It's Spring!

Yesterday we decided to do some gardening, so while we were digging up the grass, Ava was digging in the mud. We ended up having to take her dress off so she spent most of the afternoon wearing nothing but a t-shirt and underpants that fit over her diaper. It didn't take long before she was covered in dirt and even had a scrape on her knee. She seemed to have a really nice time playing outside and she's getting better at not eating pebbles and miscellanious debris. (Although I did catch her eating a small piece of mud at one point)

This morning we went to a play group and on the way home she started singing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat'. She was actually pretty good at it too! I had no idea she knew so many of the words. Her version went like this:

Row your boat gently down the stream
If you see a crocodile, don't forget to scream! ('forget to' actually sounds more like 'get a')
Aahh!

It really surprised me when she started singing it. She's getting better with sentences as well. A few days ago she came in the back door and said 'It's a bit too windy outside!' And she actually meant it. She had decided she didn't like the weather so she came back in the house.

She's getting very good at recognising shapes, and she knows her colours. She can sing most of the alphabet and is getting pretty good at singing The Incy Wincy Spider. Sadly she no longer says 'down came the rainbow and washed the spider out' she says it correctly these days. I'll miss the image of a rainbow coming down and washing the spider out, it's so cute.

We're off to go see Cody and Isabelle for a play date now!

Update

Ava will be 20 months old tomorrow - nearly two! I can hardly believe it. Right now she's playing on the floor with her farm yard that her Uncle Robin built. It was a gift from him and Grandma Sue for Christmas. She loves all the animals and tries to stuff as many of them as possible into the stable.

Today we have a meeting with a preschool in the next village over. We were supposed to visit the Montessori school up by the hospital this morning, but they had to cancel because they had decided to take the children for a walk... I don't really mind too much though, I went for a drive past it yesterday and was surprised at how run down the neighbourhood was. I'm not sure I'd be happy leaving Ava there. We've rescheduled for Tuesday so I'll at least go meet the people and see inside before I decide whether or not I'm happy with it.

Graham and I have decided that we think preschool would be good for Ava, which is why we've begun looking into it. She's such a quick learner and loves discovering new things all the time. Her vocabulary is huge and she never stops talking. She's very polite, always saying please and thank you when she's given something. She does still whine when she's bored or hungry which can be annoying but I have to remind myself that she's not even two years old yet so I shouldn't be surprised when my 'mini adult' acts her own age once in a while.

She loves singing and dancing to music and has her favourite songs. She likes to tell me to turn the radio on and then grabs my hands and says 'Lets dancing!'

She adds 'ing' to things that she's doing even though it doesn't make sense. For example, the other day she was bouncing on the chair and looking at her feet, and I said 'What are you doing?' and she said 'I'm feeting!' I thought it was quite creative, she decided it all on her own making up a new word. She did the same thing when she was hopping around the kitchen saying 'Ribbit! Ribbit!' I asked her what she was doing and she said 'I'm frogging!'

Her counting is really coming along too. A couple of days ago I caught her bouncing on the couch and she was counting her bounces: 'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, biscuit, nineteen, twenty!' I laughed when she replaced thirteen through eighteen with 'biscuit.' Always thinking about cookies and cakes.

Which remindes me, I actually tricked her the other day when I was trying to get her to eat some dinner. She had refused almost everything for nearly a week and I was getting tired of wasting food, so I told her that her scrambled egg was actually chocolate cake.... and she ate it! For about 10 mouth fulls she said 'Mmm yummy chocolate cake! Delicious!' but she seemed to catch on after that. I felt a bit bad for lying to her but I figured it was more important that she actually ate some food.

After struggling with colours for a few months, she seems to finally understand the differences and guesses correctly nearly all of the time.

Hmm... can't think of anything else that's new with her... The camera battery is dead so when it's finished charging I'll take some pictures and post them when I get a chance. Maybe a video too :)