birthday

in my opinion, ava has been "spiritually" two for a few months already, but tomorrow she officially crosses the threshold. ava's second birthday will coincide with the happy occasion of grandma's release from the hospital! however, all the grandma-related chaos made it impossible to pull together her planned birthday bash at grandma's house.

thankfully, the post family came to our rescue, and hosted a lovely party birthday party for ava at their summer cottage on lake superior. moments after ava and i arrived, the wind started howling, rain started pouring down and the thunder and lightning show began. ava had never experienced a thunder storm before, and i thought for sure she'd have a meltdown. thankfully, she just looked sort of puzzled and said "noise!! loud!!" every time there was thunder. twenty minutes or so later, the rain cleared out, the sun came back, and we all went outside to hang out by the lake and roast dogs.

ava opened oodles of presents, seemed very pleased by her birthday cake, and only almost sprinted straight into the bonfire once. lots more birthday pics here

ava had two first birthday celebrations. on the special day itself, she had her baby friends (and their parent's) over for dinner. ava was very excited to have some company her own age, and put on quite the show, gleefully rolling around on the bean bag chairs with paulo. after some romping around the living room, all of the babies pulled up a chair for dinner, and were quite amazingly well behaved. paulo even had lasagna for dinner.

after a little more romping around the house, grandma helped Ava blow out her candle and open her presents. ava wasn't that excited by the wrappings (ayan was the paper ripping champ, and paulo enjoyed both the bows and the boxes), but she was absolutely obsessed with the tag on a cute shirt from flavia.

a couple of days later, ava had a birthday picnic in the sunny east bay with her aunties (errr . . . and bavin too!). the highlight of the picnic for ava was a lunchbox full of finger puppets from laura. she played with them as only a baby could, taking them in and out of the box, stirring them around, tossing them in the air, etc. when she was playing with them at home later, i caught her organizing them on a pile in the floor by her bookshelf, then standing up and firmly stomping them with her foot. oh to have just a little glimpse of the little baby mind . . .