Aminals

As an "only child" Ava has a lot of toys, but her favorites have always been her "aminals" (as she still pronounces it). She has a collection of little plastic animals that if they were placed end to end in a parade would reach from one end of the house to the other - we know this because we've done it.

She particularly likes the Schleich brand - made in Germany, and extremely life-like, with everything from dinosaurs to puppies. We first found them at Aubuchon Hardware in Lisbon - I believe "Mr. Moose" was the first. After that, we also discovered that Play N Learn in Freeport carries a huge selection of them, and now Ava's very favorite place to go in the whole world is to Play N Learn.

The other night, just before her birthday, she asked me if we could go to Play N Learn the next day. I said, "Ava, you just got a bunch of toys for Christmas, and your birthday is Saturday when you'll get even more toys, so No, we're not going to Play N Learn tomorrow..." She burst into tears (she's not used to being told No!), and commenced to plead and beg. It was very hard to hold my position in the face of her agony, so I finally told her to go talk to Gaffer about it.

So she went into the living room and proceeded to plead her case to Gaffer. It was hilarious to listen to from the other room - when Gaffer tried to reason with her, by telling her that she can't just be buying a toy every day, she said through her tears, "But Gaffer, I'm serious, I only want a toy tomorrow! I won't ask for one every day!" The back and forth between the two of them went on for a good twenty minutes, and he finally arrived at a compromise with her - that we'd take her to Play N Learn on her birthday, so she could choose the animal she wanted, and, exhausted with emotion, she agreed.

So, on her birthday, in a blizzard, we headed out to Play N Learn - Ava had asked to go as soon as she woke up! She takes her animals very seriously! At the store, she studied all her choices and settled on a big woolly mammoth. Then we also let her get a bison, and Gaffer told her she could get a second different bison because her other one at home is missing. She was happy as a clam, and then I picked out a cow and a calf and told her these would be for me. She smiled with delight at the thought of Gammer getting animals for herself, and then said, "Will you let me play with them sometimes?" I put them in her arms and said, "Actually, Ava, these are for you!" She was ecstatic and kept saying, "I can't believe I get to buy so many animals!!"

That's the thing about Ava, she's spoiled, but she's not rotten. She truly appreciates what she is given, and takes the best care of all her things. She loves her things as part of her family, whether the things are her plastic animals, her stuffed animals, her dolls, or her puzzles - they're all so special to her.

But, as I said, the animals are her very favorites, and they are her friends, most of them with their own personalities. Little Foot is really the cornerstone -- I think of them all, he's the one most special to her. He's been with us for a couple of years now, and has gone to Florida and on a moose hunt in Aroostook County (where he was almost lost by the shore of a lake, but Gammer found him - it was a miracle that I spotted that little green guy amongst the flowers and rocks) and camping at Chesuncook. He's a baby "long-neck" dinosaur, and is very brave and adventurous and kind to his friends. His best friend is Sarah, a baby "three-horn" dinosaur. This actually is Sarah #2, because the first Sarah was lost on the plane coming home from Florida in February. Sarah is the bravest of all the animals - even over the grown-ups. She's quite a girl, that Sarah.

Sarah is extremely close to her dad, "Father Three-Horn", and Father Three-Horn always sticks up for Sarah to Mother Three-Horn. If Sarah goes off on an adventure to rescue another animal, without telling Mother where she went, and then Mother is angry, Father always tells her not to be mad at Sarah, that Sarah had to do that job, Mother just needs to understand that.

Mr. Moose is another hero - he comes to the rescue of someone nearly every day because his large antlers can catch somebody when they fall, or carry somebody when they're hurt. Diego the tiger is another upstanding citizen, and one of her favorites. She has a big T-Rex that is called Jackson, and sometimes he's good and eats leaves, and sometimes he's bad and scary. But when he's bad and scary, Sarah always teaches him how to eat leaves, and then he's nice.

