Tidbits

Avery recently had her 2 year appt, she weighs 26 pounds and is 33 inches tall. She had to get just one shot and was pretty brave considering she definitely knows what's coming now. We talked about walking up and down stairs which Avery still would much prefer to crawl up and down the stairs, Dr Woo said it's a confidence thing. So Daddy has successfully been working on Avery's confidence this weekend while I worked. Last night she walked up all the stairs and she just walked down 3 stairs without hands, we are very proud and she is so proud of herself. She has started watching Sesame Street on occasion and learned yesterday about up and down. Now before we know it she'll be up and down no problem.

She also has an interesting way of counting to 4. She every time says "one, two, three, five, eighteen, four!" I try counting the correct sequence and she never ever says it, she always says "one, two, three, five, eighteen, four!". Help!

Every Tuesday this summer at school there have been special events, like Bubble Magic and Parrot Day. It has been so neat to be able to ask her about her day and actually have her tell me things that she learns. On Parrot Day she painted a verbal picture for me of the man wearing a hat who had a lot of birds, including a Macaw, that were green and yellow and orange and the bird was crying because he was tired (ok not so sure about that one) and on and on about what she saw. She for sure did not wake up that Tuesday morning knowing what macaw meant or what one looks like. After 1.5 years of driving home with her and not really knowing what happened during the day, other than "she had a good day", it is so great that she can tell me about her experiences. It makes our twice-weekly nighttime hour-long commute go by much quicker than listening to music or NPR.

She is much better about saying "thank you", still working on the "please" part.

When she says 'no' now, she follows it with an emphatic "not!", like not is an extra emphatic no. It makes me laugh, but usually she is saying it about something that is not funny.  For instance: Mommy: "Avery, eat your carrots!"  Avery: "no! ... not!!!" in a sort of whiney tone.  

She also has a bike reflector that she calls her camera.  Here are a few pix of her taking pix with her 'camera'.   Included in the pictures are her new rocking horse "Carrot" who Avery actually named herself as we were talking about how horses like to eat carrots.  She was so lucky to get 2 rocking horses for her birthday, "carrot" is from Grancy and "rocky" (named by daddy) is from her friends Lawson and Andrew.  Avery rode a rocking horse at Lawson's 3rd birthday party and word got around how much she loved it and hence she ended up with 2, which is good for when Oskar comes over to play so they can both ride a horsie.  What a lucky girl.

Two Bikes, Daddy's Birthday and One Ugly Cake

For Daddy's birthday we got beach cruisers. I am historically not much of a bike rider, but I will say our recent cruises down to the beach and up to the SM pier have been really fun. Avery LOVES to ride the bike with daddy and she's pretty happy when I come riding up beside them too. Thanks Daddy for being born so we can go on bike rides together.

So about 6 months ago, Jon found a recipe for a key lime bundt cake that he wanted me to make for his birthday. It is by far the ugliest cake I have ever made (well, my sister and I have made a couple of heinous looking attempts at our GranHaysel's burnt caramel cake). But it was so very limey (Jon said next time it needs more lime) and delicious. And for sure I will crisco the heck out of my bundt pan, because a little butter did nothing to get that cake out whole. Mmmm, it was tasty though.

Avery helped Daddy blow out the candles.

Happy Birthday, we love you so much.

ford

We recently went to the Ford Amphitheater for their Family Big World Fun series, the weekend we picked was music from Zimbabwe. What a beautiful venue. Interestingly Jon and Avery had seen the same group perform at our local Farmer's market 2 weeks before. Who knew? Anyway, it was really fun and all the kids got to go on stage to play the xylophone looking things, called a marimba. Once we got up there Avery was a little overwhelmed and just wanted Mommy to play the marimba. I was really good at it, haha. Avery enjoyed the music and the dancing very much.

New Best Friend

Since discovering her Sesame Street Gund characters on her birthday that Grandpa Michael sent her, Avery and Abby Cadabby are pretty much inseparable. We have even allowed her to start taking her into the crib with her. She loves Abby, Abby gets to ride in the seat of her baby stroller, while the other 9 characters ride in the back basket of her new stroller. This is a pic of her and Abby cozy asleep.

Cupcake Promise

Avery and I talked for about a week about making cupcakes on her birthday.  Every day she would ask about it.  So after returning from San Diego, we broke out the recipe, ingredients and the ever-feared mixer (sort of like the vacuum).  She learned things like whisking, stirring and pouring.  We had fun together.  The prerequisites of her school was little or no frosting as they would just scrape it off and they would cut the cupcakes in half so the kids don't get too much sugar and go crazy.  So I decided to make mini cupcakes and found little candies "confetti decorettes" to create a little flower on each one with just a dab of icing to make them stick.  I was happy with how they came out.   
I used the remaining batter to make the Joy of Cooking Black Bottom Cupcakes for a barbeque.  So delicious with cream cheese and chocolate chips cooked inside the cupcake.  I gave Avery the choice between a regular sized Black Bottom Cupcake or a mini cupcake with a flower.  She of course picked the flower.  
She blew out both her candles, one at a time without any practice of that ritual.
 She then pretended to share her cupcake with GG via iChat.  It was a happy birthday. 

