What Happens in Costco, Stays in Costco

Mare: Ava, tell Daddy what happen at the store today.
Ava: ...blank stare
Mare: Were you kicking Mommy at the store?
Ava: Yeah. Daddy, I kicked mommy, and it wasn't nice.
Mare: Thats right! Tell Daddy what happend after that.
Ava:(After a long pause) "...then it got weird!"

A Lesson in Taxidermy

While Marianne is living it up with friends, Manhattan style, Ava and I decided to indulge in some wanderlust and head to Wyoming. While the weather didn't quite cooperate, Jackson was the quietest I have ever expierenced it, giving Ava and I lots of space to reconnect while wandering the boardwalk town.

It is no secret however that Ava is not a shopper. She grimaces at the thought of browsing and I think I heard her mumble something under her breath when I told her we were going to walk around town to window shop. But, regardless, her charming wit had perfect timing while we walked through a store naming the several stuffed game animals on display and mimicked the sounds they make...well made, when we came to stare up at a large, shaggy moose. Without thinking I asked her what he would say (while standing there stuffed, staring blankly in a store) instead of asking what do moose say, in general. Without skipping a beat and with a bit of a grimace on her face, she growled in her best moose impersonation, "Oooo...I am not feeling too good"!
You had to be there.

The Hazards of Twirling

Ava is not very girly in any of the stereotypical girly ways. She doesn't like to play dress up and prefers balls, cars and sand over any doll. But she does love shoes, painted toenails, and twirling around in circles in a pretty dress. Even if she's not wearing a dress.

One afternoon I'm chatting on the phone in Ava's room as she's twirling around and laughing hysterically as she falls crashing to the floor. Predictably, she falls in random, ingenuous ways. Sure enough, I watch as she headplants directly into her dresser and promptly punctures a hole in her forehead on the drawer pull.

While there is screaming and some blood trickling down her forehead, both the crying and bleeding stop remarkably fast and since she is normally quite the drama queen for pain I figure that it really must not hurt that bad. (She is pretty alarmed when she reaches up to touch it and sees her own blood for the first time.) Still, there is a bit of a gaping hole in the flesh; too small for a stitch but open and deep enough to leave a nice scar. So I decide that a nurse needs to at least look at it. Ava becomes much more worried about the impending visit to the doctor's office but the magic of being three means you can now talk her through most events. We walk in the door with her blaringly red juicy wound preceding us and when the nurse comes to help, Ava understates "I got an owie!" I was surprised at how grown up she was throughout the whole thing after I reassured her how nice the nurse would be. So Ava's forehead is steri-stripped and bandaged and we're on our way.

Oh and by the way, that bandage was glued on so tight that removing it a week later was more traumatic than the whole ordeal combined.

Footloose and Fancy Free

The Bean discovered the pure joy of a Hippity-Hop!

Buzz Lightyear Loves Brownie Batter

With a little whipped cream

Ava: I'm small.
Marianne: Yes, but you're very beautiful!
A: Yeah. Ava have pretty hair. Mommy is tall. And Daddy is tall.
M: You're right. What does Daddy look like?
A: Daddy have brown hair and green eyes.
M: Is Daddy fat or is he skinny?
A: He's skinny.
M: What does Daddy smell like?
A: Blueberries!!

Whose kid IS that?!

Dear fellow passengers of Delta Flight #3804,

I hereby express my formal and sincere apology for the continued, ear-piercing, utterly blood-curdling screaming emanating for a full 30 minutes from the small curly-haired toddler sitting in row four. I promise that I was not deliberately torturing her, but apparently sitting in a chair with the seat belt on constitutes torture to a two year old. (By the way, the contortions used as an attempted escape tactic were actually quite amazing.) Thank you for not throwing me even one single dirty look even though I know you felt like throwing us out at 20,000 feet.

Forever grateful,
Frazzled Mama

P.S. Hope you're not on the return flight next week.

