3 years with Ava

It's been three years and four days since we have been home with Ava. I can't even begin to write about how much this little girl has changed. First of all she's grown physically so much. She's gained 10 pounds and grown about 10 inches. She's still really skinny, but she started out in a size 18-24 months and now she's wearing a size 5T!!!! Ava's hair is getting darker, and she's just all around healthy!!

Ava's personality is so sweet. Andrew's adoption has thrown her for a loop and we have had some really hard days; but she is beginning to act more like her old self, so I think we will all survive. Normally Ava is happy, funny, loving, but also very stubborn!

Ava loves to play outside, play with her babies, and kitchen, and now she likes to play anything Andrew plays. Playing was one thing Ava never really knew how to do, and it's actually taken her quite a while to be able to play on her own. She's not attached to one certain toy or blanket. But since she sees that Andrew likes to sleep with certain cars, and blankets, she has started doing that too.

Ava really loves to snuggle, and be held. Very often she wants to be a baby. She still really likes to be rocked and cuddled! (which is totally fine with me!)

It seems like we can understand more of what Ava is saying these days---she still speaks in 3-4 word fragments most of the time but normally we can understand what she's saying. This is my first year homeschooling Ava (Kindergarten), and I feel that it's going good. Again, the transition with Andrew has been challenging, but just the past couple days, things are beginning to settle down, and we have had good days at school.

We took Ava to the neurologist to see if they could shed some light on her "developmental delay". They didn't want to do any MRI's or tests like that, and felt that her delay was based on her past history and that she would eventually catch up. They did suggest a neuro physchological evaluation to help us learn more about how she learns that would maybe help us with different techniques on how to teach her. So for now, we are just going to keep doing what we're doing.

Ava loves to sing and has a great rhythm on the guitar and the piano! She doesn't just bang on the piano keys---and she can strum to the beat of a song on the guitar. I know we will need to get her started on some music lessons someday soon!

Ava is still a neat freak!! She's the neatest eater in the whole wide world!! She's also very gentle. She plays gentle, and she's gentle with our dog. Andrew has truly rocked her world, because there's not a gentle bone in his body. Ava is having to learn to toughen up a little, and Andrew is having to learn to calm down and be gentle (A LOT!) Maybe they will balance each other out!

These three years with Ava have flown by, but then again---I can hardly remember life without her. We are blessed! I know we are all thankful that God has brought us down this path of adoption. It has been amazing to experience God's redeeming love!

This last picture is funny! Ava is pretty timid when it comes to things like this! In fact I had to go down the slide with her the first couple times. Then she decided that she could go down by herself-but she wanted to do it on her tummy--I guess she thought she wouldn't go down as fast. Soon this was hurting her legs when she got to the bottom so she went down the proper way! She's getting braver and stronger every day!!!