christmas

initially, our coastal california babe was not a fan of either snow or snow-clothes. ava's boots were particularly challenging for her. we were all transported back in time a few months, to an era in which the baby would suddenly appear lying on her face on the ground sobbing. fortunately, snow is very low abrasion, so no permanent damage was done.

by the end of her canadian visit, ava was getting used to her winter gear and enjoying the snow. she still looked like a big pink marshmallow though.

while we in thunder bay, grandma organized a traditional sleigh ride, way out in the country past a little town called kakabeka falls, where a little girl named cailin used to live. the day of the sleigh ride dawned dark, gloomy and raining in town. i called mark to finalize arrangements, assured him that it was not raining in the country, and as i hung up the phone it started to pour. the thunder bay natives rallied nonetheless, showing up with five kids and three umbrellas.

thankfully, the weather gods smiled and the rain turned to snow moments before we reached our destination. the sleigh ride was exactly as i remembered those in my childhood. the neighborhood bullies gleefully tossed the small children off the sleigh and into the snow, we stopped for a hot chocolate and cookies break and john built ava a snowman. more pics

while ava was in thunder bay for christmas, she did a lot of cooking with grandma. they made homemade bread, three kinds of cranberry sauce, carrot soup and numerous other things. ava perches atop the kitchen stool, and grandma arranges herself in such a way as to keep ava from unexpectedly jumping off.

we all pitched in to make the christmas cookies. ava was of dubious value during the cookie rolling stage, but she really enjoyed the decorating. we had to form an assembly line just to keep up with her. john and i iced as fast as they could, ava provided the sprinkles, and grandma kept the whole line moving, delivering fresh cookies to be iced, and whisking away the final products before ava could decide it was time to take the sprinkles off again.

in the end ava decorated fifty-six cookies (i was so amazed, i had to count).

this week ava has a cold and her top molars are arriving. when her bottom molars appeared, she spent a couple of hours lying in a heap on the floor sobbing her little heart out. and then, miraculously, it was just over. if i'd known in advance how brief it would be, it would have been borderline humorous. at the time though, i was really worried that we were all in for a long stretch of pain.

her top molars are taking a little longer to work their way through, but only seem to bother her first thing in the morning. the first morning of this episode was the one i chose to go get a christmas tree. yup, that was alot of fun.

by evening though, ava managed to rally to the cause of decorating the christmas tree. she caught on right away to the idea of putting the ornaments on the tree, and gave herself a round of applause to celebrate her accomplishment.

today we took ava for her first visit with santa. grandma tried her best to prep ava for the encounter, but my suspicions that it would be a bit of a fiasco proved true. even with mommy doing her best to broker the deal, ava still wanted nothing to do with the weird man in the red suit. eventually, she warned up to the idea of being near santa and cuddled with his teddy bear and posed by his christmas tree.

on the whole though, ava greatly enjoyed her trip to macy's. she adored the spca display in the macy's windows. the display featured both animated toy animals, as well as the real, adoptable variety, housed in ornate "cages" with happy kittens sprawling across miniature four poster beds. she was also difficult to drag away from the miniature grand piano. she played with uncannily good form - back straight, wrists slightly arched and pressing each key with an individual finger. no banging on the keys with her fists for this toddler.