Mexico

Avery is having a wonderful time in Mexico so far. She loves crawling up and down the one step from our living room into the courtyard and then back again.  There are all sorts of new places to explore and birds to watch in the clear blue skies.  Most of all, though, she is loving her frequent walks along the beach and through the neighborhood.  We haven't made it down to the beach at a time when she can play in the sand, and the winds were too high today, but before we leave she'll get to experience it.

Happy Birthday, Avery!

Today is Avery's first birthday! Thinking about it, I guess it's technically her second since, you know, she was actually born on this day a year ago - her BIRTH day. Anyway, I digress. It's been a wonderful year. Parenthood has exceeded my wildest expectations and brought me joy I hadn't known before.

Thank you, Avery! Happy Birthday! Daddy and I love you!

FYI - The video is 9 minutes and 43 seconds

Avery Year One from Megan Smith on Vimeo.

Helpful

Today's lesson: laundry *can* be fun!  Avery will push the laundry hamper (with some help from me to keep it on track and keep focus) all the way from the laundry room to our bedroom.  She babbled the whole time and walked most of the way versus crawling on her knees.  Since Daddy is working from home today, she was even able to go into his office and show him her new helpful attitude.

Avery's walking often with her walker toy now.  Here's a little video of that.

Walker Toy from Megan Smith on Vimeo.

I let Avery play with my old laptop today.  This isn't a good idea, as I quickly found out, since within 30 seconds, she'd broken off the letter F.  However, it did give me a good opportunity to capture her saying, "uh oh." 

Uh oh from Megan Smith on Vimeo.

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