"What a Big Brain You Have!"

It really feels like one day I had a baby, who only observed and sat by as things happened around her or to her, and then the next day I had a little girl who interacts and develops more every day.

I keep meaning to write, but life just gets in the way. I need to stop apologizing for it, after all, I'm not making money on this blog--it's just for me. I keep documenting our lives in photos, so that's an important thing.

Avonlea just gets more and more interesting. It always surprises me whenever she exhibits some new skill, or shows me new things that she has learned.

I mean, she is pointing at things when we read!  I know it's something little, but it's just seeing those brain connections that didn't exist prior, and are now getting stronger and stronger.  I read a lot of books with her. She used to have no attention span whatsoever, and now she goes to the book box and picks a book out and brings it back to me to read. She'll sit on my lap, turn all the pages, and point to pictures as I ask her questions. She can identify "ball", "balloons", "zebra", "fish", "eyes", "mouth", "elephant", "Elmo", "Cookie", and "monkey". I love asking her, "Where is the monkey?" and waiting while she scans the page and then makes a quick point at the monkey on the page. Today, she gave me an additional highlight: when I asked her where the monkey was, before pointing to it, she said, "ooh ooh ooh!"

The other day, Nick was blowing bubbles inside, and just for fun I said, "Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere!" a line from one of Avonlea's favorite stories. She toddled away from the bubbles, over to the book box, and grabbed the bubble book and brought it back to me to read.

She's not saying too many identifiable phrases, but she talks all the time and uses lots of inflection when she speaks. You can tell she is asking for certain things. She loves to drink out of my water bottle, and loves to munch on whatever I am eating--she'll point at my bottle or my plate and say, "oissssh?" She's also good at saying goodbye when people are leaving. It's really funny to look up in the window and see the top of her little head and her eyes peeking over the ledge, with her little arm pumping up and down in a wave. :) She also loves to wave at Waldo in the window.

As she gets more independent, we're also dealing with more temperament and strong-willed issues. Tonight we had a particularly cranky fight about leaving her bib on while she eats. She's been trying to pull them off each meal (velcro--urgh), and I haven't been letting her. Well, tonight that really made her mad. She threw a fit, and kept fighting me on it, but I tried to be calm and collected but continue to stand my ground.  Nick observed and said I did a good job riding the storm, which was nice of him to notice.

Avonlea also loves to go places and do things by herself. She doesn't like to hold my hand--she likes to walk around by herself and explore things on her own. Today that meant finding her several steps into the kitchen in the Asian restaurant we were in. Thankfully the staff thought it was funny instead of annoying, but I have to keep a closer eye on her now.

She also likes to eat by herself. If I put any food in her mouth, even if it's something she likes, she will spit it into her hand and then put it into her mouth herself. She also takes spoons away from me to put things into her mouth herself. Basically I have to make sure that whatever is in the spoon won't fall out--I really only do avocado--otherwise I spear things with forks for her or mash them into a pouch or let her pick them up with her hands.

She's becoming crazy-obsessed with her stuffed Boo. She already loved Boo--but now, she wants to carry Boo wherever we go, and she is always asking for him. I think I'm going to have to put the kabosh on that--Boo is already a little worse for wear, and he hasn't left her bedroom (except when we traveled to Ohio).

She's also better at playing with her friends. I noticed her sharing with her friend Ava today, and while I know that won't always be the case, it was nice to see her interacting with kids around her own age, since she's been mostly ignoring them up until now.

She is starting to recognize humor. She laughs at videos of herself doing funny things, and at puppets doing silly dances. She also does things to make us laugh. She blows these amazing raspberries that always make us giggle.

I also love watching her figure things out. We have a shape sorter, and she'll try the shapes out in the different openings, trying to see which one it will go in. She'll manipulate the piece in multiple angles now, instead of just trying to force it in a certain hole without moving it around.

Easter was a great example of her burgeoning cognitive abilities. She totally "got" the Easter egg hunt idea!

I love watching her grow. It's to the point now where pictures don't do her justice. My memory card on my phone is filling up much quicker now, because I'm taking videos all the time!

Rage Against the Minivan...er, Machine

Want to get everyone on Facebook riled up?

Say you're never going to get a minivan.

Last week, I watched "Parenthood" (are you watching that show? If not, you should. SO good.), and on it, Jasmine was trying to convince Crosby that they needed to get a minivan. Crosby, who I have identified with more often this season than I'd like to admit, was repulsed by the idea, and spent most of the episode vehemently against it.  That is, until the very end of the episode, when he was able to drive an entire band home after a drunken night out, wherein he decided the minivan was a great purchase.

I went onto Facebook and declared Crosby a traitor.

