Ava: 10 Things We Love

Greg and I collaborated and came up with this list of ten things we love about Ava at 3.5 years old:

1) She will talk to anyone, hearing or Deaf. She's never met a stranger. Every adult that comes through our front door is automatically her playmate, if there is not another child to play with - I recognize that this is partly because she has been an only child and still essentially an only child since Darcy cannot play with her yet.

2) Her funny obsession with chocolate factories and pink jungles. She prays to visit a chocolate factory and a pink jungle every time she says the blessing at dinner.

3) Her crazy attachment to her pink corduroy cat and the way she uses its tail to soothe herself and relax. It's just quirky.

4) She points at things with her pinky finger.

5) Her pronunciation: "take a baf," "my teef are white!" "ahval-it" (all of it) "happy birfday!" "pah-corn"

6) The way she wriggles her bottom when she dances and how she makes up songs.

7) Her imagination: she fills her tea party sets with fat beads as tea; she puts on my apron around her neck and pretends to be a superhero with a cape; ties a broken string of play pearls around her waist and pretends the dangling end is a tail (and wiggles her bottom at us to demonstrate her tail); she pretends to be a princess and a ballerina, sometimes at the same time;

8) One of our favorite memories of her is when we were at the hospital with her waiting on test results. There was a lady nearby who was holding a baby and crying. Ava hadn't noticed her but was clowning around and being silly. She was singing and dancing, I think, and she jumped around, stuck her bottom out at us, and wriggled it. We burst out laughing and the sad woman saw Ava sticking her bottom out at us and began to laugh.

9) She is empathetic to other kids; loves Darcy and has not been jealous of her once.

10) Her lively curiosity about everything and how she lives life to the fullest.