Ava and her fish

Ava has found a new toy, our wooden fish from our plant shelves in our house. We have a million of those plant shelves in our house that usually just collect dust, but when we moved in, we decided to buy a bunch of fish and ducks to sit there. Ava has recently noticed them and points to them daily to see them. Mike finally got some down and that is all she wants to do is play with them. Here she is the other morning playing with all her fish outside.

Eating... The challenge of a lifetime. Trying to come up with different ideas of what to make for Ava and then to make it a couple of times to see if she really likes it or not. The other night, Ava wouldn't eat her dinner, which is not unusual these days. She really doesn't like to sit still to eat. She likes to have snacks on the mat at our back door. She will pull me over there and sit down, which means, I am ready to eat something. So after letting her down from her chair, Mike and I continued to eat and she pulled a chair out from the table and got up on it (without her booster). We gave her her plate and she proceeded to eat the rest of her meal. If I have to do it that way every time, I will. Eating at this age just isn't important. I stopped giving her crackers all day long and if she is hungry and fussing for something while I am cooking, I give her bites of her veggie or fruit. I don't want her to live off of crackers and water. She needs something to stick. I also try to get hummus and cheese to her as a snack, so that the fruit/veggie don't go right through her. Don't get me wrong, I still give her some crackers, but it is just not all day. We have been trying to buy organic foods for her. All her snacks are organic with the occasional goldfish or cereal. We are going to try organic hot dogs next because that seems to be the one things she will eat more often than others. What a challenge it is!!!!!

Anyway, here is her eating like a big girl...

This is a picture after her bath. She is getting so big!!!! She will be 19 months old next week.

She is starting to mimic things we do. The other night, I was taking my vitamin and I put it in my mouth and tilted my head back for it to go down, which I had to do twice and I look over at her and she is tilting her head back too! I had a scratch on my chin and I look over at her and she is scratching her chin too.

I think we are getting closer to potty training. Like I said before, it is more me dreading it than her. Whenever she takes a poo-poo, I can usually tell, because she starts to walk funny. If I ask her if she took a poo-poo, sometime she will say yes, sometimes no, but if I say do you want to flush your poo-poo down the toilet,she says yes and runs to her bedroom to get changed. Then she has to look at it immediately. After she is all cleaned up, we take it to the toilet and plop it in and then she flushes it down and waves good-bye. She will also tug at her diaper when she pees. I know these are all the signs that she is getting ready. We have been reading potty books too. I am going to start in late October after we get through the next couple of weekends that have things going on. We will see how it goes.