Just kick that boatman in the teeth

Ava often likes to play with our jar of spare change; dumping it all out, pointing out the image of "Jesus" on the face of the pennies, and slotting it into her little piggy bank. One afternoon I left the room as she was counting her money and returned a few moments later. This is the sight I encountered...



I know she asks for black cereal in the morning and is fascinated with skeletons, but I had no idea she was this morbid.

Nice Mane, Dude

Last Saturday we attended the Venture Outdoors Festival in Canyon Rim Park. Among the vendor booths, live music, and kiddie games, there were some people demonstrating how to ride a mountain board down a grassy hill and over a pink wooden ramp. Ava was enchanted and stopped to watch for several minutes. As we were sitting there, she pointed to a guy standing near us with a hairdo similar to this....

....and exclaimed "Horsey!" I could definitely identify with that viewpoint. I laughed and wished that he had heard her creative interpretation of his carefully constructed social statement. Then the next morning as we were playing with her barn, Ava's reality suddenly struck home with me. She was more right than I imagined.....

NOW it feels like Summer

The Perfect Morning

Step 1: Eat a bowl of Cocoa Roos and leave the residue on your face to taste later.

Step 2: Take off all your clothes (including your diaper).

Step 3: Put on mittens and Crocs shoes.

Step 4: Relax on the couch while watching a Winnie-the-Pooh show.

Can you think of a better way to start the day?

Trip to Colorado Springs

During the week of Valentine’s Day, Ava and my mom and I flew to Colorado Springs to visit my sister, Christina, and her house full of boyness. (Jon had to be in Wendover for a conference during the same time so he didn’t get too lonely.) It also happened to be Christina’s birthday while we were there.

Ava generally enjoyed the flight over, except for the part where the doors were shut and the plane was aloft. She kept crying and saying “Out” and pointing for the door. I’m sure it didn’t help that we were on a commuter jet, making things feel even more enclosed, and also the fact that it was past her bedtime. Heck, we survived, and without the bonus of rotten tomato smears from other passengers. The flight back actually went much more smoothly, probably owing to the fact that she was able to sit in her own seat and put M&Ms in the little cup thingy on the tray table.

Anyway, I think Ava and I single handedly managed to throw the Gleason household into even MORE chaos during our stay. Clayton (age 4-nearly 5) is such a sweet boy and absolutely adores Ava. He calls her his little A-V-A. He always wanted to play with her and could hardly resist constantly hugging her, much to Ava’s chagrin. In this era of her life, Little Ava’s personality contains a chunk that inexplicably causes her to run and scream at the approach of any other child, regardless of whether that child is ignoring her or smothering her with affection. I have seen her delightedly run up to gigantic furry dogs and then come screaming back to me when she realizes that the dog is accompanying another kid on his walk. Seriously, Ava. Her reaction to her other cousin, Samuel (age 18 months), was similar. Sammy could really care less about playing with her, but they are close enough in age that they like the same toys. Ava never gets aggressive, takes toys from others, or pushes kids away; she just grips her toy with desperation and runs in terror. So you can imagine the scene every time Sammy showed his cute smiling face.

However, once the kids were adequately corralled, we adults managed to enjoy each other’s company. We made an aborted trip to Outback Steakhouse for Christina’s birthday dinner; I’m sure we made the other diners’ experience more authentic to the Australian outback than they would have preferred. But hey, we tried, and the meat was just as tasty back at the Gleason kitchen table. We all exchanged Valentine’s gifts and had a blast doorbell ditching each other. We had lunch out one day and Clayton, Ava, and Grandma painted some lovely garden rocks.

The weather was nice enough one afternoon that we even made a trip to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The highlight of this zoo is the giraffe habitat, where an elevated boardwalk allows you to wander through at giraffe eye level. The kids had a blast feeding them crackers, never mind their long purple tongues. We counted at least 15 giraffes, including several babies. There was also a budgie display, meerkats, tigers, and Ava took her first ride on a merry-go-round.

So all in all, really a great trip for us, thanks to Christina and Ross for being so accommodating and just so friggin’ awesome.

