from the mouth of babes (update on Aven)

Lately Aven has been cracking me/us up.  I wanted to record some funny things she says so I don't forget later.  Even though she can construct pretty complex sentences she still is figuring out tense.

For example, every night while on vacation before bed she asked me to sing the song that my mom "teachted" to me (Magdalena Hagdalena --as a side note why she wanted this to be sung before bed is beyond me but that is another story).  Another funny one is when she was talking with Abe and told him that she "bleeder" on an owie.  When Abe gently corrected her saying it was "bled" she said, "No, Daddy, bleeded.  Do you know what bleeded means?  It means to bleed blood."  Also, even though she gets the general concept of time she often uses the references interchangeably and without the correct time period.  For example, she'll say "the other day" meaning any time in the past or possibly even the future.  She'll use, last year, the other day, yesterday, etc to mean anytime in the past.  Last year could mean something yesterday and vice versa.

She is very curious about all of life as she has finally gotten to the why phase.  Once you begin to explain something you better be in for the long haul because even if you explain it to her (whatever "it" may be) she may ask you to repeat it over and over.  I am sure this is a technique to attempt to understand the concept but it can be very exhausting trying to re-explain something in a new and fresh way.  For example, we were driving in the car and the sunset looked to me to be the color that shows when there are wildfires.  I then attempted to explain what a wildfire is.  And how it starts, and how it makes me feel.  I used basic terminology to say that often fires start in nature when something happens like lightening.  Then she said: "tell me about nature."  Dang, this girl is smart!

She has a mind of her own and knows what she wants in life.  This is usually really helpful but can also be a source of frustration (for me).  She has a style of her own and is totally gregarious.  She will talk to anyone anywhere and has no shyness or fear about it.  She loves her dresses and skirts but will play anywhere in them, even the fanciest of dresses.

Things she has been loving this summer:

• still her babies, she has many and doesn't seem to have any one favorite although they are all special at one time or another.  She has a stroller, a car seat, a baby carrier and blankets galore and at any one time they may all be in use.
• still books.  I am happy that this girl is still so enamored with reading books.  She loves to attempt to read them to herself, constantly asks for books to be read to her and my favorite thing she does is bring books to Elodie and reads to her (so cute)
• still being outside.  This summer has been beautiful with so many sunny and warm days.  This girl uses any attempt she can to be outside (fall and winter will be a shock).  She loves playing in her pool and running through the sprinkler.  She just experienced her first spray park and she loved it!  She loves playing in the rocks of our walkway, with sticks, in the grass and has no problem improvising and using her imagination.  She loves going to parks and could spend all day there if you let her.  She has named each park by the color of the slides and she has assigned a park to each of us.  Franklin park is "her" park; Rock Hill Park is Abe's park and Carl Cozier (Elementary School Playground) is my park.

  

  After a big tumble at school, she needed a lot of band-aids.  It cheered her up to have so many colors too.  Thank you $1 store.

  
  

  

  Elizabeth Park--playtime.  One of my favorite parks because of the big beautiful trees.

  
  

  

  Aven and Sonja--it is so cute to have friends.  She loves hanging with Sonja and 4th of July as they snuggled under the blankets together and watched the fireworks was no exception.

  
  

  

  my girl: personality galore

  
  

  

  happiness and silliness all in one package

  
  

  

  before bed one night, she laid on the floor next to Ethel and said  "look mommy, we are doggies"
  
  

  This girl is growing up.  She is almost 3 1/2 and she's in total preschooler mode.  She is independent and has a mind of her own and is getting very proficient at so many things in life but she is also a little girl always giving and asking for hugs, playing with her little sister and wanting to help out and be around her family and pets and friends.  We love you Aven Lily.

funny things you hear from the mouth of a 2 year old

Aven has been a combination of a handful and a bellyful of laughter lately.  She will absolutely drive you crazy, be so into what she is doing and not listen at all and then she'll say something so funny it will double you over.  So, if you lived with me, these are some of the things you'd hear on a somewhat routine basis:

• "I can't try" (meaning, I can't do it)
• " I don't like to wear my socks today Mommy."
• " I wanna read it...a, b, c, d, e,f, g, e-i-n-g-o, e-i-n-g-o, oh what a raindrop will be."
• "Eleanor want to eat it Mommy" (when she drops food on the floor).

