Outside today in beautiful weather!  Ava was happy and very energetic.  It will rain this afternoon, but we got our fill of the sun before lunch.  Ava is starting to wear bits and pieces of her new Spring wardrobe (size 2T everything) and boy is she cute!   Her "new" Stride Rite shoes are actually getting a little dirty in spots, the sign of a walking toddler. 

She has recently started saying, "Mom-my" instead of just "mama" and I love it.  Today, when we were out in the yard, she kept asking, "Mom-my?"  and I would say, "Yes, Ava?" and then she would babble some little phrase or word in her toddler talk.  I feel like she is beginning to understand how to USE language, which is one of the goals that we talked about at her annual meeting. 

I have played two new games with Ava this week:

1. I will ask her where her body parts are, and not only does she point to them, but she continues to try to name them.   But, the really fun part of the game, is that when I say, "Ok, ready?  I'm gonna try and trick you!"  Ava will say, "Ok! Trick you!"  in her own language (it acually sounds like "kick ooo").  Hey, we can understand it, and that's all that counts for now.

2. The second game is something that I tried just the other night and I could not believe the results!  Ava likes to take small toys in and out of two soft bins, and I decided to ask her to find certain toys and give them to me.  I asked her to find a stuffed dog, a bead, a ball, and several more objects - she located about 95% of them on the first try!  I had no idea that she connected so many object names with the objects themselves, and that she could identify them by touch alone.  What an amazing little girl.