 Included are also a couple of cute gift enjoyment pictures.

Birthday Dilemma: Home or Hotel?

Avery loved our hotel, props to the SD Grand Hyatt.  

The view from our room included a little red train that would come by all day, with a little "ding, ding" every time.  When it went out of view, she'd say "where'd the train go?".  We'd reassure her it would come back soon.

From the other side of the room was her favorite view, the pool.

We went swimming every day and Avery had a major courage breakthrough jumping off the stair to us and if her head didn't go under she would be disappointed and say "head go under" and try again.  We had lots of fun in the pool.  It was chilly but she didn't mind one bit. 

SeaWorld was the day before her birthday.  On her birthday morning, we ran to a restaurant called The Mission for breakfast, it was delicious, highly recommend it. Avery enjoyed french toast and pancakes and orange juice too.  Jon had a healthy but truly delicious egg white, tofu, brown rice dish.  Don't worry, he shared our pancakes and french toast too.  We then walked back to the hotel through downtown San Diego. We then went swimming one last time before check out, it was her actual birthday after all!  

As we pulled into the garage, mommy saying "home again, home again, jiggity jig!" Avery was crying saying "no home, more hotel, go hack to the hotel."  Ahhhh, home sweet home.

Happy 2nd Birthday!!

Rather than have a birthday party, we decided to take a family trip to San Diego to take Avery to Sea World for the first time.  It started with a very lengthy car ride to Burbank to drop off Quincy at his friend Rally's house, then poor Avery was such a trooper through traffic, missed exits, unknown destination for lunch, more missed turns.  All told she sat in the car for 5 hours but even as we neared our destination she remained in good spirits, undressing baby and playing with her baby's outfit.
SeaWorld has a whole Sesame Street area with rides and water play. Avery and Daddy went on Elmo's ride, then we all went on Abby's ride (very teacup-like, blech!!).  Avery was so happy to see all her favorite Sesame Street characters with their very own rides.  We also went to the 4-D Elmo movie.  I will say, probably not the best first movie for a 2 year old, given the 3-d glasses, the water spraying on your legs and the huge cookie flying at your face.  She ended up turned around facing me, all snuggled in, quite afraid of the whole experience.  But now she remembers it fondly, so that is good.

Here we are waiting for the Shamu Believe! show to begin.  Not an ounce of shade to be found, FYI.  But we grabbed the first show at 11 am so it wasn't too terribly hot yet.  Avery seemed to really like it but she got very sleepy mid-way through and needed some snuggles while she looked over her shoulder at Shamu.  Jon and I really enjoyed the show, so much so that we didn't capture any photos of the beautiful whale.

  

Oh my, look at that polar bear.  Avery really liked looking at the single polar bear we got to see.  So much so that when we exited the area and entered the store (that is present after all rides/exhibits with correlating stuffed animals, key rings, posters, etc.) she started picking up one polar bear, hugging it, setting it down and picking up another one.  We felt she had to have a memento from our day and bought her a little polar bear.  We were determined that she not name it 'Polar Bear' so we gave her a few recommendations, let her think it through and she's settled on 'Whitey', and the name has stuck.  Whitey it is, appropriate for her little white polar bear.  Happy Birthday Avery Mae!  

Lazy Summer Weekends with Daddy

Okay, definitely not lazy.  While I have worked the past 4 weekends, Jon and Avery have come up with a great routine keeping very busy.  They go to the Santa Monica College pool one morning and the beach the other morning.  One morning they even met our friends John and Maddie at the SM pier to ride on the carousel.  Avery is so lucky to have her daddy all to herself.  It is such quality time for them to share, even though I miss being with them terribly.  We are looking forward to the next 2 weekends together, finally! 

Moving Up

Avery has progressed from playing her piano with her tushy to now playing with her feet.  She loves to sit on top of it and make sweet music.  Here is also a good visual of how much more hair she has these days.  We are still holding out on her 1st haircut, although it may be soon. 

New Friends

Avery loves to drag her dolls and stuffed animals around and take kitchen towels and tuck them in for naps, whether morning, noon or night.  She has recently added 2 new critters into this mix, Bunny and Pinky.  If one gets relocated, they all do.  It is quite a chore as the party grows to include Baby, Doll, Elmo, Bunny AND Pinky.  

