Vocabulary of our two year old

Once Ava really started talking around 18 months, her vocabulary grew quickly, gradually migrating toward full sentences a few months ago.  Now however, she's begun spitting out much more long and complicated words amidst clear sentences, leaving us literally speechless sometimes!  Though my attempt to compile a list of the words I've heard her say over the past month or so would no doubt be incomplete, many of the words are ones that leave us wondering when she even picked them up.

One example I do remember was when she came up to me holding a vibrating massager that we have (which she hadn't played with in maybe 6 months) and said, "Mommy, I do the vibrating?"  To which I of course replied, "You do the what??"

And, on our trip to Mimi and Pappy's, one of their favorite conversations with her was after she came down from a fitful nap (during which she woke and cried a lot for me to come get her).  They asked her how she slept and what happened during her nap and she said, "I was frustrated!"

She's a sponge I tell you!

This past weekend we went down to Virginia for my cousins wedding and had a wonderful time.  We saw many cousins and aunts and uncles but the highlight of Ava's trip was no doubt the plentiful presence of boys her age wearing dress pants and ties.  Little did we know, our shy little girl is quite the little romantic.  She was following around every boy she could find trying to hold their hands and get them to dance with her, turning to us to say, "I dance with boys?"

Another of my favorite stories from this past month is when Ava asked me to sing a particular song from one of her books at nap time.  I couldn't remember which song went with a particular page in her book (it came with a companion CD) when finally I said, Oh, I think it's ---- .  She smiled at me with the most genuine smile you've ever seen and took a deep breath and said, "Oh, you're so smart mommy!"  Ha!  I about lost it and thought, my two year old just encouraged me!

With the increase in language skills that Ava is possessing, she's starting to be able to recall and tell us about her dreams at night.  I've always wondered what infants dream about and though that's still a mystery, it's been so fun to hear about some of the things she's dreaming of now.  Though she's talked about butterflies and squirrels, my favorite (after the fact) is this.  Blair and I were watching her on our new video monitor one night, she'd awoken and was sitting crying in her crib.  After a minute she went quiet and started sucking her thumb.  I was relieved until we realized she had fallen asleep sitting up and then did a dead fall, her little head knocking right into her bed rail.  She of course starting screaming hysterically and we ran in to comfort her and make sure she was ok.  She fell asleep again surprisingly quickly and I laid her in her crib.

Not ten minutes later, she awoke screaming again and this time wasn't settling so I went in.  She was wide awake and when I asked her what was wrong and if she wanted to lay down, she said, "The car! The car went fast on my neck!"  "What?" I said, a little perplexed and wondering if she'd suffered any real consequences from her earlier fall.  She replied with vigorous hand motions, "Daddy's purple car went fast on my head."  I started to realize what had happened, "Did you hit your head really hard?" I said.  "Yeah, the car went really fast on my head, right here" she pointed.

What a sweet little heart, she'd slept through the whole ordeal and was now awaking from a nightmare in which her dad's car ran into her head!  We did our best to stifle our laughter and comfort our baby girl and convince her that it was a bad dream.  Though it was awful for her I'm sure, it was a great moment for us as parents to watch that whole thing play out and to see her use her words to communicate so well with us!