ava's blog

today was ava's fifth swimming lesson at la petite baleen, and her behavior has improved to the point where i am willing to talk about it. there are many things i really like about la petite baleen. the first is the location - right on the bay, in the presidio, at the end of crissy field. see view from the parking lot to the right. not bad. the second thing is that they are pretty hardcore. these folks believe in the swimming version of "cry it out" - this means that no little bodies escape from the pool for the duration of their 30 minute lesson - no matter what. however, this very strict rule is balanced by a huge amount of compassion, patience and good humor from the instructors. ava's instructor said to me on the first day : "if we let them do what they want, then they learn to manipulate us, see?". hmmm . . . yup . . . got it. okay, you seem to know what you're talking about - we'll give this a shot, your way.

the first class ava screamed at the top of her lungs the entire time, while trying to climb my body to get out of the water. picture her hanging on to my ears for dear life. the second class, she was much improved, and only screamed during the "boat" part of the program. the third class was just plain bad luck. it was an unusually cold day, and therefore daycare was running on a slightly altered schedule. ava wasn't playing outside where she usually was, and we wound up leaving daycare through the "wrong" door. omg. meltdown. must never vary from the routine. never, ever, ever. i never really got her calmed down from the door episode, so she just carried on with the meltdown all the way through her swimming lesson too.

ava cheered up quite a bit for lesson number four though, so much so that her instructor was pretty much jumping up and down for joy. lesson number five was another incremental improvement. still objecting to the "boats", but she's lowered her objection to a dull moan, rather than an ear piercing scream. and, cracking some smiles now and again too. at today's lesson we were also fortunate enough to have grandma along to snap some pics. more pics here.

grandma has arrived for a mid-summer visit, just in time for our worst period of summer fog, combined with a lovely smoky haze from the numerous wildfires burning in california. we're going to try and escape at least the foggy part a few times this week, and began that goal with a trip to hidden valley farm in los altos.

i couldn't find much information online about hidden valley, so didn't really know what to expect. it turned out to be a sprawling complex of gardens and barns, full of veggies, fruit, flower and animals. really nice even in our current period of drought, and must be extra-ordinary in winter / spring when the multiple creeks are flowing with water.

ava still has a cold, and isn't quite herself, but we still had a good time. highlights (from ava's perspective)

• the "grape vine house" in the organic garden
• the cat in the organic garden
• the baby goat that kissed me
• eating fresh blackberries

low points :

• when stupid mommy tried to take my long-sleeved shirt off. who cares if its 85 F in the shade? i like my whale shirt!!!
• smacking my head really hard on the fence trying to pet the baby goat
• when stupid mommy tried to trick me into putting on shorts after my diaper change. it's just not proper for a young lady not to cover her knees!

more pics

today we took a trip to central park in san mateo, for ayan's annual photoshoot. i think ava really enjoyed not being the center of photographic attention, and i enjoyed not being the baby wrangler. we both puttered around and watched the madness, and i took a few shots and videos of "life behind the scenes". here's my favourite pic from the shoot, see the full gallery here

if you just can't get enough of ava today, watch the bagpipe zombie dance video

ava's had a cold all week. as baby illnesses go, it hasn't really been remarkable, or even particularly annoying. it has had a weird side effect though - ava is a little more cantakerous than usual and has suddenly decided that she hates taking a bath! i think tomorrow we might try the shower instead.

as ava gets older, she and daddy are developing more and more common interests. one of those is ocean beach. okay, ava's not exactly up for surfing just yet, but she does love to go hang out on a sunny day and watch the waves. ava loves all aspects of beach trips with daddy, starting with a treasured ride in the van, but especially the part where she gets as sandy as possible.

on this particular trip, ava reached an important milestone : she finally managed to get both feet off the ground simulaneously, in an action vaguely resembling "jumping". (see video at bottom). now, i think hope that her vertical leap will improve somewhat over time, but this may be one (of many) areas in which she is somewhat genetically doomed. john and i are both slow-twitch muscle dominated, and are loaded with endurance, but low on attributes like "spring".

john and i share a few more attributes. for example, we were both born with an innate ability to derive the correct answer on a graduate level math / physics/ chemistry exam - regardless of whether or not we actually have any idea what exactly it is we're doing. and, we're both hypnotized by bad television, although john prefers "reality tv" (deadliest catch, etc.) while i prefer "other wordly soap operas" (lost, battlestar galactica). it's a very good thing that we don't actually own any television reception devices.

