ava does not

as ava nears her second birthday, she's definitely developing many of the traits commonly associated with the "terrible twos". i can't even write a blog about her latest round of swimming lessons just yet, as i have yet to achieve enough "distance" on her behavior to consider it to be humorous. rather than rant about all the little annoying things that ava does, i thought it might be more fun to celebrate the many common toddler tricks that ava does not . . . (at least, not yet!)

1. bite, push, kick, scratch

or otherwise exhibit any sort of aggression towards people, animals, plants or even inanimate objects. she went through a very brief biting phase shortly after her first birthday, but it was clear that she thought she was being funny.

ava is the opposite of "pushy" around other kids. it's quite humorous watching her try to dance around the other children on the playground to get up the stairs to the slide. when faced with inevitable physical contact, ava just turns around and picks something else to do.

2. express much opinion about her wardrobe

she is a nutcase about her shoes. her new thing is to fling off her shoes and socks, take two steps, declare "feet hurt", "feet hurt" and then demand that they be put back on again. she also went through about two weeks where she wanted to wear her rainboots all the time. otherwise though, she is mercifully immune to her clothing, and has yet to pick a favorite color or outfit.

this is a good thing as mommy deeply enjoys the "dress up" aspect of parenting.

3. paw through the cupboards

our house is really rather lightly baby-proofed. we've got all the obvious safety precautions in place (outlet covers, gate on stairs, lock on the cleaning fluid cupboard), but that's really about it. we even have one floor level cabinet in our dining room that is unlocked and contains nothing but a mess of wires and cables that connect all the complicate electronics in our house. there's nothing particularly dangerous in there, but oh man - if anything in that mess got unplugged, i think john's head would explode.

the reason for our incomplete baby locking, is that ava just isn't a meddler. we told her that the wire cupboard was "daddy's cuboard" and she seems okay with that. she doesn't even bother with the cupboards that i haven't told her to stay out of. for example, she's never once thought it might be fun to drag out the pots and pans and have a good banging session. which brings us to :

4. enjoy loud noises

praise the lord, for my daughter has never once emitted one of those horrible, girly, high pitched screams - in either excitement or frustration. a few months ago she did finally learn how to yell (sigh), but it's not at all high pitched.

ava will play her various musical toys gently, but she just doesn't get a kick out of banging, stomping or shouting. i think if you played the lower octaves of our piano too loudly, she would probably sit down and cry.

5. break things

ava will occasionally go into hysterics if she accidentally rips a piece of paper that she was feeling attached too. to date she has yet to a) rip a single page in a book, b) tear an appendage off a stuffed animal or c) smash a toy.

similarly, ava never throws dishware or cutlery off her high chair. don't get me wrong, she'll take huge handfuls of blueberries and chuck them on the floor (sigh), but for some reason she leaves the bowl itself alone. in fact, i realized when i sat down to write this that 99% of the time ava eats out of a relatively fragile, glass desert bowl. she did throw a bowl overboard once, which caused all observers to say someting along the lines of "hmmm . .. maybe we shouldn't give the baby the glass bowls" and then we all forgot about it two days later. that was about 6 months ago, and she hasn't repeated this trick yet.

6. disrupt anyone's sleep schedule

ava arrived in the world, took a look around, had a good cry about the unattractive and squished state of her skull, and then promptly went back to sleep. and slept the large majority of the next six weeks, at which point she began her "11 hours a night minimum" sleep schedule. she combined her lengthy night time snoozes with a generous amount of daytime napping. yes, i was actually one of the 10 mothers in this country who spent some time searching the internet to see if it was possible for a baby to sleep too much. (yeah, yeah, don't kill me.)

the daytime napping has dropped considerably, but ava is still a champion sleeper. when you tell her it's bedtime, she now says "no no no no" and starts running around the house as fast as she can go. once you trap the rascal and get her in the crib though, she's all happy about snuggling down for yet another blissful night of uninterrupted snoozing.