First Side Ponytails!

It's still not quite long enough to be done properly, but I put Avery's hair into two side ponytails* today. I think it's pretty darn cute.

* My mom and I had a debate as to whether it would be proper to call these pigtails. I think it would, she thinks it's not. Wikipedia seems to agree with both of us in that you *can* call them pigtails, but most of the time it refers to braided hair.

Diaper Pail

I knew it was a bad idea.  I never thought it was a good idea.  But I did it anyway:  I showed Avery that when you put something in the diaper pail, then close the lid and reopen, it disappears.  We have one of those diaper pails that has a little bucket, and as you close the lid, it turns the bucket upside down.  You reopen the lid and the bucket is empty.  Now Avery is trying to put everything into the diaper pail.  Today, after working to get her not to put her bib in there, I gave her a couple of wipes to satisfy her curiosity.  She took them, put them in the diaper pail, stood up on her tippy toes to look into the bin to see the wipes in the pail, closed the lid, then opened it, peered in and then looked at me and said "uh oh!"  It almost makes me not regret showing her it was so cute. 

The phase of tantrums is upon us.  She is testing boundries left and right these days.  I must admit that I didn't expect this phase to arrive quite this early.  At the moment, they're not too bad, but I can see our future and I expect our little girl will become an expert at this.  She's already made great strides in effective tantrum throwing in the past few days. 

She walked quite a bit more than she has before with the walker toy today.  And she walked a bit with me holding her below her arms - something she hasn't done since she first started crawling.  After speaking with Avery's birthmom (hi, Nikki!), we know that her brother walked at 13 months, so hopefully Avery will not walk before then.  Not before Mexico is my new chant!

Avery's birthday is fast approaching.  Time has flown by, yet has seemingly stood still.  We're very much looking forward to a small celebration with Avery's birthfamily. 

Wheeee!

One of Avery's favorite games is when we poof up the duvet on our bed, put some pillows down, then D does a "onnnnneeee, twwwwwooooo, threeeeeee!" and tosses Avery onto the duvet. She loves this. Absolutely loves it. Tonight, we are babysitting Avery's friend Elise. We got some good shots of both babies playing this game. Each one was quite anxious when it was the other's turn, but we avoided tantrums. They also took a bath together. Babies in a tub are so darn cute!

Uh Oh

For the past couple of weeks, Avery has really enjoyed spending extra time in her crib.  When she goes down for a nap, or wakes up from one, she spends her time happily playing with her stuffed animals or her bib (which she inexplicably loves to play with).  Yesterday morning, she woke, played for a while, then made some noises that made me think she was ready to get up.  I picked her up and she leaned back to the crib, so I put her in it and then gave her some books.  This made her very happy for about 15 minutes, then I hear some unhappy noises, so I went in again to get her.  This time she scrambled up to stand and then looked me straight in the face and said, "uh oh!" I looked down and she'd thrown her bib over board.  This was not her first use of "uh oh" and certainly not the first time she'd thrown something over board, but I found it blog worthy nonetheless!

D keeps insisting that Avery will be walking any day now.  I think it's still a month or two (at least) off.  To me, she seems quite content with her crawling.  Honestly, I hope that she doesn't start attempting to walk until we're back from Mexico, where we'll be over the holidays.

Finally, some pictures!  We really need to get her haircut so she doesn't have to wear the Pebbles look all the time, but I rather like the Pebbles look, so that might be part of my delay in doing so.

From Daily Avery

From Daily Avery

From Daily Avery

England

It's been a month since my last post - oops!  In that time, we've been to England and back.  Avery did quite well on the flights (all things considered), but we all had a lot of problems with the time change.  We also battled sickness when we were there making for an exhausting trip.  However, it was wonderful to finally introduce Avery to her family across the pond.   We spent a week in London and then a week in Worcester with Damian's dad.

While in London, we got to spend a lot of time with Justin & Caroline (Damian's middle brother and his wife) and their 4-year-old son, Ollie.  Avery adored Ollie.  And Ollie was quite taken with Avery.  One night when we were over at their house visiting, it was time for Avery to go to sleep.  She was going down in a crib in Ollie room.  Ollie actually asked to go to bed early so he could go to sleep with Avery.  So cute!

Getting to spend time with Damian's dad and his partner, Rosie, was very nice.  If we hadn't brought a virus into the house, it would have been even better!  Nonetheless, we're glad we made the trip.

Avery with Granddad

 

With Alex, Damian's youngest brother

  

Grandma Rosie & Granddad

 

Playing with cousin Ollie

We intended to get pictures of Avery near typical tourist sites in London, but the timing of things just didn't work out.  Ah well, there's always next time.

11-months

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!

Seattle Children's Museum

When we were in Seattle to get Avery's passport for our upcoming trip to England, we visited the Children's Museum to make the trip a bit more fun for Avery.  She had a great time and was able to put to use her new stair climbing skills.  The stairs in the video were actually a bit tougher for her to climb than regular stairs, but she managed quite well.


Seattle Children's Museum from Megan Smith on Vimeo.