Oh-Bla-Di

So it’s Spring Break in Las Vegas and all the public schools are out for the week.  What that means for you, dear readers, is that this blog will be quiet this week.  I’m deep in paper writing (I need to produce approx. 30 pages this week) and won’t be using up my words on blog posts.  Wish I could say that we’re jet-setting off to somewhere fun and we’ll have loads of pictures when we get back but, alas, that’s just not our style these days.

Don’t stray too far…hopefully, we’ll be back with some more excitement from around the casa by the end of the weekend.  Goodness knows that I’ve got a camera full of pictures just waiting to be shared with all of you.  We’ll be back soon!

Since this blog is not only our way to share the news of our family with our far-flung family & friends, but also my digital scrapbook of the little things in life, it’s time for another little update on what we’ve been doing, stuff Ava’s up to, and how things are going around here.  Since I missed Tuesday, when I could call this post Ten on Tuesday, here’s some “Words for Wednesday”…also in neatly numbered/bulleted lists.  

1.  Ava’s speaking in whole sentences.  Sometimes they’re simple…”Mommy, I want fishies, please.”  Sometimes, they’re not so simple…”Mommy, you’re driving the car to school, go that way, and I’m eating my Kix and drink my milk in my chair.”  Either way, it’s fun to hear her share what she thinks about things, what she did at school that day, what she wants to do.

2.  Ava talks a LOT.  However, context is still really important for understanding her.  Since there’s at least one night a week when Matt or I check in with her on the phone, having an interpreter is really helpful to knowing what she’s talking about.  Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, but her enunciation, while good, can still leave even the most attuned ear highly doubtful of the content of the conversation.  Knowing what she’s pointing to, or the activity in which she was engaged when you called, can help all sorts of lightbulbs go on.

3. Dresses.  Our girl is turning into a real dress lover.  Her absolute favorite piece of clothing is her “flower clothes,” a cute striped dress with a sunflower on the front.  She wears it every Monday (because that’s the first day it’s clean again) and every morning she asks, “Flower clothes still dirty?”  Thank goodness she’s still willing to wear pants with them!  She’s such a monkey on the playground at school that dresses aren’t really practical except as really long shirts.

4.  One last Ava note (probably she’ll be involved in other notes…don’t worry)…she can ride her tricycle!  We’re still working on the looking up so you can steer thing, but she can definitely pedal.  Matt’s got a blog post started of her accomplishments from when I was gone.  Maybe you can encourage him to finish it?  

5.  Speaking of Matt, I put the poor guy to work this weekend.  A little backstory…. the weather here in Vegas has been beautiful.  Sunny, 70 degrees, light breezes.  Perfect springtime weather.  Trouble with that is that spring weather makes me want to move, as in, why is it spring and I’m not looking for a new house online and planning our move dates and thinking of how to pack the cars?  I actually called Matt last Thursday to tell him to expect to do something because I just couldn’t fathom spending two more years in our house without do something drastic.  So, that night I rearranged the furniture in our front room and Saturday we built a headboard for our bed and hung curtains (from our Ohio house, stuck in the bottom of a trunk waiting for the next time they were useful) in our bedroom.  Our room looks totally different now and we’ve changed just enough to tide me over for another six months or so.  I’m thinking our artwork will change next.  We’ll have baby pictures to hang soon!

6.  With spring in the air, we’ve been thinking about getting back in the pool this summer.  We spent all day Sunday in the backyard putting a solar cover on the pool, cleaning up toys and patio furniture and getting the yard ready to be another room in our house in the coming months.  It looks ready for a party and I’m excited to get out to grill, swim and enjoy!

7. Speaking of ready to party, 45 days until graduation.

8.  59 days until Matt turns 30.

9. I want to go to Florida and visit the Bond girls.  I want to visit the beach, too, but mostly I’d like to see my friends.  Miss you girls.

10.  I know there’s more that I wanted to write down about Ava, but I can’t remember now what it was.  Silly pregnant lady brain.  I think I only have three brain cells left and I used them all up getting to #9.

ETA: I remembered what the other thing was!  Ava can name all of her fingers…as in, index, middle, ring, pinkie and THUMB!  Thanks go to Matt for teaching her this very important early life lesson.

Have a great rest of your week!  Hopefully, we’ll get a post up with some pictures sometime this weekend too.

When Matt uploaded his post about his and Ava’s visit to the museum last week, we had a good chuckle about her dancing skills in the African hut.  Our girl has always had a really great sense of rhythm, if not the best moves on the block.  After seeing the newest video, though, Matt’s folks were kind enough to send us a throwback video to point out that Ava’s dancing really hasn’t evolved all that much over time.

At the time this video was shot, Matt was TDY to SOS at Maxwell AFB, we’d been in our new house in Vegas for less than two months, and Ava and I were just getting through each day.  While Matt was gone, Ava learned to push herself up to sitting, to crawl, and began dancing up a storm.  Reliving those days with this video really put a smile on my face today.  Ava was a fun baby and is becoming a fun, terrific kid.  I’m so looking forward to seeing her become a big sister and teach her dance moves to Dos!

So, here she is.  Ava dancing to the theme music from Grey’s Anatomy at six months old.

On Sunday, Sally left for Chicago to attend the NASPA conference. Ever since Sally’s departure, Ava has been informing everyone she meets, “That my Daddy; Mommy go ‘cago.” On Tuesday, Ava and I both skipped work and school to spend some Daddy-Daughter time together. Initially, we had considered a short hike at Lake Mead followed by a picnic, but the weather ruled that out. The weather (rain, wind, and temperatures in the low 40s) would have made picnicking at Lake Mead with a toddler more of a survival exercise than a fun outing at the park. So we turned to the Internet and discovered that Las Vegas has a Natural History Museum. (Think: Small Still-life Zoo.) The Las Vegas Natural History Museum is not glamorous, but it’s the perfect place to go with a two-year-old on a Tuesday morning. The place was nearly deserted so Ava could look at any exhibit as long as she wanted. Ava really liked the still-life giraffe and fireflies, but her favorite was the marine exhibit. The exhibit featured several small aquariums of real, live fish. One of the tanks had a “spider” [translated: lobster] just like the ones at grocery store. Ava’s favorite exhibit, however, was the “bucket-o-koi.” The exhibit consisted of a large garden tub from your local home improvement store full of koi kept company by a small turtle.

The museum also had a few exhibits that Ava was not too sure about. The Dinosaur Room featured a Triceratops which grunted and moved it’s head back and forth, and a T-Rex that produced a psyche-shredding roar when prompted by a red button. Ava’s first reaction to the sight was, “Wooo” followed by, “eeeh…want go back car.” I think my favorite, however, was the human exhibit.  In this exhibit you could go and watch a small human dance in a hut.  (Make sure to turn your volume up so you can hear the dance mix in the background.)

Ava loves Rebel sports.  Saturday before last, we took Ava to watch a Lady Rebels Basketball game.  All morning long the next Saturday, Ava talked about how we were going to, “go see Rebels.”  So we took Ava to see the last home game for the UNLV Men’s Basketball Team; the Rebels emerged victorious over Wyoming.