She's got skills

Ava's learning curve is making its upward turn. Whether or not these skills are relevant or worthwhile to learn, I'll leave up to you. Regardless, she's learning.

Skill #1 - The covert pacifier toss
Lately we had been noticing that we were running a little low on pacifiers. We had ruled out the possibility of them dissolving in her mouth due to the sheer amount of time spent in her mouth (kinda like old gum), but that still left us with no explanation. On the verge of calling Skully and Mulder, during one recent nap attempt we made a discovery.

You see, Ava has figured out that she has some control over those things with fingers that wave around in front of her face. They are good for more than just self-inflicted eye pokes. This has led to massive amounts of drool while she sucks on her hands, but I digress. She has begun grasping things with some degree of intention. Toys, my chest and under-arm hairs (ouch!), and, more currently relevant, her pacifier.

As Ava lay in her crib, protesting her much needed nap, I was studying for a test in the recliner in her room. Since I was being fairly quiet, I don't think she knew I was in the room. In this moment of inferred privacy, Ava promptly threw her pacifier through the slots on the back of her crib. It bounced off the wall and the crib several times before coming to rest on the floor. Shortly thereafter Doni came in the room to see why her Little Miss Lovely was not content. I told her what Ava had just done with her pacifier, so Doni removed the drawer located under Ava's crib so we could get to the pacifier. Little did we know that we were impromptu treasure hunters, for the booty we found under the crib would have made any Jolly Roger proud. We found, not one, not two, but FIVE PACIFIERS! Ava had been storing up a cache of pacifiers in case there were ever to be a shortage! Better yet, she had been doing it when no one was looking to keep her stash secret!

There was only one possible explanation for where she could have picked up on this skill.... SPARKY! Sparky has a history of trying to hide bones inside and outside of our house. We've gotten pretty good at catching him when he tries to take things outside, so he's become much more covert about hiding things in the house. We've found bones or rawhides buried in our dirty clothes, under our pillows, and anywhere else you can imagine. Sometimes we've found treats and we can't even begin to remember the last time we had given it to him!

It's good to see that Ava is learning, although we would prefer she pick up things not from her four-legged housemates, but from her biped, intellectually superior ones. Can you imagine if she continued to mold herself after the dogs' behavior and not ours? When Ava got older she would jump on people whenever they came in the house, follow us whenever we walked into another room, and bury herself under blankets when she wanted to take a nap.... Now that I think about it, it would be kinda cute.

I'll get to Ava's other skills as they come along. For now, I've got to stop Ava from scratching at the floor every time she poops.