For Ainsley

As promised, a post loaded with pictures of Ainsley. (Recent pictures, no less...) This hodge podge collection captures a lot of Ainsley for me -- her likes, her habits, her personality. So in no particular order, here's a glimpse of sweet Ains.

Ainsley likes people, saying hello, hamming it up for the camera, and putting on socks. She is dead serious about sock wearing. She insists on putting them on all by herself most mornings.

Ainsley finally got enough hair over the summer to sprout pigtails, and she developed an intense curiosity to try out anything anyone else is doing (or eating -- but more on that later). Too bad her mean mama won't let her play with an expensive camera.

Ainsley does not like being left out. Fortunately, she has finally gotten old enough to be included on the Daddy-daughter Saturday excursions. They usually involve some amount of french fries, which Ainsley doesn't mind at all.

Ainsley loves her sister's shoes and clothes. Any pair of Afton's shoes is rather awesome to Ainsley, but she was particularly fond of Afton's jelly shoes from last summer. (We finally bought Ainsley a pair to end the shoe stealing madness, aka Afton's conniptions and Ainsley bouts of despair.) Afton's shorts and pajama bottoms are other favorites too. The best part is that Ainsley knows that this clothes and shoe stealing is a bit of a no-no (or at least it will provoke her older sister's ire). Occasionally in the morning, I'll find Ainsley lurking near Afton's drawer. Then she'll snatch a pair of shorts out of it and make off in a mad dash out the bedroom door. She rarely makes it much past the kitchen before Afton near tackles her in an attempt to reclaim the clothes (that Afton has no intention of wearing). But lately, Ainsley has had more success.

We should have known when Ainsley was just a few weeks old, and was best soothed to sleep by being worn in the Baby Bjorn carrier, that Ainsley was a huge fan of the human pillow. And lately, she much prefers the human pillow in the form of her father. This human-pillow love, I believe, is the reason she didn't sleep through the night on a regular basis until a month ago. (Why soothe yourself back to sleep when you can get your parents to snuggle you? And just for the record, we did the tough love/scream it out sleep-training thing four different times. She was untrainable.)

Ainsley loves to eat. When combined with her fear of missing out on anything, it means that if you are chewing in front of her, she'll pry your mouth open in an effort to get a bite. She is also a disaster when she eats. It's actually rather funny, but it means that I do a lot of stain removal. It also means that Ainsley is often not allowed to eat while wearing clothes. (It's easier to hose her down in the kitchen sink that way.)

And, just because the universe wanted to give me a break after 18 months of brushing Afton's teeth while performing wrestling moves on her and jamming the toothbrush in her mouth, sweet baby Ainsley loves to brush her teeth. (And again, for the record, we tried a number of different things to make teeth brushing fun for Afton, and she didn't buy any of them. She just needed to turn 3.) Ainsley also likes to brush other people's teeth and other people's hair. She combs (or at least tries to comb) Afton's hair every night before bed. One of her babysitters recently called her a "little mother."

And finally, despite all the squabbles, Ainsley seems to really like her big sister, whom she calls "Aa" (only the first phoneme -- no "fton"). Ainsley lights up when we pick up Afton from preschool or when we wake up Afton together in the mornings. She will usually give her a kiss goodnight.

A couple days after Ainsley was born, I noticed this strange phenomenon. I had lived 32 years of my life without Ainsley and didn't feel any less because of it. But as soon as she was born, it felt like she'd just always been there -- part of our family, part of my life -- and I couldn't imagine her not existing. Kids are a funny thing that way. Now I just can't wait for Ainsley to learn to talk more so the good times can really begin.