Of course I had this perfect list figured out in my head days ago but by the time I got to a computer and actually sat down...poof!  I'm feeling a bit under the weather today and it certainly doesn't help that the weather is so stinky too!  Haven't had a summer cold in years and it really sucks.  Sniffly all day at work, coughing and scratchy voiced at the end.  Workout tomorrow?  Most likely.

Will post more when I feel a bit more put together and I can think more clearly than through this cloudy cold filled head.

my favorite comment about my name/what's in a name?

When you have an unusual/unique name like Vale, you get lots of comments. Over the years these have ranged from, "oh Vale, is that a family name?" or "how did your parents think of that?" or "were your parents big skiers?" or "did your parents love Colorado a lot?" these are among the top sayings I've heard multiple times. However, this morning after meeting someone at the gym and saying my name I heard (for the first time mind you): "Vale, that's custom! I like it." Just thought if you meet anyone who has a unique name you might want to use this comment too, I thought it was kind of fun.

On the topic of names, I thought I'd just say that picking a baby name can be extremely tough. It is hard to imagine someone's personality and who they will become but in a lot of ways I think we live up to or grow into our name. Picking a name for Aven was tough but I cannot imagine her as anything else now that she is growing into a little girl with personality. The hardest part was picking a name that my husband and I could both agree on. We had picked out the name Aizza (I pronounce this name A -long a- Za) Rose. About 6 months before we had Aven and before we found out we were having a girl, Abe's sister had a baby and named her Asha Rose....which we decided was too confusing and much too close to our name! So, we had to start at the drawing board. I also found out my cousin was expecting a baby about a month before me. When I found out she was having a girl I was excited but she hadn't picked out any names. By the time I heard about the name she'd picked, we had already decided on Aven but strangely enough, my cousin picked Ava Rose (very close to Aven's name and the same middle name we were going to choose originally!). Now, the three granddaughters on Abe's side are: Ariel Faye, Asha Rose and Aven Lily (all A names).

There were several names I liked but Aven was the one I kept coming back to. I really liked flower names like Violet or Rose or Lily or even Camelia, etc. All of these names have really come back into fashion but they seemed a little more common than I wanted. I finally did a google search for "old lady flower names" and somehow came across a list of names that had Aven in it. It immediately struck me because it sounded a lot like Aiden (which I liked for a boy) and Ava which I liked for a girl but was more common. Then I found an alternate spelling which had an Irish/Gaelic meaning of "fair radiance." To me this was a beautiful meaning. The next step was choosing a spelling. While we were tempted to go with a unique and probably more phonetic spelling of the Gaelic word, it seemed to lend to being often misspelled and mispronounced (Abe said he didn't worry about things like this but I had had this problem all my life so I was a little more concerned). Once we decided on the name, it took several weeks to decide on the spelling.

Last was the middle name. While in some ways I agree that a middle name is somewhat pointless and an age old tradition for who knows why....I still wanted my daughter to have a middle name. Abe has 2 middle names so he wanted to just go with a first and last name. I said that I was very open to choosing the middle name (since Aven was my pick for a first name) but that I did want her to have a middle name. It was kind of funny because one of the middle names I'd considered was Lily but I hadn't told Abe. One night he just started running through possible middle names and stopped on Lily. It seemed to go well with Aven and we both easily agreed.

I could go on and on about names. I love names, I love picking names and the sound and meaning of names. Since I was a little girl I made lists of the names I wanted to name my kids. Of course they changed over the years but I have always loved names. So, here we have our little flower girl: Aven Lily (8 months today).