Thanksgiving

In honor of the arrival of cousin #2 (Monica) and in celebration of Thanksgiving, Ava took to the skies again this November. Her trip to Chicago started with "Monica's first tailgate," complete with Big 10 family and friends from around the country. Rivalries aside, Ava quickly embraced her new cousin.

Ava's motherly instincts kicked in and Monica was subjected to unrelenting bottle feedings and diaper changes - with limited success. Ava also served as some sort of human baby monitor in reverse, standing by Monica's crib shouting "Aca sleeping!"

When it came to sharing the spotlight, Ava reluctantly agreed so long as Monica stayed away from Ava's toys. A deal was reached.

It was too cold to play outside (especially for a small child who refuses to wear jackets) so Ava joined in with such Rabold holiday traditions as card playing and puzzles. As you can see here, she's not all that bad.

Ava also tried her hand at another Rabold tradition - heavily posed family portraits. As you can see here, she's not all that bad.

Ava's 22nd Month

Our camera broke this month so you'll have to use your imagination to recreate the majority of the scenes from the past few weeks.

All in all, it was an eventful month as "Machines At Work" (one of Ava's favorite books), was played out in real life. We took a field trip to the closest construction site so Ava could check out all of construction equipment, which made her a very happy girl. Thinking we were on to something, we followed up with a hayride, to which she responded, "All done. No like." into Helen's shoulder as she clung on for dear life.

Unintentionally, we gave a Ava another introduction to large machinery a few weeks later when Helen and Ava were in a car crash (boooo).  About an hour after the crash, just when hanging out on the side of a road became not so cool, our tow truck arrived and was greeted by Ava's screams of "MACHINES AT WORK!"  Sure, we lost our car that day. But Ava got to ride in a tow truck!  So maybe it wasn't such a bad day after all.