growing-up

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!

ava and daddy's tour of the park usually includes two of golden gate park's playgrounds. they end at the "little playground" where ava likes to show off her ability to do a "lap" all on her own (see video).

at 20.5 months, ava is suddenly coming down with a case of "i can do it myself!". at the arboretum, there is a stone courtyard wall that ava likes to clamber on. the wall is about 3 feet high and there are a variety of different ascents. ava mastered one of the more difficult routes today, accepting my usual "spotting" without complaint. after one successful ascent though, ava decided that she'd had enough of mommy's hovering hands. she pushed me away and said "bye bye!" quite firmly. i conceded a distance of a few feet, but then snuck up on her again once she was a foot off the ground. after completing her second ascent (and noticing my trickery), ava came up with a new plan. this time, she dragged me over to the nearest bench . . . "mommy sit down . . . mommy bench . . . " and then stomped off a few feet . . . "bye bye" . . . and went back to her wall, casting the occasional glaring glance over her shoulder to make sure that i stayed parked where she left me.

if you listen closely you can hear ava saying "big step", "big step" to herself as she goes up the stairs.

like most kids, ava's very interested any electronic device with buttons. remote controls are a big hit, as well as phones. however, as of late december, phones and remote controls were indistinguishable to ava, and neither had anything to do with conversing.

over christmas i let her play with grandma's cordless home phone for awhile. i kept an eye on the button pushing, but her keystrokes were so random she never seemed to make an actual call. at one point though, she picked up the phone to her cheek and said "hi", "hi". grandma and i were both surprised and delighted and gave her a little round of applause for this new skill acquired.

a few days later my dad mentioned that he had "enjoyed his phone call from ava". phone call from ava i thought . . . we didn't call grandpa? then i remembered the play session and laughed. not only had ava said "hi" to the phone for the first time, she'd actually been speaking with her grandfather!

since then her phone skills have progressed nicely, and today she even had a nice chat with her grandma about what they were going to do today :

grandma : "we're going to the park so you need to put on your coat and shoes"
ava : "park?"
grandma : "yes, now go put on your coat."
ava : "shoes?"

ava has reached the age where she prefers to do most things the "big girl way". i'll take a porcelain dish, a soup spoon and a grown-up chair with my yogurt please.

never mind that i cannot possibly see what's inside this bowl. mommy was trying to eat it before i booted her off the chair, so it must be good.

ava's growing mind and body require period upgrades to her "nursery". recently we added a tiny table and two chairs. ava uses this to studiously examine her cards, books and puzzles.

on the other hand, sometimes we get nostalgic for the days when she was a little tiny baby in a basket. so, we bought a bigger basket to recreate the moment.

twelve to fifteen months is a rough patch in baby evolution, because it's the time when conventional wisdom dictates that parents should start taking away many of their favorite little things. this is probably much harder on the parents than the kids because you are supposed to get rid of just about every little trick you've developed to keep them quiet for five minutes. for example, no, ava doesn't really need to lounge in her bouncy chair to drink her bottle, but gosh, wasn't it nice when she was all nice and strapped firmly into place, so she didn't combine bottle drinking with walking practice?

speaking of bottles, the biggest challenge (for everyone as far as i can tell) is transitioning to the sippy cup. a couple of days after ava's first birthday I tried to make her quit the bottle cold turkey. when she got up in the morning, instead of a bottle i handed her the dreaded sippy cup. she screamed hysterically, took the sippy cup and threw it across the room. the scene ended with ava strapped into her bouncy chair, "watching television" while periodically screaming as i dribbled the milk into her mouth sip by painful sip. i opted to abandon this plan in favor of a more graduated approach to the issue. currently, we've reached a bizarre standoff in which she will drink juice from the cup, but not, god forbid, milk.

grandma is visiting again, which means that it's time for ava to reach another milestone. unsurprisingly, grandma coaxed ava into her first solo steps. so far, only grandma seems to have the knack for "launching" ava so that she takes a few steps on her own before falling over.

The more sustainable method of Ava transportation is the (also new) one-handed assist.

i tried to inspire ava to stand up on her own by plonking her down in a patch of decidedly prickly grass. her reaction followed my prediction, and she gave it herculean effort, but she never quite made it to her feet.

ava's crawling is not showing any improvement, and her pediatrician said it would be normal (and harmless) for her to stick with her unique take on the crawl. thus, she'll probably just have to put up with everyone giggling at her until she learns to walk. lately, she's starting to work towards that goal. she's always been very good at standing up if you hold her hands, but now she can hold on to something herself. watching her fall over from her failed attempts to stand up is much less painful then watching her fall over when she was learning to sit. now, she falls on her well padded little bum. then, she kept falling on her head.