Avery will be 11-months-old tomorrow. Her understanding of the world around her increases daily. I ccan now say to her, "Avery, do you want to go upstairs and take a bath?" (doing the signs to go with "upstairs" and "bath") and she will take off like a shot to climb the stairs and make her way to the tub once upstairs.
She's also started pulling up on one side of a table and then making her way to the other side - or a sofa or whatever. She doesn't seem overly eager to walk, which is surprisingly only because her desire to crawl was so strong. Today, she took her first few tentative steps with a walker toy. Well, not the toy we have, but a large diaper box. She pulled up into a standing position using the box as support, then the box slid, so she walked with it.
Avery's first official word was Eddie. The pronunciation is a bit muddled to say the least, but she definitely recognizes Eddie (our German Shepherd) as Eddie. She has also sporadically been calling Damian "dada." One night last week, as Avery and I were awaiting D at the top of the stairs, she pointed straight at him and said "dada." A few times she has said "mama" at times that made me swear she knows I am mama, but I am not calling that one until she points at me and says it.
A new favorite game is diving into a stack of pillows or very thick blankets and squealing. This is absolutely adorable. She makes a running start (crawl, of course) and then squeals into the blanket, then rolls over giggling. I will surely get this on video soon.
We're making progress with her eating in terms of variety of baby foods, but still having problems with gagging when eating true solids. That said, we did have a successful Cheerio and cheese eating session today. Of course, Eddie and Turtle got the vast majority of food, but any eating session without vomit is a successful one in my book! Yogurt remains her favorite food - any flavor will do.
Apologies to all for the lack of updates lately. Nikki & Mike (and Grandma J), if you're reading, Avery sends her love!