so . . . how does ava stack up against her parents? perhaps it's time for our second genetics showdown . . .

well, so far it looks like physically ava is just headed in her own weird direction, while behaviorally she matches mommy. of course, most traits shared with mommy are also shared with most toddlers. hmm . . . what exactly does that say about me?

well, it's officially an unusual summer here in san francisco, as we have now had three summer heat waves. the first was around may 14-16, temps climbed to the triple digits, and we had a pool party. the second was around june 9-12, and in our neighbourhood it was more of a "warm wave". i don't think the temperature topped 80 F, but it was still an unexpected break in the fog. this week, the heat hit a third time, peaking at 95 F in downtown on san francisco the afternoon of friday, june 20th. we, of course, took every opportunity to let ava frolic in the back garden in both her "ghetto pool" (empty storage bin) or her "padding pool" (the nice blue pool), depending on how motivated we were feeling. we're quite positive that we've used our back garden more in the past 30 days, than in the last 3 years combined.

watching ava frolic naked in her pool while alternately hugging and devouring her frog , i was struck by three thoughts. 1) that kid is crazy. 2) why must she drink her bath water. 3) who stuck this long shapely leg on my baby girl?

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.

just a quick update for any ava fan's out there who might be worried that by now she is suffering from dehydration and / or sleep deprivation. fear not. the situation is under control.

ava mourned the loss of her binky with great passion and volume for three nights, but has now returned to her more typical "i love my crib more than my mommy" self. it seems like it takes her longer to go to sleep now (we hear chattering and singing for at least a half an hour), but i'm wondering if her nighttime serenades are just louder now that there isn't something stuffed in her mouth.

and (thankfully) she's back to her morning and evening milk-guzzling self, tipping back that sippy cup like she'd never known anything different.

phew.

poor ava! it's been quite the trying two weeks for my little muffin. on saturday, june 1st, mean mommy and daddy took away her bottle. on friday, june 6th, they stole her binky too!

here's how it all went down . . .

the bottle

ava's induction into bottleholics anonymous was actually a bit of an accident. we'd planned to take away both binky and bottle on june 6th. on june 1st, i got a bit curious how bad the bottle part would be and handed ava a sippy cup instead of her bedtime bottle. amazingly, she did not throw it across the room in disgust, so i figured . . . well . . . let's just go with it.

after that things went both better and worse than i thought. bizarrely, ava never once asked for her bottle. now, we're talking about a 22 month old who knows words like "elephant", "fairy", "beautiful", "special" and "hiding" - lack of vocabulary was not the problem here. i think she was mainly confused. she would hear the microwave beep and would exclaim "milk coming! milk coming!". we'd bring her the sippy cup of milk, and she would take it, take a sip, and then continue to say "milk coming? milk coming?", in a dazed, confused, and hopeful tone of voice.

this tailed off after a couple of days, but what did not ramp up was her actually consumption of liquids . . . especially milk! suddenly ava's favorite part of the day became her most hated, and we've had to resort to every trick in the book to get her to consume a minimal amount of milk per day (see video). when we're feeling less creative, we are reduced to "co-watching" an episode of little bear with her, while pouring milk into her distracted little mouth.

the binky

for the end of binky, we engaged in the traditional "binky gifting" ritual - gathering up all our binkys, wrapping them up pretty and delivering them to paulo's little sister (who actually hates pacifiers - don't tell ava!). i'm not sure ava really got the point at the time, and paulo certainly confused things by trying to give them back to ava as we headed out the door. she got the point that night though . . . and boy was she not happy!

what followed was probably a typical binky-free transition. three nights of 1+ hours of full throttle howling, 1 night of 1 hour of muttering, and 3 nights (and counting) of 1 hour of talking ourself to sleep. the situation was greatly complicated by ava's coincidental discovery of how to remove her own "snuggler" (sleep sack). she would take it off, and then be immediately infuriated that she could not get it back ON again. for some reason it took us three nights to try out the well known trick of putting the snuggler on backwards - worked like a charm!

like most small children, ava suddenly seems happiest when she's either a) moving as fast as possible or b) climbing as high as possible. the more potential for injury - the wider ava is smiling. watching her clamber about on the playground is starting to get a little terrifying. i think i'll feel much better when she's officially two - as i find frequently find myself wondering "is it really reasonable to let a one-year-old climb ladders that go above my head?".

fortunately, it is sometimes possible to fool ava's danger-meter. for example, nothing very exciting is actually going to happen when daddy swings her around in a circle on the soft grass, but gosh, it sure feels exciting to ava!