It's all about Ava!

It is hard to believe that Ava is 2 years old already!  She is growing into such a sweet, smart little girl – Ryan & I truly feel blessed to be her parents (most of the time)! J 

She will not have her 2 year appointment until we are back in the States, so we don’t have too many stats to share.  She did jump on the scale while I was at my last Dr’s appointment though; therefore we know that she weighs about 27 lbs!  And she has 16 teeth – all that are left to come in are her 3 year molars. 

She has hardly stopped talking since she turned 18 months and is starting to put 3 word “sentences” together.  She also loves to sing.  You will often hear her singing, “Wheels on the Bus”, “Ba Ba Black Sheep”, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, “Old MacDonald”, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” or “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes”!  It’s quite adorable!

She has known her animals, most body parts and colors for a while now.  She recently learned basic shapes (square, circle, triangle, heart and star) and can count to 10 – when SHE wants to do so.  She recognizes most numbers: 1-9 and is working on letter recognition too.  The other day while we were out, she surprised us being saying “P!”  Sure enough there was a Parking sign with a big “P” on it!  We have learned not to underestimate how much she can learn and she really does surprise us with something new almost every day!

She is a pretty good eater and loves cheese (would eat it morning, noon and night), spaghetti – although prefers pasta with pesto sauce rather than tomato sauce, pizza, sausage, ham, shrimp, salmon, corn, green beans and broccoli!  Plus, almost every kind of fruit out there – especially berries, bananas, apples and oranges!  We introduced her to pure carrot and apple juice while in Hong Kong and she loved it!  It will be nice when we have our juicer back in Michigan! 

She loves to help out – cooking, cleaning and doing laundry.  However, picking up toys is not always her favorite, but after a time-out or two, she tends to listen better!

Most recently she has stopped using her pacifier (or “wa woo” as she calls it).  We were going to wait until we got back to the States and she was adjusted to the time before figuring out how to get rid of it, but on our way to Japan, she accidently dropped it out of the car window.  She got such a sad look on her face and of course Ryan and I were worried about sleep the next couple of nights!  She did great though!  She still asks for it once before nap and bedtime, but we remind her that she dropped it out of the window.  When she says “other wa woo dada” (she knows we have more than one), we tell her that she’s a big girl and doesn’t need it anymore!  Thankfully she has accepted this answer and goes to sleep on her own without one!  Now we’ll see how she does when her baby brother or sister arrives and has their own "wa woo"! 

Now that we have made Ava sound like a little angel – here’s the other side of our sweet baby girl!  While she is the apple of our eye, she is NOT an angel by any means.  We are definitely getting into those terrible twos and boy is that fun!  She will scream when she doesn't get her way and just plop down where ever we are (sidewalk, store, etc).  Usually we let her do this and tell her to get up when she's ready to act like a big girl, but man is that embarrassing some times!  I am sure it will get worse when we get back home because, honestly, the Chinese allow their kids to do a lot more than we would at home – or perhaps we get a “free pass” because we are Americans and everyone is so in love with Ava here!  For instance,

1.    She is free to run around restaurants – in fact, the waitresses will pick her up and take her behind the bar!

2.    Nobody seems to mind if she goes on stage while people are singing – they will even let her sing in the microphone!

3.    Restaurants don’t seem to care that she throws her food on the floor or drops her silverware every 5 minutes!  We don’t even have to leave a tip to apologize and they still welcome us back with open arms the next time we show up!

We will gladly take any advice another parent has (as long as it has been successful)!  Otherwise, we will continue on as is and hope for the best!

We have a few small gatherings planned for the next couple of days, so I will post more pictures from her birthday on Sunday!