Two!

Avery turned two today!  When she came downstairs for breakfast, it took her a while to notice her gift from us in the middle of the room.  D was able to gift-wrap the entire tricycle.  When Avery finally did notice it, she was very excited.  As she opened a small bit of it she peeked in and said, "Bicycle!"  Close enough!  We forgot to buy her a helmet to go with it (duh!), so she just rode it in the house today.  However, she spent much of her riding time reminding us that we need to buy her a helmet by repeatedly saying, "Helmet!  Need a helmet!" 

To celebrate, we had a very casual party with some of her friends.  I'd intended this spectacular event where the kids sit nicely around the table and decorate the cookies that I'd have already made in a nice clean kitchen.  Um, yeah, that didn't happen, but fortunately, the kids didn't care!  Avery and her friends had a grand time running around, decorating the cookies (somewhat), eating cake, and generally being two-years-old.

These past few weeks have felt like she's growing up so fast.  She's now in her big girl bed (pictures to come now that the sheets have arrived!) and she's now officially potty trained.  I thought potty training would be tough and transitioning to the bed would be easier.  I was wrong.  Potty training, thus far ... knock on wood, has been quite easy.  It took a few days for her to get used to underwear, but from then on it's been smooth sailing.  And, magically, she stays dry through the night now - at least if the past five or six days hold true.  I'm sure we have plenty of potty accidents in our future, but I'm calling the training done and looking at the future accidents as just that.

Transition to the bed has been another story.  She loves her bed, loves the mattress, loves the freedom.  It's that last one that is the problem.  Today's nap was a step in the right direction since it was the first time that I think she's fallen asleep in her bed after I've left the room.  The other times, she's fallen asleep on her floor or something like that.  This time, she got upset when I left the room, then climbed back up to nap in her bed.  I'll take that as improvement.  Daddy is upstairs putting her to sleep for the night, so hopefully it'll be smooth sailing.  I can dream!

Here are a couple of recent pictures.  We went out to a fancy dinner with a friend who was visiting from out of town, so I grabbed the opportunity to dress Avery up a bit.

This one is from this morning, right before she opened her gift from us.  It is going to be tough to tell it from a Christmas picture since she's still in jammies and there is a Christmas tree behind them. In hindsight, maybe we should have gotten her dressed before she came downstairs!  Lesson learned.