Big Girl

It is one week before Avery's second birthday.  I can't believe how quickly she's growing up.  There have been a number of moments recently that make me shake my head and wonder where the last two years have gone.

The first is Avery's ever-expanding vocabulary.  Like any toddler, she learns new words and phrases everyday.  So far, we haven't had an unfortunate repeating of words that should not come out of a toddler's mouth, but keeping her shielded from hearing these words is tough!  Not only do we have to watch our own language, but those around us, and those on the TV.  The exact-phrase-repeating episodes are now so frequent that I fear the moment she repeats a less than desirable phrase she overhears on TV or in the grocery store or wherever.

Avery can now tell me what states Nain (my mom) and Pop Pop (my dad) live in - Colorado and California.  Sometimes it takes her 15-30 seconds after I ask, "Where does Nain live?" for her to come up with Colorado, but if I wait long enough, she usually successfully retrieves the answer from her memory. 

She can also identify all the letters of the alphabet and can sing the ABCs, though the LMNO part is typically muddled and sometimes she misses a letter or two.  Oddly, she doesn't always miss the same letters.  One letter she always gets right, very clearly and loudly is W: "DOUBLE YOUUUUUUUUUUU!"

The other day, we were driving in a parking lot.  It was night, so the signs were lit up with neon and eye catching.  She pointed and said "P!"  I looked at the pharmacy sign and figured she was spotting that particular P.  I said, "Very good!  What is the letter next to the P?"  And she replied, "H!"  I was quite impressed that she was able to move to the next letter on her own.

Avery also likes to play waitress.  She's been doing this a while, but the way she plays is getting a bit more sophisticated every week.  The other night, she decided that Mommy and Daddy were very hungry and that she would feed us.  She would ask us individually if we were hungry, we'd each say yes, then she'd nod her head and say, "Yes. Food!"  She also knows that our favorite drink is Diet Coke, so she's constantly bringing us pretend glasses of Diet Coke. 

Finally, we've made great strides in potty training the past week.  If she's on the main level, she'll take herself into the bathroom*, go potty, then dump it into the big toilet.  I'm usually there by this point and I help her turn on the water to wash her hands.  This is probably in the TMI (too much information) category, but she'll now go both #1 and #2 without much coaxing on the potty.  The #2 took a bit more effort, but in reality she did much of the effort on her own.  

*I should note that she's typically not wearing clothes on the main floor, so I'm not sure how competent she is at removing her pants to go potty. Avery's main state of being is unclothed.  I put 'em on, she takes 'em off.  She runs hot anyway, so we just keep the house a bit warmer and she is perfectly happy.  The other day, she did agree to just wear underwear whilst running around and she was able to remove those herself, but she deemed the kitchen an excellent place to do that, then she ran all the way into the bathroom.  I figure these are small details on our potty training path. :)