What I love about Ava at 19 months

It's been awhile since I've done this and since this blog is sort of our way of keeping track of Ava's milestones I thought I'd make an updated list of what I love about Ava.


I love that Ava loves wearing hats and often points to her coat rack and yells "hat" as soon as I walk into her bedroom in the morning. I also love that she can now put them on herself and often goes into her bedroom just to grab one and put it on.

I love that Ava will do anything for chocolate and the mere mention of the word will send her to the kitchen where she'll sit down and fold her hands in her lap because I've rewarded her with a chocolate chip a few times for obeying me and sitting down when I asked her to.

I love that she loves her baby doll, lays it down next to her at night in her crib and covers it with her blanket and then rolls over and gives it a kiss.

I love that Ava is sweet natured and likes to obey and that I could decorate for Christmas pretty much like I do every year and she (for the most part) only touched the decorations when we told her she could and obeyed the "use one finger" rule.

I love that she loves to run into the room and yell "HI YOU!"



I love that every morning when I hear that she's awake I go in and she pretends to be asleep and then then jumps up and says "Hi!' and then pretends to go to sleep again. . .and the cycle repeats about 6 times. It's our regular morning ritual.

I love that if I'm busy cooking she'll go to her room and get a few books and then come sit with her back against the refrigerator and just read her books to herself.

I love that she prefers to sit on a pillow or a blanket on the ground and if she's on the couch she wants a throw blanket over her lap. . .just like her mom who's always cold. And that the other day I came into her room after her nap and she refused to get out of her crib because she was sitting there, with her blanket over her lap, reading a book to her baby doll and lambie sitting beside her. She stayed in there a good 20 minutes "reading" out loud to them.

I love that she will give us kisses and hugs whenever we ask. I try not to abuse the privilege and only ask for them about 100 times a day. There is nothing better than having her run across the room with her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face because I asked for a hug.



I love that when she wants in a room and the door is closed she'll stand there and knock until I open it for her. And when we arrive at someones house she walks up to their front door with her fist out ready to knock.

I love that she's silly and goofy and gets a big kick out of plugging her nose and making funny voices while she talks.

I love that she loves to dance and dances in her car seat and sings with me in the car. I especially love when she dances with her baby doll or lambie in the kitchen while I'm making dinner.

I love and I hate that she is obsessed with two books right now, Baby's First 300 Words and Richard Scary's Best First Book Ever. We read them over and over every day and as soon as I sit down she brings one of them to me (and they're both so big she can hardly carry them) and tries to climb into my lap with it so we can read it together.

Right now my favorite animal noise/imitation she does is a squirrel. She puts both her hands to her mouth (like she was eating a nut) and sways her head side to side and says "Num, num, num, num".



I love that she picks up after me, putting my shoes back in my closet if I leave them out and putting clothes on the floor into the dirty laundry hamper.

I love that she somehow knows when it's almost 6:00 and goes and waits by the front door for her dada to come home and gets SO excited when she sees him.

I love that when I'm in a room she likes to leave the room and shut the door on me and then stand out there until I come out and when I do, stare off into the distance like she's up to nothing, then give me a sly smile and crack up laughing at herself for locking me in the room.

I love that even when we forget to pray before meals sometimes, Ava never does and sits there folding her hands until we stop eating and remember to pray, and sometimes if we don't catch on quick enough she just starts praying (unintelligibly) herself.



I love how much fun she has pretending to make food with her dad at her play kitchen and bringing cups of "water" back and forth for me from her play sink.

I love how she's starting to act out what she sees happening in her story books, pretending to fall over herself and giggling at the bear who fell into the river, rolling on the floor like the bears who are playing and wrestling in the book, etc.



This list could go on and on, Ava is just so much fun right now and learning something new every day it seems. She's really into playing with her dolls, feeding them, wrapping them up in the dish towels she steals from the kitchen and rocking them. She loves to pretend to be doing whatever I'm doing, sweeping, folding laundry (in fact Tony has some t-shirts that are horribly wadded in a drawer right now because Ava "folded" them and then put them away) and cleaning up around the house. She doesn't talk a whole lot yet but she's learning new words all the time and she seems to understand the vast majority of what we say and can follow any commands we give like, "Go put that in the trash", "Take your diaper back to your room and put it away", "Go get your towel so we can take a bath", "Go put that book back on the shelf, those are Mama's books." Stuff like that. She's also mastered just about every animal sound we can think of and now wants to know what the giraffe in her book says and the armadillo and the porcupine and . . .we're running out of ideas . . .

So that's Ava. :o)


And here's us all raking up and playing in the leaves in our back yard. I know, only in Texas does it take until January for all the leaves to finish falling off the trees. . .