Tracy brought little Justin over to us this morning. Before he got here, Ava and I speculated on how much he's grown and whether or not he's walking everywhere without falling down. Sure enough, he arrived with a big smile on his face, and busy little feet and hands that were up and down the house in no time!
Last weekend, she had picked out a big blue swordfish Christmas ornament at the Hallmark card shop, and as it was $10 I told her that she had to be very careful with it - that it was breakable, and that it wasn't to play with - that she'd have this ornament for the rest of her life if she took good care of it. So as soon as she was up and about this morning, one of the first things she did was put the ornament higher on the tree so Justin couldn't reach it. I hadn't mentioned anything about it to her, she just took it upon herself.
As much as she loves him, she's not used to a baby following her around and trying to grab her, so she spent a good two hours when he first got there up on the kitchen table, playing "Survivor" with her animals out of his reach. She cut a rubber band so it was a single string, then made yo-yo's out of her baby dinosaurs, first Sarah and then Little Foot. They were competing in Survivor and she made them do all kinds of tricks on the yo-yo. She had me bring in their "parents" to watch them, so I had a whole row of dinosaurs on the kitchen counter, watching across the room as their children did yo-yo tricks up on the table with Ava.
I used the time to make a pork/moose meat pie, and it was a cozy time in the kitchen - Ava standing on the table, Justin opening all the drawers and cupboards and strewing pots and pans and spatulas across the room.
Ava got down off the table, and on to a chair, to feed Justin a pudding snack - she held the spoon out and he toddled over, took a bite, and then toddled off until she called him back for another bite. She kept saying, "Justin, open your mouth, a choo-choo train is coming..."
Later, when Gaffer got home from duck hunting, she "helped" Justin open his Christmas presents - "helped" meaning that she did it for him, but he didn't mind. And then she didn't play with his toys, she just "checked them out". We gave him a little John Deere ATV to ride around on, and when Gaffer saw her riding it he said, "Isn't that a little small for you, Ava?" and she got a little embarrassed, and said, "Oh, I'm just making sure it's working right..."
He was obviously dying to take a bath - every time we went into the bathroom for any reason he bellied up to the tub, patting it with his hands and raising up and down on his feet, babbling with excitement. One time he actually got a leg over and slid right in - *thunk* So we made a bath for him after supper, and he had a blast splashing and bouncing around in the water. Ava and I sat together on her little stool by the sink, watching him. At one point, with her head on my shoulder, she sighed and said, "Oh, they grow so fast, don't they?"
She's been watching the latest "Ice Age" movie, Dawn of the Dinosaurs, where Sid the sloth finds three T-Rex eggs hatching in a cave, and then the T-Rex mother shows up to claim the babies. Ava obviously had been pondering this, and asked me, "How did those eggs get into the cave anyway? The mother can't fit in there..." I've watched that movie about 600 times now, and it never occured to me to question how those eggs got into the cave. Her little brain is always working!!
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