Pictures

A few pictures taken over the past couple of weeks ...

The stage of "mine" is officially upon us. Avery has been identifying what is whose for quite some time now ("Mommy's shirt" "Daddy's shoes"), but only within the past couple of days has she been consistently identifying what is hers using the words "mine" or "my" - she used to say "Avery's." Turns out, Avery owns a lot of stuff. Our living room carpet is hers as she informed Nain while they watched the guy clean it. She scrunched up her face and said "my carpet!"

Her counting is coming along, but it's all over the place, as any dignified toddler's should be. She's got one, two, three, four, five, six down pretty well. Sometimes she gets seven, eight, and nine. The shocker for me was when we were counting stairs as we descended them. I said, "thirteen," she said "fourteen", I said "fifteen," she said, "sixteen." I don't even normally count that high. It makes me worry I count aloud more often than I realize.

Leaps

We've had a couple of leaps forward in vocabulary in the past few weeks, as well as in Avery's general ability to do various things.  Examples:

1. I had installed another car seat in our car to ensure I knew how to do it (it's the one we use for traveling).  I was so proud of how solidly I got that sucker installed that I left it in the car for a while.  When I put Avery in thinking she might want to test out a new position in the car, she sat there for a while, but then said, "no like it!"  I took her out, of course, but was thrilled she can now express this sentiment with words rather than simply with whining or crying.  
2. This morning, she was drinking out of her Avery mug, called this because it has her name written on it.  We'd spelled it out a few times for her earlier that day.  Then I hear her say, "A  V  R  Y."  She missed the e, but she remembered the other four letters.  In my book, that's spelling out the most important letters in her name!  Who needs vowels, I ask?
3. "Oh dear."  In an effort to ensure I'm not saying really bad things around her, I tend to substitute really corny phrases.  So I say, "Oh dear!" a lot.  Avery now says, "oh dear" when she drops something. My mom is here for a visit and says, "Oh boy" a lot, so that is quickly becoming part of Avery's vocabulary.
4. Frequent use of three word sentences is becoming the norm.
   
5. She likes to identify what objects belong to whom ("Mommy's shirt" "Avery's shoes", etc)  She's been doing this a while, but now she'll identify things she knows to be hers by using her name. 
6. Last night I asked her she wanted to rock a bit before going into her crib or if she wanted to go straight into her crib.  She said, "straight to crib."  And in she went with a giddiness that only those of us who enjoy sleeping can truly appreciate.  
7. Avery can now blow bubbles all by herself.  She can hold the container with one hand, while dipping the wand with the other, then blow on the wand and make bubbles.  It's kind of messy sometimes, but she can do it.  
   

We were scheduled to be in Mexico right now.  However, the hurricane hit right before our scheduled date to arrive and we couldn't fly in due to the electricity being out.  Though we could have flown in this week, we opted not to for several reasons, the main one being nervousness on my part about the food available.  I wasn't confident that any yogurt, milk, eggs, cheese, etc would have been properly refrigerated during the periods when the electricity was out, so I couldn't risk taking Avery into that situation.  Avery's Nain (aka my mom / Nain is the Welsh word for grandmother) is up in Portland for two weeks since she was to head to Mexico with us.  It's a great opportunity to get things done that we keep putting off during her other visits.  Avery's favorite Nain activity thus far with Nain is making apple cookies, which she pronounces both perfectly and adorably - Avery's pronunciation is pretty good too.  :)

So You Think You Can Dance

Avery likes music.  Actually, that is an understatement.  She absolutely loves music. She has signed for music from a young age.  Now she can say the word music and even ask for specific artists (e.g. "more Kylie" and "Michael Jackson").  She loves to listen to it, but she also loves to dance to it.  So, with much prompting from Amber*, I present Avery's latest video montage: So You Think You Can Dance!

So You Think You Can Dance from Megan Smith on Vimeo.

*Amber: you have not one, but two video clips to prove her raise the roof abilities, tyvm