One Year Old!!!

I've had kind of a crappy week, but after some retail therapy, some blogging and free Chic-Fil-A things are looking up! I even finished this LONG post I have been working on for awhile and ran 3 miles today after not running since Logan was born! I love accomplishing something!

My baby girl is ONE year old now! I don't even know if I can still really call her my "baby"! She is really more of a toddler! I hate that! She is at such a fun stage though. She is starting to talk and interact with us so much and she has so much personality and she is getting around really well. I just miss being able to cuddle with her and hold her like a baby. She is much too wiggly for that now! They grow up SOOO fast!!!

Aug 29 - Avery is now a stair maniac! I spend most of the day chasing her up and down the stairs. She is so fast now! I love watching her just slide down on her belly. She loves to go up to the toy room and she always wants to be where the big kids are.
Aug 29 - Avery and cute Ethan at his 1st birthday party. This picture was at the end of the party and they are both looking a little tired. I love that she has such a cute little cousin so close to her age. It is so fun to watch them together, when they are not poking each other's eyes out!!! At his party, she was really working hard to walk. I don't know if it was all the people and attention or what, but she took about 8 steps that day, which was the most she had done.

Sept 1 - Avery at the park at our End of Summer picnic at the park! She LOVES the apple slices and chicken nuggets from McDonald's!

Avery's favorite thing is the swing! She loves it and gets so excited when you even get close to it. Her little legs just go crazy!


Avery trying out the slide.

After the park, we walked around the zoo. It was so funny to see Avery watching the animals. She got pretty into it. Especially feeding the ducks!!! She wanted to climb over the fence and in with them.
Avery watching the monkeys.
My BIG kids on Logan's first day of school. Avery is so sad to have her brother gone for a little bit each day and gets very excited when I say it is time to go get him at the bus stop. It is too cute!!!
Sept 2 - Avery on Logan's first day of school
Avery eating an ice cream cone. She looks like a little walrus! She LOVED it!!!
Sept 3 - Avery walking!!! At this point, she could take about 6 steps at a time and loves walking back and forth between Mom and Dad. I think she thinks it is a fun little game. It is so cute and she is getting really good!
She especially loves to fall into our arms when she is done.
Sept 4 - Avery's first Labor day weekend! We spent that Saturday at the Webber's hanging out by the pool. This girl loves her daddy!
Avery kept acting like she wanted to get in the pool, so I changed her into her suit, but that only lasted a few minutes. I don't know if the water was too cold or if there were just too many people, but she wasn't staying in the pool! She looks cute in her swimsuit though.
Sept 6 - For Labor Day, we went up the canyon with my family. Doesn't Avery look so cute by the flowers? We had a really fun day!
Avery and Ethan on the teeter totter.
She loved this thing!
Daddy and Rylee and Avery and Uncle Jeff - The teeter totter was even fun for the BIG kids! :)

Me and Avery hanging out by the pool. We went to this campground that had a pool, so after we roasted dogs, some of the brave people got in the pool. They claimed it was really warm, but I didn't think it was warm enough for Avery so we just soaked up some sun. I love this girl!!!
September 11 - Avery's messy face - She LOVES chocolate!

Sept 11 - Avery at her first Aggie football game! She loved it and they won!!! Woot Woot!
Sept 15 - Avery and her funny teeth - She is still missing that big top middle one so it looks a little funny when she smiles. I love it!
She is starting to really cruise and can make it pretty much across the room now. I love how she walks with her little hands up waving in the air like a little monkey!
Sept 19 - Avery out playing in the yard. She LOVES to be outside!!!
Avery's funny bear crawl! She does this a lot, but mostly when she is outside. I don't think she wants to scratch up her legs on the concrete and she doesn't really like the feel of the grass either. I think is looks so funny with her little bum way up in the air. She's our little Mowgli.
Walking in the grass - On this day (Sept 19), she started walking a lot and did about 12 steps in a row! She was walking around a lot here and there throughout the day and even did really well walking on the grass. She would even stand herself up in the middle of the room and go instead of just starting from the furniture!