House of the Bizarre

Wednesday night…. Jon and I are asleep in bed, and have been for a couple of hours, when suddenly, about a quarter after midnight, loud music is blasting from the kitchen. We bolt up, look at each other and say, “What is THAT?!” I run into the kitchen where my I had left my iPod on the countertop hooked up to some small, portable speakers. Sure enough, Moby is rocking out. So I turn it off and get back into bed more than slightly disturbed. For those of you versed in the dynamics of iPods, when you power it up and hit the select button it automatically selects the last choices that you made. My iPod was playing my running playlist, the first song of which is Moby. That was NOT the last thing I had listened to earlier in the day, nor was it automatically selected when I powered it up later that morning. (Cue creepy music….which I guess for me is now Moby, Play)

In other weird goings-on… For the last few days I have noticed that every time Ava sees a depiction of a Koala, she makes the sign for “fish.” Am I missing something? Are the planets all out of whack?

Halloween Festivities 2007

Saturday night we intivited our families over for spaghetti dinner, cookie decorating, and pumpkin carving. We even played some really old, really bad "scary" movies. Nana and Grandma both came plus James, Jordan and Melanie, Jeff, Emily and Joel, and Erin. I ate too many cookies and Ava basked in the limelight so all in all a good time.

Then last night Ava dressed up as a bumblebee for what I'd hoped would be her first trick-or-treating. However, she refused to nap all day and came down with a cold that morning so obviously she didn't feel up for much. But we made the rounds to show off her costume and one tootsie-pop lasted with her the whole evening. She actually loved the costume and went buzzing around as soon as I put it on and she ran to look in the mirror. Considering her mood and what a busybody she is, it's a wonder that I was able to get any pictures of her at all. (Note the crappy job I did with her face paint! This kid never sits still.)

Erin was dressed as the unstoppable Harry Potter and Jeffrey was the Mario half of the Mario Brothers. He even had these great white gloves which unfortunately didn't make it into the picture.

This was the first year that neither Jon nor I donned any costume. Sigh, parenthood makes us tired.

A very happy Un-Birthday to you!

Ava just recently turned 18 months old and half-birthdays are pretty important when those six months constitute a third of your life. I don’t know where I’ve been, but suddenly I woke up one morning and Ava had transformed from my cute bum-scooting baby to a charming, precocious toddler. There is a lot going on with her, too much to write at once, but here are some highlights of who Ava is right now.

She has a very sweet, affectionate disposition and will give hugs and kisses to family, bears, balls, and plastic frogs alike. She has many of the social skills of a child a year older. Her hair has grown into beautiful (yet unruly) blondish-gold ringlets and I haven’t a clue what to do with them. Those curls are a hand-me-down from Jon’s side of the family so I’m learning how to tame them as I go. But for now her locks are as happy-go-lucky as she is. She’s 30 inches tall, has five teeth, and has finally broken the 20-pound mark and gets to sit facing forward in her car seat.
Ava still doesn’t say a whole lot; most of her verbal repertoire consists of onomatopoeia (favorites are beep, pop, tick tock, and any animal sound) plus “up” and “baby.” She's very expressive and our days are filled with "wow" and "uh-oh" and exclamations of all kinds. But she’s learning signs as fast as I can teach them and even making up some of her own. She probably knows around 50 signs now and by far the most popular ones are “daddy” and “outside.” SUCH a daddy’s girl, it’s unbelievable. Ava has a perma-grin whenever Jon is around and when he’s not, she’s constantly signing for him. Anytime they tickle and wrestle she signs, “More more!”
Balls of any sort are irresistible to Ava and she often tries to carry more of them than she has hands for. (In contrast, the more realistic a doll is, the more scorn it receives.) She loves to be read stories and spends a lot of time with books on her own. She likes to put things on her arms and wear them around as bracelets, like stacking rings and rubber bands. But mostly, Ava revels in playing outside. Especially in the dirt. Or sand. Or mud. Or water. She may look just like her Dad but Ava’s got her Momma’s need for sunshine and soil running through her veins. Somebody should buy this girl a sandbox.