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.

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.

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. :)

Mutterings

Avery is talking enough now that she occasionally says some funny things. When D opened the Christmas tree box (yes, it's a tad bit early), Avery looked inside and said, "Oh my gosh!!" She then said that over and over, probably because D and I burst out laughing. It was very funny in context, believe you me. I think I found it more funny because that is not a phrase I use often. If anything, I say, "Oh my god," but she picked up "gosh" somewhere. Good girl.

The second thing that springs to mind when thinking of recent mutterings is Avery's newfound love of the movie Bolt. There's a point in the movie where the dog is going after his person and says, "Hold on, Penny!" Avery has adopted this phrase as her own and utters it with some true acting prowess. I need to get this on video because it's definitely a keeper (that sentence is somewhat amusing if you've seen Bolt ... Penny takes pictures and says, "That's a keeper!")

Third, Avery calls her friends Henry and Josie "He-ry, Josie!" However, she calls her friend Elise, "Friend Elise!" She then likes to talk about everyone in Elise's family, "Shell? Unc Jay? Baby No-wan? Baby No-wan crying!" With that last one, she makes her frown-y face. For those who haven't witnessed it, Avery has a very expressive face, particularly when it comes to showing her sad face. She has the traditional frown that goes straight into buckets o' tears. So when she shows empathy that Baby Nolan sometimes cries, it's quite endearing.

Not quite in line with an uttering, but worthy of blog documentation nonetheless, I present to you Avery's first official joke! Avery loves Michael Jackson. She can identify his music vs other music with a great deal of accuracy. One day, she was asking for "Michael Jackson" and followed it up with a very enunciated "owwwwww!" I decided that it would be funny to ask, "What does a cow say? What does a sheep say? What does Michael Jackson say?" We have done this for bank tellers and grocery checkout clerks. If their responses are any indication, Avery will be a very successful comedian.

Finally, Avery likes to announce she wants to "take a bath." While not a new phrase, I find the way she says this particular phrase to be oh so adorable. Maybe because she very clearly enunciates each word.