Sept 20 - Avery loves to "Help" unload the dishwasher and especially take out all the silverware! She is starting to be TROUBLE! She also loves to climb and climbs up on the dishwasher door quite frequently! She has started climbing UP onto lots of things(like the vacumm), but then gets stuck and screams and screams until I help her down. Funny girl!
Sept 22 - Avery at one of Logan's soccer games. She is a great cheerleader for her big brother.
Sept 23 - Avery walked all the way down the entire driveway to get to Rylee's little trike. She has recently discovered riding bikes (or at least sitting on them) and she wanted to get on this one so badly but I had no idea she could walk that far! I think she was a VERY determined little girl!


Look how proud of herself she looks!!!

Oops...Boom!
Sept 24 - Avery shoving a banana in her mouth. She will only eat the banana if it is whole. She doesn't like me to chop it up for her. It makes it a little difficult to get the whole thing in her mouth!

MMMMmmmm.... Lucky Charms! The breakfast of Champions! Not only does Avery love this cereal, she ONLy will eat the marshmellows, which you can now see all over her face and I'm sure have no nutritional value at all. Oh well! What can you do? You gotta love all the marshmellows stuck all over her face!
She is DONE!

Sept 25 - The birthday girl with all her presents!!!
After she opened them all up. She loves her cute little sock monkey! I will have much more on her birthday and party to come!!! (In about 3 months... haha!)
Walking! I love my monkey!!! She seemed to really start walking everywhere the day of her birthday and all over at her party.
Digging in to her cake at her big party (Sept 26)
Crawling in the grass in her birthday outfit. She was headed for the swings. She spent about half of her party having someone push her in the swing. She loves being outside!

Avery's One year stats:

Weight: 20 lbs. 2 oz (33 percentile)

Length: 29 3/4 inches (69 percentile)

Head: 46 cm (75 percentile)

Avery is starting to talk and communicate really well. Some of the new things she has started doing lately are animal sounds. She loves horses ever since she rode the ponies at the County fair, and if I sign horse to her, she will try and blow her lips together to make a horsie sound. Or sometimes, she even takes her finger and runs it back and forth over her lips. It is cute! She tries to do the sign for horse, too, but doesn't quite have the dexterity to pull it off yet. She just puts a finger up by her head. She also does a funny doggy sound - "arf, arf" in a funny high-pitched voice, while she pats her hand against her tummy or leg, which is her sign for dog and she can even say dog pretty well. She also can say duck and tries to make a funny quack sound, that is also really high pitched. It is really cute!

Avery also does the sign for Dad by putting her hand on her forehead. She can say Dad really well, too. She also will start up the stairs and then say 'Mon, like Come on, and use her little hand to tell you to follow her, by opening it and closing it towards herself. It is really cute! She will also sign eat and say "mo, mo" for More, over and over until you give her more food. She also loves Logan. Her favorite part of the day is going to get him at the bus stop and seeing him in the morning. She has even just started to say something that sounds like "brother" for him. It is adorable! She loves Rylee, too, but sometimes they don't get along too great. She also says "ma" a lot and her very favorite word is "Hi". She says it so cute and she seriously says it like 100 times a day!

Avery is starting to really show her personality more and more. She is so funny and she LOVES teasing her brother and sister, and even mom and dad. She will pretend she is going to give us a kiss, or share a toy and then take it right back and get the biggest grin. She is a funny girl! She is starting to really be a ham and loves attention and will do these huge chessy grins to people to get them to notice her. She is always pulling such funny faces and big smiles and making us all laugh. She loves to click her tongue and she also loves to give kisses and makes the funniest kissing sound. She is starting to try to blow kisses a little and she waves bye, bye really well.

