Aviva

A few thoughts on my favorite little girl in the whole world:

1. Aviva is absolutely unrelenting. Were she a stallion, she would never be broken. Were she the queen of France, she would say "Let them eat cake." But she's a little girl. And when she wants something, she uses all the tools at her disposal: smiling, crying, fighting, tempers and tantrums, sweetness, etc. Redirection is difficult with her because she herself is a master at it, and has used it to her advantage. It is impressive to be in the presence of someone who knows what she wants, and often gets it through the sheer force of her will.

2. She has recently started being very chatty. When I picked Max up from the school the other day, with Aviva and Leo in tow, Aviva ran up and hugged Max, grabbed his hand and asked, "How was your day, Max?" Another student's mother was there and turned and looked at me and put her hand on heart. I agreed. I heart when Aviva asks Max about his day. And she does it a lot. She asks me about my day at the end of the day too. And she listens to my answers.

One day a few weeks ago after asking Max how his day was, she turned and said, "Don't you want to hear about my day?"

3. She has also recently started to give appreciative thanks. For the first 3 years of her life, I'm not sure I ever heard her give a sincere thanks. Mostly, I think, because she thinks she earned everything she ever got (see #1 above). But recently, she started being grateful without prompting. One day after school: "Mom, thanks for putting that yogurt in my lunch. It was so good." And from there, she's been thankful for a whole host of things: thanks for remembering to bring water on the trip, thanks for bringing a sweater, thank your for getting us cheese pizza you're the best mom in the whole world, thank you for taking us to the park, etc.

4. She loves our nameless neighbors the "bike neighbors." (They're obviously not nameless, and Aviva knows their names, I think, but only ever calls them "bike neighbors.") One of their favorite games -- and Max loves it too -- is Cops and Robbers. All of the kids but one are robbers, and the other kid is a cop. The cop is supposed to chase the robbers and put them in jail. Aviva loves to be the cop. She never catches any of the robbers, which suits the robbers just fine, but she loves to have people run from her in fear. She just loves it.

5. She tries to force Leo to like her. She used to do this by straddling Leo as Leo lay on the ground and Aviva said with a sweet voice (but forceful) voice: "You love me, yes you do." Over and over and over. It was clear to everyone that Leo hated it. When we would ask Aviva to stop, she would glare at us and say, "Leo likes it."

Leo now has a wary look on his face when Aviva approaches. They've reached a sort of detente, but he better always let her think he loves her or I'm worried about him.

6. We recently introduced Max and Aviva to the Wizard of Oz, mainly because I got tired of making up stories and decided to start borrowing fro Disney and other sources. When we first started watching the movie, she was so scared of the wicked witch. And she never remembered Dorothy's name. "What's that girl's name who's with Toto," she'd ask.

Now, she loves the wicked witch. Yesterday I asked her what she likes about the Wizard of Oz and she said, "The wicked witch." She said I could be one of her flying monkeys.