Shock and awe

Introduced Ava (wearing my sandals) to the concept of eating olives off of her fingertips. By the delighted look of awe on her face you'd think I showed her a shortcut for nuclear fission in our kitchen. Toddlers are way too fun.

Ava plays the name game

At one year and nine months (21 months), having heard many conversations among the adults in her life, my daughter Ava has figured out that grownups have different names, as evidenced by the video.

It's a neat developmental milestone, but a little disconcerting to have this tiny being who seven months ago couldn't even propel her own body across the room unassisted turn to me and say, "Tasha? Tasha? Juice?"

Yeeeaaah... um, no. It's still 'Mommy' to you little bean. Or as Jason put it, "I'm not on a first name basis with 21 month olds."

I have friends whose two year old already follows yes and no with sir or ma'am. We're pretty informal out here on the West Coast so I don't think we'll be going that route with Ava, but I do want her to talk respectfully to adults.

I remember visiting relatives in the south when I was a teen. After answering some question with "Yes," an elder demanded, "Yes what?"

"Indeed?" I suggested, more to be humorously meddlesome than disrespectful.

We'll fine tune the respectful language as Ava begins to use more of it, but in the meantime, I'm just happy she articulates well enunciated and appropriately used yeses and nos (rather than yeah and uh-uh) and that she's figured out if she says "Mommy?" six times in a row and doesn't get my attention, saying "Tasha?" certainly will.

Maximus-minimus lunch

Ran out for lunch to try this BBQ truck, which sets up shop weekdays at 2nd & Pike in downtown Seattle.

I spotted it from a block away by the giant silver pig-shaped truck and the line doubled back on itself with salivating customers-to-be.

The owner was out schmoozing the line and answering questions. Nice guy, interesting concept.

I opted for the pulled pork sandwich with sweeter minimus sauce (maximus is apparently like two stars in Thai cuisine. The minimus is like one), no slaw, with a side of vegetable chips, which appear to be deep fried potato slices, green beans, beets, and sweet potato.

I also had a ginger lemonade, which struck me as just right, despite the owner's warning that some people found it too tart, others found the hibiscus nectar too sweet, and he advised that both just need vodka.

It was all delish and well worth the trek and line, although to be honest, they had me at deep fried vegetables. Menu, hours, locations and more at their site: www.maximus-minimus.com

China makes it even harder to be informed

Crazy! From Www.informationweek.com: China To Require Filtering Software On PCs http://tinyurl.com/l5y4tw

NPR had an eye-opening story related to this last week about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square uprisings. There were young Chinese who either did not believe it really happened or didn't believe their government would have committed acts of violence against its own people unprovoked.

This was attributed to the lack of accurate, information inside China about the event that hadn't been "sanitized" by government censors. It's not even mentioned in history classes! Amazing.

Ava grooves after her bath

I usually play music on my phone while we do Ava's bath. This night, we finally had a camera closeby to catch her shaking her groove thing. Perhaps I should introduce her to Shakira's Hips Don't Lie.