5 word sentence of truth

Last weekend Avery and Jon met our friends John and Maddie at the beach.  They had lots of fun and Jon was kind enough to send me phone pix to my work email so I could see pictures while I worked.  Avery has talked about Maddie and the water and John and the ocean every day since.  The other morning when I woke her up for school she was talking about the beach and told me a story I had never heard.  She said, "Maddie fall in the water."  I said, "Oh Maddie fell in the ocean?", and she said, "yes."  So I asked Jon if that was true and he said he had almost forgotten but indeed Maddie had fallen in the water and her daddy had rescued her.  That was the first 5 word sentence I ever noticed and it was a story we hadn't talked about over and over.  I am enjoying that she can tell us things about her days when we are away from her. 

Our Weekend - 23 months

We enjoyed another visit to the Aquarium of the Pacific. Early Saturday morning Jon and I were talking about what to do that day and I said, maybe we could go to the aquarium. Avery immediately got so excited and started talking about fishies. We proceeded to go for a run at the beach, the whole time she kept asking to see the fish, very upset that we had to go back home first before leaving for the aquarium.

We drove to the aquarium in mommy's new 2007 Highlander Hybrid, super fun. When we got there we went straight to the 3 story high aquarium. It happened that a diver was in there, giving a little talk to the kids, which just finished as we walked up. Avery weaved her way through all the visitors, up to the glass. Several other young kids were standing there already with their hands on the glass and the diver started touching their hands with his through the glass. Avery placed her hand on the glass and he touched her hand too, which scared her and she started backing away. The diver started making silly gestures at her to be less scary. He was very sweet and even played peek-a-boo with her. I stood with her and encouraged her and she stood and watched him but she wouldn't go up to the glass again until he was long gone. Now she talks often of the diver.

Then we got to see sea lions and seals give a great show. There is a glass tunnel kind of thing and they swim all around there. It is my favorite part of the aquarium. We also waited forever to pet the star fish and sea anemones. We spent a couple of minutes there and as we finished she kept saying more, more. We decided not to wait in the line again as she had cried most of the wait the first time around. All-in-all it was a great visit and I am so glad we are members so we can go for just an hour every now and again.

Then we went to Wahoo's and Avery chowed down on a quesadilla and black beans. She seems to be going through a growth spurt as evidenced by how tight her 2T swimsuit is in this picture. Sunday we met friends at the beach with our kids and dogs. It was fun, but we all agreed, next time no dogs, so the kids can go play in the water.

The Skirball and Noah's Ark

Avery recently enjoyed a visit to the Skirball museum to see the Noah's Ark exhibit. I had heard about it for years, ever since our friends started having kids.  Everyone spoke so highly of this place.  I have never seen such a kid friendly, pleasant, educational and enjoyable exhibit in any museum I have ever been to.  Charlotte and Ella came along and all 3 girls had a great time.  I highly recommend this to any LA natives or to anyone visiting LA.  It is unlike anything else. Here Avery is turning the wheel to make the sound of rain.

This section of the museum was for kids 4 and older, but Daddy went ahead and took her up into the rope rafters for some climbing fun.
There is a little section for cleaning up little brown plastic pieces.  Jon said they were poop but I said surely they were coal or dirt.  Then one of the ladies working there asked if the kids wanted to help her clean up the poop.  I guess all the animals on the ark must have pooped at one time or another.  
Noah's Ark was fun!  

Little Fishy

We recently took another trip to Florida.  We learned more each day that our little girl is quite a water baby.  We were able to visit the beach and pool each day. We flew a fun little fish kite.  We were able to spend time with GG, Poppy, Daynie, Grandpa Michael, and Great Grandmas Jenny and June.  Jon and I enjoyed a rare date night.  We enjoyed 4 flights where Avery behaved quite well, thanks to many distractions that we brought along, including Avery's first portable DVD experience. Thank you Sesame Street. We have tons of video that we have yet to sort through but hopefully we'll get some up soon.  

Our Swim Baby

By the last day at the pool, Avery was calling herself a "swim baby" and Jon and I were standing 4-5 feet apart, throwing Avery back and forth between us, her head going under water. Every time she came up from under the water, she was smiling and turning around in our arms as fast as possible to go back to the other parent. This went on for quite some time. You can also see in almost every picture that the best pool toy is a pair of orange Crocs. They float great.

Jon credits her early swimming classes when she was 8-18 mos old with this comfort in the water. I think it also helped going to the pool every day for a week. She also was able to start "jumping" in from the side. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great Faaaaaallllll," said Mommy or Daddy. Avery would lean toward us, we'd catch her and swim her across to the other side. "More Humpy, More Humpy," said Avery. So the moral of this story is in June we are signing back up for swim lessons at the Y. Since returning home Avery has asked every day for the pool.

Family Time

Kisses with GG

Healing Garden time with GG

Avery and Great Grandma June

Great-great Uncle Irving and his wife Ricki

We didn't successfully capture on film all the family we saw.  That is one thing I am so bad at, keeping the camera snapping.  But these are a few pictures of Avery with some family.