Her buck is "King of the Forest" and he's usually called on when there's a decision to be made, like if T-Rex is allowed to come into their land. It's understood that he is at the top of the animal hierarchy, even though he's not the strongest. A lot of times all the "men" have to gather together to fight off the angry T-Rex, while the mothers keep an eye on the babies. But you know who stays with the men to fight, and saves the day - Sarah. Of course.

One of her most precious animals isn't plastic - it's a hand-sewn brontosaurus, created by Emily's uncle Vincent over 20 years ago. Her legs can move, although they've become wobbly with age, and she wears a pearl necklace. She is "Granny Long-Neck" and is Little Foot's favorite relative. All the other animal babies love her, too, and she's often found with little animals sliding down her tail, or cuddling under her legs. She babysits while the parents go to work, and takes excellent care of all the little ones, whether they're dinosaurs or tiger cubs or fawns. She has a place of honor in Ava's mind, you can just see it by the way she handles her.

When we play animals with Ava, she usually has a story-line already in mind, and our job is just to move the animals around and basically say what she wants us to say - sometimes she gives us our lines, other times we must improvise but sticking with the plot. If we go outside this plot, she gets quite upset. As I said before, she takes her animals very seriously! Many times the story-line is about somebody being sick, or lost, or in trouble for some reason. Then somebody (usually Sarah, or the T-Rex) comes to the rescue.

For her birthday, we bought her a big tree-house playset with some jungle animals included. She likes it, but it's funny - she really doesn't need any "props" when she plays. She's not one to position animals in a doll-house or use a vehicle - all she really needs is a floor (or table, when our knees give out!) and the animals - and her imagination goes from there. I think the tree-house playset was more for me - just to kind of liven things up a little bit for my own imagination, and to bring a little variation to the stories...

She uses what's available at the time - when I'm cooking in the kitchen, she'll bring some animals in and stand on the kitchen table and make them do tricks from the ceiling fan - hanging by their feet or jumping off into Mr. Moose's antlers or into Manny the Mammoth's tusks. Book cases are mountains, and under Gaffer's chair is a cave where the poor baby elephant got lost after he wandered off in search of water and lost the herd.

When Ava and Gaffer went to the DeLorme map store in Yarmouth, she spotted a collection of baby dinosaurs in a tube, and of course Gaffer bought them for her. One of these, a little red one with a striking similarity to Little Foot, became "Rhett" - he's a mischievous little fellow, who has a bad reputation for not telling the truth. Many of our games lately have been having Rhett tell the group a wild tale, something completely not believable, like there is a unicorn around the corner. Of course, nobody believes him because of his reputation, but then, sure enough, up walks a unicorn, just like he said, and the word goes out to everyone - "Rhett told the truth!" Rhett has yet to tell an actual lie since he's lived in Durham.

All of the animals love the bathtub. Usually the baby animals have swimming class, taught by one of the older animals. Sarah is always the first one to jump off the high diving board (the faucet), and the heavier animals enjoy doing cannon-balls from the faucet - the walrus makes a heck of a splash when he does his cannon-ball! There is always a lot of rescuing that takes place at bath-time, as animals "accidentally" fall from the edge of the tub into the water, and yell for help.

The big Breyer horses, most of whom are over 35 years old - my treasured playthings as a kid - interact with the other animals at times. Ava's favorite horse is Man O' War , who over the past several years has been dropped so many times that his legs and body have come apart, and he' s now held together by glue and pins (thank you, Gaffer and Grandpa - who both know his anatomy intimately having spent hours repairing him). I commented to her last night, "Ava, I'm surprised you love Man O' War so much - he's all broken and ugly!" She looked at me with surprise and said, "But he's nice, isn't he?" She loves him, and he's the patriarch of the others - the leader, the rescuer, the smartest and, obviously, the fastest. He knows he can't run much these days, though, because of all his prior injuries, so often-times he's the judge at races, determining who is the next-fastest, after him. He doesn't have to prove he's the fastest - it's a given.

So now it's 10am, and Ava is ready to play. What adventure will we have today? Ava just told me that we're going to play "sick paw" - one of the lions was running away from a tiger and stepped on thorn. She said that's what she and Grandma played yesterday, and it was very exciting!