Clinging To A Friend

Ava loves it when kids come over to play. She gets excited and giggles. She'll go up to a kid and stand right in from of him/her, nose to nose, with absolutely no sense of personal space. She blabbers, touches them, and stares at them. She follows the bigger kids around incessantly. I'm sure she's tackled a kid a time or two in nursery on Sunday mornings in her overeagerness.  I've seen Ava annoy kids with her lack of respect for personal space.

I was vacuuming this morning and Ava was hiding in her room from the scary roaring noise. She's scared of and fascinated with the vacuum. Anyway, my friend Jordan came by to drop off her 19-month-old daughter, Lily, for an hour or two and Ava came out of her room when she heard voices. Needless to say, she was excited to see someone close to her own height. After Jordan left, I warned Lily that I was vacuuming and it would make an awful noise. She nodded and off I went vacuuming. Lily and Ava scrambled for the couch to get the most distance between themselves and the vacuum. A few seconds later, I looked back at the pair and saw something that had me doubled over in laughter: Ava, shorter by 6 inches, had her arms wrapped around Lily chest to chest, trapping Lily's arms against her sides and Ava was looking over her shoulder in wide-eyed fear at the vacuum.

Maybe it was one of those you-had-to-be-there moments but believe me, it was HI-LAR-IOUS! It was just priceless to see Ava clinging to a friend for comfort in a scary moment.