89 weeks old…
Hi. Put on your shades. Upside down or right side up. Totally up to you because… our super star Ava is now 89 weeks old!
Ava’s 89th week began with a pickle eating contest. She needed something quick while we waited for her order of mac ‘n cheese to arrive.
On Friday, we drove down to LA again so she could eat her first corn-on-the-cobb.
I’m totally kidding. We drove down so she could hang out with her Nona Dinka. Here they are enjoying a few minutes of the discovery channel.
My brother David and I used to spend a lot of summer days running through these sprinklers in the backyard. And since it was sunny and hot over the weekend, we stripped Ava down to her diaper, cranked on the sprinklers and waited for the fun to start. Hmmm. Still waiting for the fun the start…
Ok. There! The fun finally started. It took her a few minutes to start running after watching Dan, my mom and me run through them with our clothes on. After a few sprints, Ava started saying oh oh when the water hit her face and decided that we were all done. I think she enjoyed running on the wet grass more than the sprinklers.
We also introduced her to a game that David and I used to play called burrito. Yes, I said burrito. Yes, I know we are weird but it was fun to us so shhhhh. You lay a tortilla (aka the blanket) on the floor, lay on the edge and have someone roll you up like a burrito, hence the very very creative name. Then someone unrolls the burrito and you end up on the carpet. Weee. Told you it was fun.
And after that, we showed Ava how to make a fort and she invited over a few friends.
Ava has been more clingy with her toys. She likes to bring a toy with her in the car or on walks or even on her bike rides through the house. She doesn’t have a favorite yet. Any toy will do just fine.
Ava also got to spend some more time with Nathan again. She was sure to tell him ‘mine’ a couple million times.
She slowly warmed up to him after a decent amount of time, especially when she wanted the teddy bear that he had.
But the trade didn’t go so smoothly. As usual, she screamed ‘mine’ and he bulldozed her over.
Silly kids.
After dinner, Ava actually stopped being possessive and wanted to play with Nathan. She climbed up on the couch and started playing with the pillows. After a few seconds, she asked Nathan to sit next to her.
By the end of the evening, they managed to sit together and look at baby photos of themselves.
Back at home, Yoda has been more cuddly at bedtime. She stopped visiting us during milk drinking time, probably due to the fact that it was warm. But the temperature is starting to drop now that we are in October so Yoda tries to snuggle with us in the rocking chair again. Yoda is a welcome re-addition to our nightly routine but she doesn’t fit so nicely anymore. Ava’s a bit bigger now than she was last winter.
One the changes we’ve seen in Ava this week is fear. After going to our favorite Thursday night restaurant, we always take a stroll to Target to say hello to all the Dora dolls that live there. But last night, when we walked into Target, she froze at the front door and refused to walk in… because there were monsters hanging on the ceiling. She refused to look up while Dada held her or while in the shopping cart. And when we walked past the Halloween section and she saw ghosts and goblins? Let’s just say that you could hear her shriek all the way to the luggage section.
Ava also insists on having me read Little Red Riding Hood to her every day this week. I never know how to handle the part where the Paul Bunyan-looking fellow cuts the grandma out of the wolf’s belly so I just say that he finds her. Period. The end. If the book is laying on the ottoman, she refuses to go into the living room by herself. She just says ‘vuk’ over and over again, which means wolf. Poor kid. I need to remember to hide that book!
Our nightly walks around the neighborhood are getting more interesting. Ava is starting to walk on mini-walls all by herself. I think gymnastics might be in her future.
She is also starting to walk like she has no knee caps. And you though I was weird for playing the burrito game!
She also insists on taking along some of her toys. Here she is walking with her monkey who can walk too.
Ava always makes sure she stops at this one old Mercedes that sits under the ghost trees to point at its license plate and say QID. QID in Ava talk means ABC. They used to be her favorite 3 letters. We just started to ask her to say ABC instead of QID because it’s the right thing to do (even though we want her to say QID forever). Some other funny things she says is shop-a-lay for play-doh and bee-batz for toothbrush. And when she tries to count, she says jedan-two-three. A nice mix of Croatian and English. But the best thing Ava starting repeating this week is ‘volim te’ and ‘i love you’ which mean the same thing. It is the best feeling ever to hear her say it. I can’t wait for her to say without me saying it first.
Oops. I got a little sidetracked on that last photo. So back to our nightly walks. The BEST BEST part of our walks now is when Ava points and says ‘pas kaka, which is a nice way of saying dog sh*t. LOL. She might be the shoe police at home but she is the kaka police when we are out and about.
Okay. Time for me to pick-up my sweet potato pie from daycare now. I wonder if her art project today can top the one that got displayed early this week. Hmmm, I wonder how much I can get for it on eBay?
