Conversations with Ava

We have a routine at bedtime: bath, sometimes TV, and then reading/prayers/singing/cuddling in the rocking chair in Ava's room. If Craig is home he does the bath and usually TV time, I do the rest. After I've read and done prayers and sung (I am a horrific singer but she seems to like it, it's a combination of Sunday School-type songs, Tom Petty, and lullabies...lately she's been requesting "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"), we cuddle for awhile and I talk to her, I mostly just rock her and tell her how much I love her. Last night it went like this:

Me: "Ava, do you know how much I love you?"
Ava: "Mmph" (she kind of just grunts at me)
Me: "I love you so much, honey. I don't know what I'd ever do without you."
Ava: "Mmph"
Me: "You are the best thing that's ever happened to me and your Dada, you know that?"
Ava: Pulls away from me , points to her head, and says, "Da doggie! Da doggie!"

Well. Alrighty then. I know she doesn't really understand 100% what I'm saying, but it was the strangest response....haha!

To be fair, she's been OBSESSED with talking about our neighbor's dog for about a month now....we went over there to say hi one afternoon and she was petting their very good dog and saying, "Nice doggie!" But she couldn't help herself and got over-excited and pulled the dog's tail, the startled dog jerked away and Ava fell over and bumped her head. I picked her up of course but told her it was not nice to pull Doggie's tail and she scared him...I felt like a huge jerk for not comforting her more but she needs to know! If she thinks it's okay to pull dogs' tails, she could really get hurt sometime. Anyhow, at the most random times she'll try to tell people (usually me) about what happened, which is a lot of babbling, pointing to her head and saying, "Da doggie!" and once she even added some fake crying for effect. HA.

That's about it...we went to Fresh Market today (good thing it's far away, I like that store way too much) and when Ava gets up from her nap we'll do a run to Target...among other things, I seriously need a Pumpkin Spice latte (it's a Super Target with a Starbucks....Best. Idea. EVER.) Not very exciting but it's cool and rainy out (yay fall!) and this will get us out of the house for awhile. And I have two more words for the list: "Apple" and "yogurt." She asks for yogurt at breakfast and identifies apples wherever we see them: in her ABC book, at the grocery store, etc. Good stuff!