Pretend & Singing

Fairy Princess

Since D and I both feel Avery should be watching less TV, we've been trying to reduce her time in front of the screen while down here. There's no strict limit, but we said no to most requests to watch TV. This means we have to find ways to fill her time other than the oh-so-easy TV. D bought a few books for Avery in the LA airport during our layover. One of them is about a little girl playing dress up. Avery loves this book and knows the whole thing almost by heart. She misses a few words, but for the most part, can "read" the whole book to herself.

One of the characters the girl dresses up as is a fairy princess. This morning, we used the cover of a huge coloring book I brought for her and made her a fairy princess hat. She played with this for quite some time. Then she requested a helmet so she could ride her "tricycle" (aka a box of wipes). It cracks me up that she won't ride her "tricycle" without her "helmet." That insistence has got to have come from the G household since we forgot to even get a helmet when we bought her tricycle (a situation which has been rectified). 


States & ABCs

I've been singing the 50 states song with Avery and, as a result, she can now say the states in alphabetical order up to Indiana (that's Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana). Sometimes Connecticut is very clear, sometimes it's just gibberish followed with a loud "CUT!" Truth be told, I didn't think she was absorbing it, but then one day she went through all the A's and C's. She knows portions of the other states, but not as reliably as the first 14 states. I did get it on video this morning, though it wasn't her best rendition. I'll keep discreetly videoing her when she starts singing them to see if I can get a good chunk.

Her ability to sing the ABCs has been around for a while, but they're still not 100%. Despite the fact she can recognize the letter J (and all other letters for that matter - she's about 90% on doing it correctly each time), she almost always leaves it out when singing the alphabet. And the LMNO part is very run together, probably because I tend to say it faster when we sing the song. I'm trying to slow down so she can hear them enunciated, but that hasn't made much difference yet.

This morning she and I were "doing letters" as she calls it. That's where we sing the alphabet and then she or I pick a letter and we (and by we and I mean me) name all the words we can that start with that letter. This is mostly a game we play on dog walks to keep her happy in the back pack. Anyway, today, Avery said, "Do letter F!" I said OK and then made the sound that words that start with the letter F sound like. I asked her if she could think of a word that makes that sound. She thought about it and then said, "foot!" That was pretty darn cool.

Sandcastle

Avery and I headed down to the beach this afternoon to do some exploring and build a sandcastle.  I actually took pictures! 

It only looks cold - the breeze was quite warm

Here is where Avery was telling me, "Mommy sit right there!"

So I did sit right there, then she trotted off with her egg shell carton to fill with sea shells and stones

This is what most pictures now look like when I ask Avery to smile

Here's our sandcastle

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And now, some very belated pictures from our trip to Hawaii in November/December. The bottom two are of Avery with Nain (my mom) feeding the swan at the hotel.  Notice how another kid has joined them in the bottom photo.  Kids are drawn to my mom like white on rice!

Courtyard

I took a couple of pictures in the courtyard of our casa before we headed out to the Sunday Farmer's Market this morning. Avery was quite the ham for the camera. Two of my favorite shots are below.

Mexico!

We're in Mexico.  We arrived yesterday afternoon.  It is rather a last minute trip since we only booked tickets about two weeks ago, but we're both grateful that we get to spend some time relaxing and spending time with Avery while we're down here.

Avery did really well on both flights (we have to connect in LA to get here).  She was fed up with being her car seat during the second flight and decided her best course of action was to get herself a timeout so she'd be taken out of her seat and presumably placed elsewhere in timeout.  So she deliberately hit me, then screamed, "I need a time out!"  Everyone in the seats surrounding our had a good laugh about that one, and really that was all I could do, too.  I couldn't take her out of her seat at that point, so I just turned the other cheek, literally and figuratively.

Much of our first full day here has been spent dealing with minor house issues (small water leak, dishwasher not working, smoke alarm low on batteries, etc).  Avery and I did test the range of our walkie talkies by going for a long walk around the neighborhood while D stayed home to get the smoke alarm batteries changed.  On our walk, we checked that the neighborhood pool is in usable condition and warm enough for swimming.  Since it was, she and D have now headed out for a quick dip in the pool. 

I taught her that we say hi when we're in Mexico by saying, "hola!"  She has implemented that word quickly and enjoyed telling all the landscape workers we passed on the walk that she wanted to go swimming, whether they wanted to hear it or not! 

Thankfully, she's napping well.  It's always a crapshoot when we're away from home.  And traveling without diapers is awesome!  We've had no accidents even though we don't have a floor potty, which is what she's used to. The folks who run the neighborhood store near us (thank goodness that's now opened!) said they have a potty we can borrow since they have two young kids, so that should work out well.  Hopefully we can get a playdate set up with those kids to give Avery a break from us old folks.