Ava is Five

My baby turned five yesterday. Goodness. The sweetness of my little beauty.

I want to remember her sayings forever.

Things like:

Arm for am. "I arm hungry."

I love how she yells "LASSO!" every time she casts her fishing line.

Yogurt is yogret.

Her daddy got in BIG trouble of teaching her how to say sponge.

She used to say Sunge Bob Squarepants.

A slumber party is a spend the night party.

A pistol is a finger pull real shoot gun.

Her language is developing and she'll surprise us with her vocabulary. Tonight, when my mother-in-law tried to teach her how to dribble a basketball, Ava told her, "No Grandma! I'm just an ordinary girl."

The associations she makes about the world around her are quite funny as well. When she got a SungeBob Square Pants fishing pole for Christmas, she looked it over very carefully. When my mom couldn't take it any longer, she asked Ava, "Well, what did you get?" After another giant pause, Ava excitedly exclaimed, "I got a fly rod! I got my very own fly rod just like daddy!"

As my girl gets older, she clings to the comfort of the familiar. I don't blame her. Over the past few weeks she has had crying fits over the idea of taking the training wheels off of her bike and of the prospect of getting married. She never wants to move out. I comfort her and tell her I don't ever want her to move out either.

Five is a real stepping stone. She is going to change so much over the course of the next year. I don't know if I'm ready. I guess I'll have to adopt SungeBob's mantra, "I'm Ready! I'm Ready! I'm Ready!". When really, I don't think I am. Ava is going to continue to grow up whether she or I like it. Hopefully she'll ditch the training wheels and learn her letters, and I'll enjoy watching her continue to grow and crack up at her new and improved sayings.