Now that Avery is on the move, she is BIG trouble! Her favorite place to play is the toilet right now and as soon as I realize I haven't heard her for a minute or two, I know right where to check. We are trying to teach our children to keep the bathroom doors shut because she has already got caught playing in the toilet a couple times. This is an even bigger problem because Logan always forgets to flush! Gross! She also loves to unroll the toilet paper and empty all the cupboards and drawers, which she also likes to do in the kitchen. One of her favorite places to play is my tupperware cupborad. She loves to throw it all out all over the kitchen. She is a very busy girl and rarely sits still! She is always on the go and always into something!

Avery started the month taking a little step here or there, and got progressively braver day by day. She could cruise along furniture really easily and started out just taking a step or two from one thing to another. By the end of the month, she could do around 15 steps or so at a time. She is really starting to cruise and is starting to really like her independence. She walks so funny and has her little hands raised up by her head. She is our little monkey and we love it!

Avery has learned a REALLY bad trick from her older sister. She SCREAMS when she wants something...or when she doesn't want something, too. It is not just a little cry - It is a blood-curling scream that seriously hurts your ears! I call it the "diva scream" and Rylee has perfected it long ago and now has passed it on to her sister. She will do it if I am eating something she wants or if the kids have a toy she wants or just if her sister is close to her and she wants her to leave her alone. It is NOT my favorite thing!

Avery loves toys that she can put things into or take things out of. She has also recently really discovered books and loves to sit and look at them. She is like Rylee and perfers to just do it herself rather than have me read to her, although sometimes she will let me. She looks so cute sitting there and looking at her books. I love it! Another favorite toy is the phone, or anything that even looks anything like a phone. She will take it and hold it right up to her ear and say "oh, oh" (Hello, Hello) over and over and even cocks her head to the side. It is so cute! She has also discovered playing with baby dolls and her stuffed animals and loves to cuddle (and kind of maul) them. She will give them big kisses and say "MUAH". So sweet!


Avery has become quite the picky eater. She hates me to feed her anything, so we are experimenting with a lot of different things she can eat on her own. For a few days, she loved bananas, but then she wanted nothing to do with them. For awhile, her favorite was yogurt, but other days, she won't even touch it. My other kids weren't like that at all so I don't really know what to do. Some of her very favorites right now are cheese and any kind of cracker.

Avery is starting to learn her different body parts. So far, she knows her teeth, mouth and toes. It is funny to watch her point to them and try and point to them all or point to them. She especially loves to grab her toes. She LOVES to brush her teeth! She gets really excited about it and loves to do it, at least on her own. Once you take the toothbrush and help her, she is not too happy. She cut another tooth on September 9th - Tooth #5. It is her other bottom tooth, so she now has 3 on top and 2 on the bottom, but she still has her gap where her front tooth is, so it is kind of funny. She also has an awful habit of grinding her teeth! I hate it, but she thinks it is so funny and give me the biggest grin after she does it!

My other kids were pretty much ready to give up nursing at this stage, but Avery doesn't really show signs of slowing down. She does sign for milk, and says "mil, mil" over and over when she wants to nurse and even pulls my shirt up. I don't mind too much - It is the one thing that may keep her my "baby" a little longer. She also has this very funny habit that she likes to put her hand in my mouth while she nurses. She just kind of rests it there on my teeth, although sometimes she will kind of dig around. She actually likes looking in people's mouths all the time, not just when she is nursing. I will blame that one on her dad!

Now that Avery's has cut so many teeth, she is starting to do a little better at sleeping at night! Yeah!!! That is great news for Mom! She will usually even sleep all night.

Just for me for Avery's baby book:

Words Avery knows at ONE: Mama, Dad, Hi, Brother, Duck, Dog, More, Milk, Hat, Boo

Signs Avery knows at ONE: Eat, Bath, More, Milk, Dad, Dog, Horse, Drink, Finished, Phone, Bye, brush Teeth, banana (she also has a made up sign for Come On and she nods YES really well!)