Little artist
Avery is officially a toddler and is walking everywhere and is super fast at it! I can barely keep up. Not only is she walking, she is attempting to climb as much as possible and we have had a few bumps and falls. I hate that part of the first walking stage! She toddles around so cute though. It is fun to watch.
She is learning more and more words and is talking quite a bit these days. My favorite new word of hers is "Brotha" for Logan. It is so sweet! She loves going to get him at the bus stop everyday. I think her favorite word is "Hi" or "Hiya". She walks around saying it and waving all day and it is really funny. She has this super cute little voice and it sounds adorable! Avery can also say something that sounds like "Annie" for our neighbor's dog. It is always in the backyard when we are out on the swing set and she loves her and always wants to pet her through the fence. Another new word is "uh-oh" mostly when she drops something. It usually is just "oh" though and sometimes she will cover her little mouth, too. She has also learned the sign for Monkey and makes the cutest little "ooh-ooh-ooh" to go with it! We love it!
Avery is getting pretty good at her body parts and loves for us to ask her and then she will point. She can do her toes, nose, eyes, mouth, teeth and hair. Her favorite is "Eye" and she can say it really well and is always going around and pointing to people's eye and saying "eye" and poking people in their eyes. She also LOVES to brush her teeth and gets really excited about that!
Avery loves being outside and she spends part of her day watching out the window or crying at the door to go out. She loves her swing, but has also just discovered her little slide and she loves it! She can climb to the top by herself but then needs a little help to get up onto the slide. She has so much fun going down and can't wait to go again. She has tried the bigger twisty slide with Logan, but she doesn't like that one as much.
Avery is great at waving bye-bye and also started blowing kisses. They are so cute and she makes the cutest "MUAH" noise when she blows them.
Avery is FINALLY sleeping through the night on a pretty consistent basis. This is mostly my fault as it was hard to get her established on a routine and most nights she would fall to sleep nursing. We decided to practice some tough love and make her fall to sleep on her own. It was rough for awhile, but she is doing great and it is so much better now! We read her a book or two and then sing her a song, wrap her up and lay her down. She still cries sometimes, but rarely more than a few minutes. And she is doing great and usually sleeps from 8 or 9 pm to sometime between 6 and 8 am. It is great! The first night was hard, but she was really tired that night, so she fell asleep within a half hour. The next night was awful and I think she cried for almost 2 hours! It was so awful and I questioned if I was doing the right thing. The next night, she cried for about 20 minutes, and since then, she has been great! She still has had a couple rough nights, after her shots and when teeth are coming in when she will wake up in the night, but for the most part she is doing great! Now, if we could get her to nap longer than 20 or 30 minutes!
Avery got 3 new teeth this month! She finally got her missing front tooth right in the middle on Oct 8th. It is kind of funny to watch the difference in her smile over the last month in the pictures as that tooth comes in. It makes a big change! She also got her two top first molars around Oct 14th. I had no idea they were coming in and then saw them one morning and it explained a lot of grumpiness and lack of sleeping!
Avery is in my junkfood baby! She loves all things sweet, or anything bad for her! I have never had a picky eater before and don't quite know what to do about it. She especially loves any candy, cookie crisp cereal, ice cream, M&M's (she calls them m's and asks for them every time I walk by the cupboard), and pizza and I recently discovered she LOVES corndogs. When I get them out for lunch, she freaks out that I have to cook them first and wants them RIGHT then! She is so hard to get to eat real food! She does usually do good with dinner, and lunch is hit or miss, but she rarely eats much of anything for breakfast. Sometimes she will chow a banana and other mornings she will just throw it on the floor. I don't know what to do with her! She is super picky and if I put a bunch of different things on her tray, she will pick out the things she wants, and then throw the other pieces on the floor, which makes for a disgusting floor! She loves crackers, especially goldfish crackers. I had her try some pretzel ones and they were definitely her favorite. After that, whenever I give her the regular goldfish, she will throw them on the floor, unless they are in her cup and she can't tell what they look like. It is kind of funny to me that she won't just eat what I give her like my other kids did!
It is getting much harder to keep up with Avery! She is into everything and I feel like I am always taking little choking hazards out of her mouth (barbie shoes and marbles seem to be her favorite!) or cleaning up one of her many messes or rescuing her from where she has gotten herself stuck climbing onto! She is also a lot of fun and showing way more personality and loves to make us laugh.