Afternoon with Ava

I picked up Ava from pre-school the other day.

She showed me how she can now go all the way across the monkey bars and back

and forth 

again and again, sometimes even skipping a handhold.

Last year she struggled to make it across.

Finally, after about 15 trips across the bars

she agreed to leave the pre-school grounds.

So off we went to Wildflower for lunch.

All she wanted was a giant cupcake with green and red frosting and a Christmas tree on top.

That's all she wanted.

I wanted to indulge her like I have in the past but I told her she needed to eat lunch first.

She did not like chicken salad and only had a few spoonfulls of pumpkin soup.

She lamented that she should have ordered the grilled cheese.

She did not throw a fit when we left Wildflower without the cupcake

because I reminded her that we were going to make chocolate chip cookies.

Off we went to the Dollar store where I told her she could pick out a present for her 

mom, dad and baby sister.

She enjoyed looking at all the stuff and selected a pair of work gloves for her dad because the ones he has now have a big hole in the thumb.

A pair of wooden salad tossers for her mom

and a soft stuffed kitten 

(white with pink whiskers)

for her sister.

She selected a really cheaply made

my little pony for herself.

Home, and she wrapped the presents with great care.  I told her tear off small pieces of tape for the wrapping.  The first piece was long and all crinkled up

and she said she couldnt' do it but after a few tries she had it down.

Christmas music. This child likes to hear a song she likes about 25 times.

She loved Aimee Mann's 'Grinch'.  Loved it.

'can we hear it again?' she asked every time it was over.

We drew pictures of Christmas trees and candy canes.

She swang on the swing in the backyard, ran back and forth across the yard

about ten times,

pulled down a couple of grapefruits

and squeezed the juice.

She wanted to drink it and took a big gulp.

At first her eyes lit up like....yummmmy...but then a grimace crossed her face, 

and she had no more of that!

We baked cookies.  She poured the measured stuff in the bowl and kept 

asking for tastes.

She kept wanting to go the park so we finally walked to the park

and took the tennis racket and old not very bouncy ball I found

in the garage.

She told me to throw the ball

and she would

'tennis it'

so we did that a few times and she was getting very frustrated that she couldn't hit it.

We worked on her stance and I kept walking closer

until she did, indeed smack that ball several times.

Soon our time was over and home she went.

Tried to rotate this Christmas tree ...but couldn't do it!

she added her phone number to the bottom, she told me.

I am one lucky noni.