Ayla...I mean "Arthur"

The feeling I get when I really think about Ayla is indescribable - in a good way! In attempting to write a blog about her I realize she has become such a complex little person that it's tough to capture her! Obviously she's very much still a 3 year old but she no longer consists of a few activities or sayings - certainly not sayings!

A common joke is that Ayla would crush the amount of words any 3 year old has ever said in a 24 hour period! Sometimes she'll begin telling you something and it just snowballs like an avalanche of words and ideas. By the end we usually feel out of breath even though we're the one's just listening!

Lately this has combined with pretend playing. She's REALLY into the Arthur (the ardvark) books and on PBS. And I mean REALLLLY into them. Sometimes we don't know if she's Ayla or Arthur at the moment but be sure that she'll let you know accordingly! Her favorite is the book is when Arthur gets the chicken box. She will walk around the house either reciting "scenes" from the story while usually playing the part of said Arthur. Ruth is usually "Mother" while I play the part of "Father" of course. Zeke unfortunately ends up being Arthur's little sister DW. So, our daughter is a boy ardvark and our son is the little sister....oh boy. I'm just glad Zeke can't argue at this point! The second component to all this play pretending though is Ayla seems to be into medical care. She likes to take temperature's, check BP, listen to breathing etc with her little doctor kit. Hoping for a future doctor! (just not the medical school bills!!) Anyway, at this point all of us can recite the entire chicken pox story from memory, which happens about 20 times a day around here. Yesterday "Arthur" just had a cough though and was getting out to the Museum so there's hope of new story lines at least!

While sometimes exhausting hearing her replay the same story, Ayla is not a just a chatter box - she really is a bright little girl. She is asking lots of questions, whether they be why the sun is hot to why she has to go to sleep - but she really wants to know - like really why do we sleep? Ruth and I just say "look at how tired we are! Haha, no. But she seems to pick up on the answers pretty quick. A lot of times after she's asked a question for a few days she will ask it again and we will say "what do you think?" and she will tell us - usually right on what we said or a close variation. She has a pretty good memory to say the least. The other day a science show was on tv and they were taking kids through a hospital showing them different equipment and they showed an ultrasound machine. She says "that's where we used to see Zeke in mommy's belly." The last time she saw that was 7 months ago! : )

For the most part Ayla pretty much can't help but make anyone smile. But then I think Ruth and I actually get a little sad when we look at her and realize how big she is now! In fact, this last weekend we even got her "big girl" bed! We never pushed it because Ayla has always slept very comfortably in her crib. But a couple weeks ago it started coming up and she had been asking about it a little more. Combine this with the fact that she really was getting to the end of fitting in the thing and Ruth and I wanting to move Zeke into a full size crib and viola - Ayla is now sleeping in her very own bed! And she's done very well, sleeping through the night with no major problems all week so far. While the bed symbolizes her getting older, it's funny how small she actually looks in it! I know we're both looking forward to sleeping there though instead of the floor when the need arises - but hopefully not soon or too often! But we sure will take advantage of snuggling with her yet every chance we get. Don't get big too fast "Arthur" : )