Happy Halloween!!

Getting our sweet little Abby Cadabby ready to go to our friends' house for trick or treating.

Application of purple freckles (i love that abby has freckles)

Freckles are complete, Abby #1 and Abby #2 are nearly ready to go.

Getting wings

We were so lucky Grancy got to come over to help Avery get ready to go trick-or-treating.

We love you Grancy!

Oskar and his parents came with us too, cute little monkey!

Somebody is ready to go!!

We then headed over to Anna's house where the fun really started.

Wings got a little busted at our pre-trick or treat pizza party, oh well, still perfect.

Her Abby doll and her wand rode around in the pumpkin all night long.

After each house, Avery would say "again?".  She really enjoyed the trick or treating until a little after bedtime, 7 pm, then the meltdowns started.

Good Night Sweet Abby Cadabby, we had so much fun.  Now that she's sleeping I can have some chocolate, who doesn't love Halloween?

Endless Pursuit

I must preface this post with the fact that I am sooo not creative.  I was born to 2 lovely painter grandparents, my dad's an engineer (that's creative, right?) and my mom has always had a great interest in architechture (also creative I think).  Oh and my sister can paint pretty pictures too.

So after my sister found dalmation tutu costumes for her girls for Halloween, I started looking at all the tutu options.  Avery LOVES Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street.  She loves her Gund Abby which goes almost everywhere with her.  She loves to watch Abby on the computer on YouTube and occasionally on TV.  So I started an endless pursuit of turning a purple, blue and pink tutu that I bought from a tutu maker on Etsy - thegirlytutu - into an Abby Cadabby costume for Halloween.

Although Avery has more hair than ever, she definitely doesn't have enough for pigtails and little hanging Abby yarn hair that I have seen, so I went for a more subtle barrette featuring the colors of Abby's hair and the little white/yellow daisy featured on the Abby doll's head.  This is how they came out.

Abby also has a nice soft fluffy wand.  I looked for some kind of colored foam to attach to a wand but couldn't find anything like that, so I first tried pipe cleaners.  So not a good idea.  The end of those suckers are really sharp, not good for unsupervised costume time at school, they might have kicked us out.  So I went back to JoAnn's and bought 4 different colored sheer wired ribbons, and wrapped them around the wand, and here that is.  The wand is pictured with Abby for those of you who don't know who she is.  She is very fun and sweet, she is a fairy goddaughter.  

Pictures of the final product to be available shortly after Halloween.

Transition - Red Group

Two weeks ago Avery transitioned to the next room at school.  She is now with all the 2+ year olds in the Red Group with teachers Annette, Coco and Anna.  I was a little worried because she was so bonded to Teacher Beverly in her last class but she has done great with the transition.  She seems very happy and talks about various things on the way home.  Like eating soup and playing the maraca (when we said you played the maracas? she said no i played one maraca :)). She has smiled, happily waving to me each morning when I have left her.   She is now officially in preschool, no longer just daycare.  They have circle time in the morning where they have flannel board stories where they can talk about things, work on memory, language, letters and numbers.  Then during playtime they can decide at which station they want to play rather than all doing the same thing at the same time as in her toddler room.   They also spend more time each day outside.  This is also the room where she will potty train.  This will be in a few months.  She still has no interest in such things and they want her settled into this room first.  

Since entering the red group she has had an explosion of interest in the alphabet.  Much like her "interesting" counting 1, 2, 3, 5, 18, 4, Avery likes to forget TUV every time she sings the ABC's.  Ugh!  I think she does it just to annoy us :)  She gets into routines where she wants the same book read to her every night.  Time for Bed was replaced by Good Night Moon which was replaced by Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots? which has now been replaced by Dr Seuss' ABC book.  She is learning letters every day and now recognizes and can name about 20 of the letters; B, L, N and T are still challenging ones.  She loves it and is so proud of herself when she gets one right.   

There was a power outage at work Tuesday night.  This meant the elevator in the parking garage was not working.  We had parked on the 7th floor as we often do.  I thought Avery would help me out, we'd walk up slowly, we'd make it eventually.  After the first flight she broke down crying "carry me!!!"  A very kind woman who I had never seen before asked if she could carry one of my 2 bags for me, me "oh no, no, we are fine" her "no let me help you" me "okay, thank you thank you thank you".  I carried her up 6 flights of stairs.  Woooo weeeee.  I won't bore you by blogging about all the traffic lights that were out on our way home.  The high winds did a number on LA that night.   

Who Dresses Me?

It seems I have been working every weekend lately.  Of course we do this by choice so that Avery is only in daycare 2 days per week, but it gets old for all of us sometimes.  Jon keeps Avery busy usually, even when they are both under the weather.  Last Sunday he took her to the Aquarium.  It just so happened it was a special Halloween day at the Aquarium.  Good thing she wanted to wear her hand-me-down tutu from her friend Anna.  But really, this is how she is dressed when I am not around?  Some days he dresses her cute as a button and other days she is dressed like this.  The green shirt is actually a dress, it just happens to be pulled up by the tutu.  Oh dear.  I only happened to see this picture when downloading pix off the camera.  But hey, she had fun and she loves her weekend time with Daddy.  

Favorites

Here is Avery sliding down her favorite slide in her favorite dress (thanks Grandpa and NanaLin).  We've been having crazy weather, dresses one day, jackets and jeans the next, but this was a warm barefoot night at the park with Daddy and Quincy.  The second picture shows how strong she is :), she loves to hang from the bar every time before sliding down.

Headband fun

Trick or Treat.  Thanks GG, we love and miss you.

Meeting Mickey

Avery and I took a recent trip to Disneyland.  We made it to ToonTown for the first time and Avery loved looking through Mickey's house.  She insisted on meeting Mickey when I mentioned it.  Of course I didn't bring my camera for this first meeting.  But thank goodness for Disney's Photopass (i don't mean that at all).  It is so ridiculously expensive that I chose to take a picture of the picture.  It captures the moment well enough.   She was so excited beforehand but when the door opened and Mickey was actually standing there, she nearly broke down into tears.  But then Mickey encouraged me to shake his (i think it was a she actually) hand and then to squeeze his nose.  Avery then started to lighten up and then he played peekaboo with her and she was all smiles.  Avery continues to talk about going to Mickey's house and how he played peekaboo.  Then the people realized we had no camera and we went on our merry way.  Other than meeting Mickey our other favorite activity was It's a Small World.  So great.  We also shared a Bengal Barbeque lunch and made the trek over to California Adventures.  It was a magical day :).

Jewels

My daddy makes me the best jewelry... out of playdoh.  

Please note her favorite puzzles in the background, thanks to her great aunt and uncle, Nancy and Mayo.