See, in our house, we will NEVER have a minivan. And I am proud to announce that declaration to the public. I will stand on a pedestal, shout it from the rooftops, whatever it takes to show how serious I am about it.

Every time I happen to mention we will never have one, someone says, "oh, just wait" (there's that phrase again).  "Don't go saying things like that until you have 2-3 more kids." or "Ha. We'll see."

What these poor, misguided people don't fully comprehend is who they are talking to.  When I say I will never get one, I really and truly mean I will NEVER. GET. ONE.

I stand by my principles. I do not waver. I do not yield. Especially when my pride is on the line. Let me give you an example.

When we moved into our newly built home in the summer between my 2nd and 3rd grade year, I was so excited to be able to pick out the carpet and wallpaper colors for my room. After going through books upon books of wallpaper samples (does anyone else remember getting to take those home from the store?), my mom basically declared all my choices too juvenile, saying that I would grow out of what I had chosen really quickly. She thought I should go with a more "mature" color palette and pattern for the floor and the walls.  Now, when I was a kid, I was 1000% pure tomboy.  I lived in my knockoff Umbros and my imitation Adidas Sambas. My favorite colors were blue and green. I would rather have been caught dead than wear a dress--which made Sundays pretty much the worst ever in terms of wardrobe when you go to a dresses-on-Sunday kind of church.  So when my mom picked out rose-colored carpet and large variations-of-pink posies wallpaper, I cried and wailed. I'm pretty sure there was gnashing of teeth involved. The wallpaper looked like a hideous Laura Ashley print from the early 90s--or at least something that you would find on a tapestry in some creepy Sister Wives house in Utah. It was pretty much the most awful option that I could have ever been given for a room.  I vowed then and there that I would NEVER forgive my mom for that one.

She said, "Just wait."  She said, "You'll love it one day soon, I promise."  But by George, I had my righteous, holy anger, and there was no way on God's green Earth I was ever going to like that wallpaper and nasty carpet.

It was always funny when friends would come over and ask to see my room, because they were taken aback when they saw all the pink. "*This* is your room?" they would ask, with a sense of wonder. By the time middle school came around, I started taking to covering as much of the walls as possible with various posters (the 1992 US Men's Basketball Team, Steven Curtis Chapman, and a huge soccer poster were 3 that I remember specifically) and as much other stuff as possible. And though I couldn't do anything about the carpet, I rebelled by keeping my floor as covered with crap as possible so that I couldn't see the awful Pepto-Bismol color.

I moved to college still hating that darn wallpaper.  Only when I lived in China after graduation, and my parents decided to convert my old room into a guest room, did the wallpaper come down.  Did you catch that? They only changed the paper after I moved away!  Grr....  Anyways, I hated that wallpaper abomination every single day that it existed in my room, and I never once wavered in my undying detestation of it.

That whole story is a perfect illustration of why I will never get a minivan, and why all those people who tell me that I'll change my mind about it will just have to understand that it will never be so.

So why all the hate?  After all, it's just a car, right?  Yes, it's just a car. But everyone has something like this, right? A stance on an issue that you will not budge from. For some people, they are staunch about their nutrition. For some, it's politics. For some, it's a moral standard, or a conspiracy theory, or scientific truth, or Mac vs. PC. My point is, everyone has something that they have a super-strong opinion about. This is mine. Silly? Probably. But it is what it is.

So without further ado, here is my list. My (non-exhaustive, and in no particular order) list of:

Why I Will Never Get A Minivan

1. I will never have trouble finding which car is mine when picking up my kids at school.
2. My kids will have to learn to consolidate and organize their crap, just like I have to.
3. They rent portable DVD players for the car. I don't need them magically built in for everyday use. Vacations, yes. Zombify those kids for the 18-hour drive to Disney. But other than that, they'll be fine.
4. I survived my whole childhood without a minivan, why can't my kids?
5. I will NOT have a dirty car all the time, with crap spilling out of the doors every time they open. This is my #1 pet peeve of minivans. Have you ever, other than in a showroom, seen a clean minivan??
6. No matter how many swagger wagon videos you make, minivans have never been, nor will they ever be cool to anyone other than other parents.  I have a very short list of requirements for a vehicle. "Cool looking" is one of them.
7. The minivan is just a step down from an RV. An RV is way more cool. So why not just get an RV?
8. In Los Angeles, minivan owners have to park really far away from their destination, because you can't get anyone in or out of the car because the parking spaces are extremely narrow. Our friend Link has to put the nose of the van in the parking space, let his kids out, then pull in the rest of the way, otherwise his kids can't get out of the van.
9. If you have so much extra space in your car that you are able to misplace entire cups filled with milk, which then curdle in the heat and make your entire car smell for months like someone has died in it, then you have too much space.
10. Because I have my principles.

My Giggly Girl