Sunday, May 26, 2013

17 months.

remember when i blogged?  me neither.  but avery has been growing like crazy and i feel sort of guilty for not keeping track of all of it.  so i'm going to try.  also charlie apparently likes to have some sort of a record of our lives.  

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avery just turned 17 months and i have to say i am loving this age.  she's playing by  herself much more these days, which makes working from home so much easier.  the past few months were really tough because she would not entertain herself for more than 5 minutes at a time and there were many days when i thought i was losing my mind.  it wasn't terrible on the days i didn't have to work but it was really hard trying to get work accomplished and keep avery happy.  so i am very thankful for the longer stretches of time that she's occupying her self now.  

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she's still not walking, which i admit drives me crazy.  she can walk and will take steps on her own, usually when asked by one of us if she'll walk or if she can stand up.  she's just shown no interest in making walking her main method of getting around.  there's a lot of things that i think she would enjoy a lot more if she could walk instead of crawling, like playing at the park or going to the pool.  but she's determined to keep crawling when she wants to get from one place to the next.  we started taking her to a 'gymnastics' class on saturdays in the hopes that being around walking kids would encourage her to walk but so far no luck.  she's always been very cautious with moving to the next stage so i think part of it is just that she's not that confident in walking yet. someday soon i hope.  

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she loves books and we read an uncountable number of books a day.  some of her current favorites are the national geographic pop-up books, good dog, carl, the three little kittens, the jolly postman books, and any animal book.  she'll read to herself now, which i love.  i hope that she continues to enjoy books as she's gotten older.  she's gotten slightly more gentle with books so we're no longer limited to the board books, although we have quite a few crumpled pages from her flipping through her favorites so many times.  

blowing kisses for daddy

she's really affectionate.  not exactly sure where she got this from, but she gives kisses and hugs unprompted throughout the day.  i have to say i love this and it's nice to see that she actually does love and appreciate us on some level.  she still loves the animals and they all frequently get hugs and kisses, too.  i think she still slightly favors the cats over the dogs and we've been lucky that they've all been really good with her.  

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she eats anything and everything and there are times when i'm shocked at how much food a tiny person can eat.  breakfasts and dinners are her biggest meals and sometimes she'll eat almost nothing for lunch, but she's still eating about 3 snacks a day, too.  still chugging water and refusing milk, which i've long given up on.  she just officially weaned herself a day after she turned 17 months.  i'm glad she did it on her own but it was a little bittersweet for me.  i've really enjoyed that relationship.  

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she loves kids, animals, books, water, and being outside.  i'm so happy that the weather is finally nice because she loves being outside and will ask to play outside or go for a walk.  we took her to the pool for the first time this year and she loved it.  i thought she might be a bit apprehensive since she didn't go at all this winter but she was in heaven screaming 'play, play' as soon as we got there until we went in the water.  she didn't love those 10 minute adult swims even though she was so cold she was shivering. i'm hoping we get to go a lot this summer and hopefully get her into a few swim lessons.

it's like she's all grown up.

charlie and i got to put our lifeguard training to use in the past few months when she choked twice in one week.  sort of made all of those early morning CPR classes worthwhile.  luckily she rebounded well from both experiences although i've been cutting her food up a lot smaller.  she's had a lot of molars coming in and i think chewing was painful so she decided to skip that step.  i think they're all almost in, although i think all of that teething was part of the reason why she was so clingy for a while.  in the past 3 months she's gotten 6 new teeth and she's never been a baby who wasn't bothered by teething.