Pretty China Shoes

Along with 35,000 Great Work Perks cards from China, we received a special gift. Jon's super sweet supplier in China, Yasong, sent 2 pairs of hand-knit shoes that his girlfriend had made for Avery. They are adorable and they fit her little feet perfectly. Doh je, Yasong, or is it xie xie? Thank you either way. Avery loves her new shoes.

One of Avery's Very First Kisses

First Stairs

Avery has always had access to a set of carpeted stairs. For 11 months and 6 days, she was carried up and down them or crawled right by them. She did not yet see their great potential. Until Monday, that is. Monday morning she crawled over to the stairs and stood up. Monday afternoon she crawled back over, we grabbed the camera, and she climbed her fist stair. About 5 minutes later, despite ever vigilant parents she fell off her first stair, but that won't be stopping her. Stairs are super fun! And, wow, our little baby is growing up.

11 month Family Foto

Now that Avery is 11 months, she is cruising, kissing all her stuffed animals and pictures of animals and babies in books, saying "hi", starting to stand without holding on, and is just very busy crawling around exploring anything and everything. We were lucky to catch her for a moment to capture this picture of the whole family.

Forgotten Outing

So as to commemorate Avery's first trip to the Aquarium, she was photographed watching Quincy's squeak toy swim by. We forgot the camera and she LOVED the aquarium, loved watching all the different fish. I am thinking about a membership. And next time I will bring the camera. It was great fun.

Catching up/ Quincy and Avery's worlds collide

This morning my sister and I had a conversation about blogs and how there can reach a point where you are so far behind that you consider quitting. This conversation re-motivated me to catch up with the happenings of the past couple of weeks. I came home from work Saturday to find Avery playing with Quincy's water bowl, splashing and squealing, water (dog bowl water) all over her dress, arms, legs, diaper, FACE, and the floor! Jon says, "you have to see this!" You all will see it too, there is video to follow soon. So I watched for a couple of minutes until I could stand it no more, then wiped her down and undressed her and daddy had a great idea of putting water in a pot and letting her splash around. She had SO much fun splashing! Much more sanitary, but unfortunately her little thumb got stuck in the handle. It's hard to win!! But after some loving cuddles, she was fine.
Another video to follow is her giving kisses to "dolly". She has over the past few days started giving kisses. Her first kiss ever was to Quincy's bear. Those of you who have visited our place know how very revolting this image is. Quincy LOVES bear. So after her first kiss shared with Quincy's bear, she then kissed Daddy, then Mommy and now all stuffed animals. It's really cute, if she is holding a stuffed animal by the feet, she will turn it around and kiss the face. Now she is probably all kissed out, because we are often asking her for kisses. Wishing you all lots of sweet kisses :)

Baby's First 'Do

Over the past month or two I have heard regular mention of a little thing called the "faux-hawk". It's something crazy kids are doing with their hair these days (wow, i sound old). After a sweaty nap on the car ride trip home from the Camarillo outlets where we shopped with Deirdre and her 2 girls and Jenny, Kylie and Kira, the above hairdo resulted. I thought it was funny and so took plenty of pix to capture it. The bottom picture kind of captures her big smile she gives when she's extra happy where she crinkles up her nose too.

Creeping

One little game we have started to play is placing "dolly" at the other end of 2 chairs against the wall and getting Avery to creep over to get her. There are 2 issues with this game, namely that it brings to the forefront that we have totally unoriginal names for her dolls and stuffed animals. Bear is "teddy", all dolls are "dolly", oh there is one i named "petunia" but i realize it will be a long time before she will be able to say, "mommy, can i play with petunia?", so i am thinking of renaming petunia "dolly". The other issue is that she really doesn't care for this game and it demonstrates how she seems to err on the side of caution in her life experiences. Except when she tries to launch herself off the side of our bed, she tends to be careful of anything new or scary, like how to get down from standing up, for a few days she would just cry and fuss until she figured out how to get down onto her knees or bottom. She's got that figured out now and spends lots of time pulling up to stand anywhere she can. Just in the past week she has started standing in her crib calling out to anyone who will listen.