Goliath

We were telling Ava the story of David and Goliath this morning after breakfast (before school) and Greg was asking her review questions like "Was David BIG or small?" and "Was Goliath BIG or small?" She answered appropriately and proceeded to tell us that Goliath comes to her school and "the baby dragon will fight Goliath and I go..."(punching the air) "...and Goliath dies." She then hopped off her chair and began to brandish a fly swatter like a sword and started fighting with an invisible Goliath just outside our kitchen.

Lately, Ava has been praying about the chocolate factory at dinnertime. She hasn't seen Charlie And the Chocolate Factory in a while but somehow recently, it's stuck in her head. She prays for it, prays to visit the chocolate factory, and mumbles other things about it during prayer. Funny girl.

Last week, we were picking Ava up from school and one of the teachers at the school, who speaks English, was lounging on the patio. We chatted with her for a minute and she shared that Ava would spontaneously shout, "It's showtime!" and start singing to her classmates, improvising on the spot and mixing English and Turkish. The teacher demonstrated this for us, which had us laughing. She said she caught Ava doing this on video with her phone and would send us the video later.

Ava's always singing, inventing songs, etc. Her shouts of "showtime!" were new to us, though, because she wasn't doing that at home. We were at the doctor last week, waiting in the lobby area to get some tests done. Nearby was a woman holding a small baby and tears were coming down this poor woman's face. Ava hopped out to the middle of the area and began singing. She then whirled around and stuck out her bottom and wriggled it at Greg and me. We burst out laughing, slightly embarrassed that she was basically mooning us and shaking her bottom at us in public. The crying woman saw Ava and started laughing, too. Glad that my silly daughter brought a minute of sunshine to this woman's day.

Now, her preschool has finished the spring term and is currently in summer session (basically, they just play all summer without any real training or lessons). At the end of the term, they give us a report on how Ava is doing with milestones, etc. They were sweet enough to type up some of the sentences that Ava has been learning to say in Turkish such as: "let's go to mommy," "teacher, what is this?" "good morning," "teacher, where is my water?" "(so-so), what are you doing?" "we're going out to the garden." They said she has no difficulty understanding her friends while they are playing. She can react to her friends in situations that make her feel uneasy, "(so-so), don't do this!" and "(so-so), no!" I interpret that as her being bossy, not uneasy! :-) We see her responding to Turks in Turkish and it's just surreal to watch her speak another language, especially when we don't speak it ourselves! Greg does know some Turkish but I know zilch.

The other day, we were talking again about the baby. She knows that she'll need to ask to hold the baby, she knows the baby will cry a lot and sleep a lot. At the end of our conversation, she said, "I love babies!" Ha! She does seem to like babies but doesn't pay too much attention. Also, a couple days ago, Ava put her hand on my belly and said to the baby, "give me five!" She paused for two seconds (the baby didn't move) and then said, "Good job!"