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 :)

Nearly 19 Months

Ava has been having a really good week, she's been so well behaved during the day and sleeping well at night. In fact, yesterday she let me sleep until 9:45! I went in to see if she was awake, and she was just sitting in her crib playing with toys and reading her books. She has been doing that most mornings, rather than crying and whining until one of us gets out of bed and goes to her. Such a nice change!

She'll be 19 months old tomorrow, and I still can't believe how quickly that's happened. I haven't weighed her in ages so I have no idea how heavy she is, but she's wearing 18-24 month size clothing, so she seems to be where she should be.

She loves to sing songs, particularly 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' and 'Incy Wincy Spider'. She gets upset when the 'rainbow' (as she says) washes the spider out, but then she shouts YAY! when he climbs up the spout again.

I've managed to get some video of her singing the first part of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but she gets distracted by her farmyard and decides she'd rather play with that instead!

I took her to Tumble Tots yesterday and we had the whole place to ourselves! Ava enjoyed trying new things like stepping from one block to the next, sort of like stepping-stones, and she climbed a ladder to reach the top of a slide. Her favourite event seemed to be the hoola-hoops. One of the instructors was swinging it around on her arm and Ava kept trying to copy her. The ladies really liked Ava, they couldn't believe what a little chatterbox she was. Whenever she completed an obsticale she would jump up and say 'Did it! Good girl!' with a big smile on her face.

She's talking in sentences now and it's very unusual for us to have to guess what she means. Most often she'll walk into a room and say 'Hello mummies, what you doing there?' and she almost always remembers her manners: 'Like some cheese, pleeaaase?' and then 'Fank you mummy.'

She loves to hide things inside the oven mitt, and the other day I found:

- 5 spoons
- 2 fruit cups
- a plastic cup
- sippy cup handles
- a rubber mat used to suction her dishes to the high chair tray
- and Iggle Piggle

all inside one oven mitt!

It started with farm animals but I guess she figured out she could hide many more things and it's now entertainment for all of us. It made me laugh when I saw Iggle Piggle stuffed in there, upside down, feet sticking out of the top.

Crazy Hair!

Finally got the camera out and took a few pictures this morning. Poor Ava has inherited my insane hair. I had hoped it would settle down as she got older, but it just seems to be getting crazier by the day!

1...2...3... CHEESE!

Last week I took Ava to Wizzy's World, which is a big play barn with a giant padded climbing frame where you can let the kids loose for a while. Anyway, they had a yellow bus ride (like the helicopter from the other place) and Ava was obsessed with it so I decided to let her have some money to make it move, and suddenly a little girl jumped inside the bus and was standing next to Ava (who was in the driver seat) and Ava turned around and shouted 'Sit down!' and the little girl sat down right away! Then Ava smiled and said 'Good girl.' and went back to driving the bus. It was so funny, I wish I'd had the video camera going.


One of Ava's tv shows teaches children sign language and Ava has started to pick it up recently. She can sign the following:

- Strawberries
- Scales (weight scales)
- Red
- Hello
- Thank you
- Look
- Parrot
- You sign

That's all I can remember at the moment... I think there might be another one or two in there though.

She's such a clever little bean, always learning and surprising us with the things she has learned.

Play Time

Today I took Ava to her weekly Busy Little Bodies class at the village centre behind our house. The hour is spent singing songs and clapping, playing with puppets and then having tea and a cookie afterward. Ava occasionally pays attention to what's happening during the singing and clapping time but more often than not, she's running around the gym trying to play with fire extinguishers and electrical sockets. I was starting to wonder if I was wasting my time taking her to these classes, when a few hours later at home, she began singing some of the songs from the class! I suppose she is paying attention after all, even if it doesn't show.

I found out from some of the other mothers that I should have already registered Ava with a preschool in the area if I wanted her to attend one when she's two and a half. I hadn't really thought about it but I suppose it's probably good preparation for when she has to go to real school.

Earlier this evening I took Ava over to Isabelle and Cody's house, and while Isabelle and I were chatting on the sofa, Ava tried to climb up to sit with us. Suddenly she let out a shriek and started to cry. I looked down and noticed that Cody had ahold of her shirt with his teeth. I thought he was just holding her back and that it was upsetting her, so I took the t-shirt out of his mouth and noticed a very painful looking bite mark on Ava's tummy! She was very upset and kept clinging to my neck and trying to hide from Cody. Isabelle was really concerned and kept scolding Cody, but he ended up biting me a little while later and then Isabelle as well. Ava has bitten me a few times but I always squeeze her mouth and say 'No biting! No biting!' every time she does it. She doesn't really do it anymore, so hopefully my scolding is working.

Graham and I took her to one of these indoor play world places a couple of days ago and we let her run around on her own, but still keeping an eye on her. When I went to get us some tea I saw her trying to get into a little helecopter ride. There were three little boys inside (older than Ava) and one of them suddenly shoved Ava really hard and she fell backwards out the door and landed on the ground on her back! She burst into tears and came running over to me. I felt so bad for her, I wanted to go shout at the little boy for being mean but I figured it would start something with his mother - if she was even paying attention - and it's probably best that Ava learns other kids can be mean, and that's not the right way to behave. It's just so sad to see someone hurt my little girl :(

So it's been a rough couple of days for her when it comes to playing with other children, and we're going to a Tumble Tots class tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully no one will try and beat her up and maybe she'll make a friend or two.

Update

Ava had another teething spell recently and as a result now has 4 new teeth! Her cheeks were very pink for a few days and she was pretty grumpy some days so we knew some teeth must be coming in.

Her vocabulary is expanding daily and she understands almost everything we say to her. She has a bit of a rebellious streak in her though and decides for herself if she's going to do what we ask her to.

She can be very sweet and loves to give us kisses. She loves her toys and spends hours playing with her new farm yard that Uncle Robin made for her. It was a Christmas gift from Grandma Sue, Roger (Ava calls him Dodgy) and Robin. She has several farm animals to play with, and she has started to find hiding places for them around the house. Yesterday I went to put on the oven mitts and found two pigs inside one of them.

She has started singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and even tries some of the alphabet. Yesterday she said 'TUVWXYandZ' She also likes to sing 'And munch, and munch, munch, two three four, hurray!' which is meant to be the Teddington's Marching Band song from Show Me, Show Me. I think some of the lyrics are:

And march, and march,
And march, 2 3 4!
Hurray! Hurray!
For Teddington’s Marching Band.

I haven't got any new photos to put up, so I'll try and make sure I take some more this week, and maybe some video too. I'm so behind with all of this stuff, her youtube page hasn't been update in ages!

18 months

I can hardly believe it; Ava turned 18 months old 4 days ago! She's growing up so fast.


We had a very busy Christmas and New Years this year, even though we stayed in England and celebrated with Graham's side of the family. On Christmas Eve we travelled to Stratford-Upon-Avon and stayed at a very cute country cottage in the village of Quinton, with Graham's mum, Roger, Steve and Jenni until the 3oth. Because the cottage was so tiny, Steve and Jenni ended up sleeping in the living room, and Ava's travel cot was set up in the ensuite bathroom in the master bedroom. We thought this would help everyone get a little bit more sleep, but unfortunately the walls were quite thin and Ava had us up several times a night for one reason or another.

She seems to have sunk back into the habit of waking up screaming every couple of hours for ages and will only settle down once one of us goes in and sits with her. We've tried letting her just cry it out but she goes on for hours. Stubborn little monkey.

Last night she was perfect though - she slept from 7pm to 8am without waking us up once! When I woke up at 8:15am I had to go check on her to make sure she was okay, and I found her in her bed reading a book. If only she would do that every day!