Ava had her first riding lesson today! It was great—she was so excited. SO excited. We got there, and the instructor (who looks just like Dennis Farina – the cop on Law and Order plus other things) was superb. He was very kid friendly and very patient. And it was a real lesson. No pony rides here! After he led her around, he stood in the middle and around she went. She learned “whoa,” turning (sort of), and how to move forward. She had her game face on, but beneath it you could see an irrepressible smile peeking out– she was clearly so proud of the fact that she was really riding. The funniest part was when the instructor asked her what sort of horses she liked. He clearly expected “brown” or “white” – and she replied: “um, I like draft horses, actually.” He nearly died laughing, and she got his instant approval. Carter got to ride for one turn around the ring, sitting in front of her, which had him utterly thrilled. AND he taught Ava the rudimentary parts to falling off—he had her stand up in the saddle and fall into his arms. This is a great thing—allows people to ride without fear. And she rode around with her arms out to her side—another great learning device. I was very happy with it.

Then after such a great day, Ava somehow tripped while crawling around on her hands and knees (I think she was pretending to be a dolphin), and she very nearly sent her tooth through her lip entirely. Fortunately it was all confined to the inside of her mouth, thus no stitches, but it was very deep and very traumatic for everyone. And her lip went ballistic, swelling up hugely, despite ice. It hurt her a lot. When she initially did it, the noises she made were gut-wrenching. She could barely make noise, and the ones that did manage to come out were somehow a mixture of screams, groans and gurgles all into hands held firmly against her face. I had to pry her away from me and her hands away from her in order to see what in the world had happened, and was expecting to be horrified. She calmed down a bit, but basically did not stop crying until she fell asleep an hour later.

Meanwhile Carter is thoroughly sold on strawberry ice cream, and if I so much as walk within a 4 foot radius of the freezer, he gestures wildly at it. God help me if I open it, as he will remove the entire half-gallon from the door.

And he sits on my lap for books! He has been addicted to books forever, but never would sit still to actually look through the whole thing. Now he insists on sitting on my lap (so cute) and wants to carefully go through the text, and have everything named. He points to something and says “eh” and I have to name it. Most interestingly, he will make me go back and forth, underscoring the word for him. He will point at a fish and then a truck and then the fish and then the truck and then the fish and then the truck and then the fish and then the truck, and on and on, and I say “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” “fish.” “truck.” He does this without books too—especially when he is relaxing on the potty. He points to the sink, the door, and the wall, and makes me say them in order over and over and over. Sometimes he mixes it up—sink, wall, door, sink, wall, door, sink, wa-SINK! And he gets hysterical, so thrilled that he tricked me.

Speaking of the potty—it is great that he is using it and all, but he insists on using it to pass gas too—so we go through the whole rigamorole of pants off, diaper off, socks off, sit down, TOOT!, laugh uproariously, get up, pick up the empty potty cup, bring it to the big potty, dump the invisible fart into the big potty, put the potty cup back, toddle around to the flusher, flush, wave bye bye, and run joyfully bare bottomed out the door. It is cute, but a lot of effort. I know that he might not know the difference between tooting and pooping, (in this, he is not alone in the world), and just recognizing the urge is great, but I have to say that there is a down side to the early potty training. He is too little to do it himself, even to pull down a pair of underwear, so it is a labor intensive event. And he really hates the diapering that is inevitable when we go out. Oh well. This too shall pass.