Chocolate and Chicken

I'm trying to capture on video Ava saying "chocolate". The best written description I can give is, "kohckla" with kind of a guttural Russian accent. It sounds similar to the way she says "chicken" (actually she just says the cluck, cluck) which sounds kind of like,"kuckl". If I pull out the George Foreman grill, she points and makes her clucking sound. And then there's "pickle", which used to be "ckle" but has now regressed to a grunt and point at the door of the fridge every time it's opened. Maybe if I OD her on pickles she'll get sick of them...

Like Father Like Daughter

Be forewarned, this is probably more info than you want.
When Ryan was young (10, I think?) he had the tip of one of his toes chopped off when a hatch on the houseboat got slammed down on it.
Yesterday evening, Ava nearly repeated that feat with her left ring finger. She climbed up on a dining chair and while my back was turned to put pasta in the boiling pot, she must have climbed up the back of the chair and tipped it over. I ran over and grabbed her but it took a minute for the bleeding to start. Since I found her face down I was looking all over her head for bleeding but there was nothing there. Then I saw her finger, her poor little finger. I can only assume that she landed with her finger in her mouth and her teeth cut through it from the top side, at the tip. I'll spare you the gory details, but it was pretty bad. I'm surprised at how panicky I got, I thought I would handle an emergency better than this. I called Ryan and told him she almost bit her finger off. He thought I said she did bite her finger off, and instructed me to call 911. My biggest lack of reasoning was that I couldn't figure out how to get her to the hospital. I knew I had to restrain her because she just wanted to grab it where it hurt. But who could get to my house immediately and get me there? (Duh, my sister, Jen, lives like a mile and a half away). Shoulda just skipped the 911, but I was kind of freaking out.
Fortunately Ryan sent Tyler right over, and I should have just had him take us to the hospital but an ambulance was already on it's way, so we had to wait for that. I was hoping they could fix her up, but they just wrapped her in a bandaid and said she needed to go to the ER. So rather than pay them to take me I opted to have Tyler drive us over (THANK YOU TYLER!!) since it wasn't a life-and-death situation. Ryan beat us there and fortunately there was no wait at all. But there was the end of a BYU game on... that did seem to slow the doctors down just a little. Really.
They gave her 2 shots in the finger to numb it, which appeared to be excruciating. Apparently when Ryan had his toe incident he said the shots were worse than the actual toe-chopping. X-rays showed that she broke the finger too, above the knuckle. Where she sliced through was right at the nail bed so with the stitches they also reattached the nail and it may or may not grow back. Hopefully she's young enough that it will. I mean it's her wedding ring finger--she'll probably care how that looks one day.
She had to be strapped down in a mummy board for the stitches, and we did our best, along with Grandma and Grandpa Cook, to distract her and entertain her, but it was not a fun time. When your child is crying in pain, the minutes just draaaag on. All in all, from fall to finish, it was about a 3 hour ordeal. Felt like 8.
And of course she got wrapped up in a blue bandage because the doctor just never seemed to hear us when we told him she is a girl. But her dressings will be changed tomorrow and I plan to ask for a bright pink bandage! Stitches come out in 10 days. Today I think I'm more traumatized than she is. She's on rotations of Tylenol and Advil (she likes the taste too), and seems to be back to her normal self, with just an occasional show of the hand and an "Oww" to remind us that something happened yesterday (no actual show of pain though).
I was hoping our first emergency wouldn't happen until she was at least five. But I'm grateful it wasn't worse—it could have been so much worse. And at least I never had to rush her back to the hospital after she left the NICU as a baby. And at least she's never had to be hospitalized for RSV. And at least she didn't knock her teeth out (like I did as a kid) or crack her head open, or totally lose the finger. So I'm grateful.

Under Construction

Yesterday construction started on the lot right next door to us. (This could make nap times interesting). The only window out that side is the laundry room window. Ava is loving to watch the excavator (we call it a tractor for her sake) and has spent much time on top of the dryer staring out the window. I finally pulled up a bar stool* so she can just get up and down as she pleases. But mostly she just stays up there.

She has also learned how to pose for the camera. When she hears that click-click, she turns around and starts the smiles. Her main motivation of course, is to see the pictures afterward. She loves pictures of babies, herself included.

In other random fact news, if Ava was allowed to, she would eat only pickles, olives, canned pears and milk with Carnation instant breakfast (this is by recommendation of her Pediatrician—for extra calories and vitamins). She begs for these things several times a day, while refusing many other foods. (Pickles she says "ckles"). After eating a good meal last night I decided to let her have some sliced olives. She ate almost the entire can.
When we go to the indoor pool at the Rec center, she loves the slides and the water fountains. She runs back and forth sticking her hands in the streams of water, wagging her tongue back and forth the whole time. It's pretty cute.

*Note: the bar stool is stable and does not tip over when she climbs. Despite our discouragement, she insists on being a climber.

Little Helper

Ava loves to sort laundry. Or at least move it around. She takes all the laundry from one basket and moves it over, piece by piece, to another empty basket. This occurs every laundry day.

Lost and Found

My lost boot has been found. It was in the bottom of our tall laundry basket (which I searched twice previously). Third time's a charm!
Now if we can just find that missing key....

Ava at 18 Months

These are a few of her favorite things:
peas
olives
milk

hats & headbands

balls

cars

Baby Signing Times videos
shoes*
goldfish crackers**
animals, animal books, animal sounds, animal games
books, books, books
anything pint-sized that she can sit on (laundry basket, stairs, kid chair, cat)
climbing (chairs, couches, me)
hide-and-seek or peek-a-boo
wagging her finger and saying "nune, nune, nune" [no, no, no]--a little trick she learned from Grandma after just one incident
baths
bubbles (possibly her favorite word too)
slides
babies
my sister Jen. She just loves Jen. And Grandma and Grandpa, of course.
unloading the dishwasher, whether clean or dirty
her new stroller--she had to eat dinner in it the first night Ryan brought it home. And to ever take her out of it results in a fit.

*especially her baby Uggs and any new pair of shoes
**she only gets them at nursery now, because if I give them to her at home she refuses any other food. First day at nursery the teachers told me she was a hungry little girl. I said, "Was it the goldfish?" They said yes. That explains it.

She's so fun and delightful and strong willed. We love her so much.

(this is wear she situated herself to watch baby signing times)

The Case of the Missing Boot

I recently purchased this pair of boots from Aldo.

And a certain little lady of the house has lost one of them. Stolen right out of my closet, probably while I was in the shower or something. She does love shoes. How many places can a 1 yr. old hide a boot? A lot, apparently. I've looked everywhere I can think of--under, inside and behind everything, but still nothing. I even looked in the diaper pail. Where, oh where, could my boot be hidden?