Mommy's Little Helper

Ava is doing so much these days that I thought I'd write an extra post in here rather than trying to remember everything for next month!

I remember vividly when Ava was still an infant, wondering what her little voice would sound like. Would it be quiet? Loud? Low? High? Sweet? Now getting to hear her voice is such a thrill (most of the time) and a delightful part of my day.

Ava's vocabulary is growing rapidly, as is her interest in the alphabet! She has a box of alphabet books (one for each letter) that she is very into now. She loves trying to pronounce each letter and actually gets more right than we would have thought! She loves U and I and when mommy sings the ABC's. She doesn't yet recognize any of the letters by sight but I'm sure that will start happening in no time. I forgot in my last post that Ava has been saying "Where are you?" when searching for her ducky or another toy, has muttered "Where go?" when she's lost something and just yesterday she said to me, "Mommy do!", shoving her toy in my hands and clapping with anticipation.

Yesterday Blair was working in the afternoon and evening so Ava and I had a quick dinner and went outside to play. We went for a walk and saw lots of lawnmowers and leaf blowers (her favorite), and then came back to the house. I've been working on some "spring cleaning" these last couple of days so as Ava played in the driveway I continued my work in the garage for a few minutes. I decided it was time to fix up our old, sorry looking wreath that has been hanging on our door, removing the sun-bleached berries and replacing those strands with ones from another leafy wreath. I sat on the bottom stair to the front porch picking berries off the wreath and watching Ava stomp in a puddle and work her way over to me. I told her what I was working on and with barely a word she sat down beside me, watched what I was doing and then started picking off faded, styrofoam berries, one at a time. She sat with me for a solid twenty minutes, the only words exchanged were the occasional, "You're doing a great job honey" and "Thank you so much for helping mommy". She didn't need to talk or move on to something else, she just sat and helped me work. I kept glancing at her, working hard and concentrating, and marveling at how big my little girl has become! She is almost a year and a half old--the big turning point into solid toddlerhood, and it shows. And boggles my mind.

Here is the before and after of our wreath, now much less sad and a wonderful reminder for me of our first mother-daughter project. :)