Wednesday, November 20, 2013

23 months.

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the last month before two.  crazy town.  and the last month that avery is an only child.  also crazy.  
can i say it again?  i love this age, she's challenging and fun all rolled into one.  

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avery's been really into her little animals this month.  we play with them at least 5 times a day.  "mommy, play animals?" is something that i never grow tired of hearing.  we have a few games that we play with them.  we sort them into categories according to where they live:  farm, ocean, and wild.  we also play silly games, attempt to see how many we can stack on top of dunkin, and sing songs and make up stories.  she'll play with them by herself, too.  and i love to spy on her while she plays and makes up games with them.  adorable.  along with the animal theme she still brings her animal book with her in the car a lot and also loves to watch the "pole to pole" episode of planet earth.  

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she's also gotten really into coloring this month.  another activity that she loves to do both with us and by herself.  we have a little table and chairs set up in the 'playroom' and i leave out crayons and a book for her to draw in.  she'll go in there on her own and color and also request that we "go upstairs and color" throughout the day.  she requests that we draw christmas trees all.the.time.  and is also into us drawing shapes so that she can color them in and she also will ask for certain letters, too.  i've noticed that she's gotten a bit better about identifying colors and letters this month.  we're nowhere near mastering these yet but not everything is purple and not every letter is a "k".  

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one of my favorite things that she's started doing this month is asking "what is this" when she wants to know what something is.  most often she'll ask this as she flips through books but she'll also point and ask about random things when we're out and about, too.  i love that she's so curious about what things are.  and she always repeats whatever the object in question is.  

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speaking of books she still loves to read.  she'll happily read to herself and it's a mix of made up words and things that she can either identify on the page or if it's a story that she knows she'll mimic some of the words that charlie and i say when we read her the story.  we read several times a day but we always, always read on our bed right before she goes to bed.  she's still into a lot of the dr. seuss books but we've also started reading a few christmas books and she still likes some of the shorter board books that we used to read a lot when she was a baby.  she always insists on turning the pages and is pretty good about waiting for us to finish a page before flipping to the next one.  of course sometimes she refuses to let us read to her and insists on reading to herself, which is pretty cute to watch.  i love reading books with her and i love that she loves to read.  i think she knows that reading is one of those things that i'll never refuse even when it's reading clifford's first christmas for the 10th time in a row.  

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she still loves our animals.  she always wants dunkin to come and sit with us when we play with the animals or come upstairs when we go up to play.  she'll always ask, "dunkin come?".  she has lower expectations for henry but she still loves him.  the other day she wasn't being very nice and squeezed his face really hard and he whimpered.  so we had a discussion about how that hurt henry and that what he was trying to say when he whined was "ouch".  for some reason the conversation really stuck with her and she will repeat the conversation to me over and over.  or she'll tell henry about it as she's petting him.  it was pretty awesome that she not only understood what i was saying but respected it enough to then be nice to him.  i think henry's appreciated it, too.  we all know that he's a huge baby and really cannot handle being picked on.  

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she's still sleeping really well at night and terribly during the day.  she has always, always been an awful napper and i think a big piece of that just has to do with the way she was made.  i've always been a little jealous of parents who's kids were champion nappers as i cannot count on any time during the day to do things.  every minute she's asleep is a gift but i basically hold my breath the entire time until she wakes up.  her naps are anywhere from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours with the average being somewhere around 40 minutes.  it's really not enough nap time for her but she won't go back to sleep after she wakes up and there's not much else i can do.  she'll sleep better if she's in the car or being held (i've held her through 2 naps this week since she was sick and couldn't breathe) but obviously i can't drive around every day for an hour and a half or hold her during that time.  i do wish she could sleep better on her own during the day because she does such a great job of it at night, but whatever.  if i have to pick i'd choose good nighttime sleep over daytime sleep.

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we went to the aquarium twice this month.  once with friends and once by ourselves and she still loves that place.  i have a feeling that we'll be renewing our season passes in march because we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of them and she really loves going.  i also love that i can take her any time "for free".  

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she's sick again this month, which is the third time this fall.  i'm really not looking forward to winter if this trend keeps up,  i think it was mostly a cold although it started out with her just super tired and whiney and with a low grade fever.  i'm hoping that these little bugs are at least building up her immune system and praying that she's better before this baby comes.  a snotty toddler is one thing but a snotty infant is way worse in my opinion.

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she's still eating really well although we probably need to be better about getting her to use utensils instead of feeding her or letter her use her hands.  yogurt is pretty much the only thing that she'll feed herself and it's always one huge mess and i find it really stressful to watch her drop yogurt all over the place.  i probably need to just get over it and feed herself more often.  

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she loves her broncos shirt, "booming" or fist bumping with charlie, watching the broncos: "go broncos", playing with her football, helping clean if she's in the mood, looking at pictures, playing on her pillows, christmas trees and lights, m&ms, coloring in the bathtub, singing silly songs like the ones from her gymnastics classes, bunny and tiger, helping me cook and bake, playing on the playground, and going to the doctor to listen to the babey's heartbeat.  whenever she picks up the black crayon she starts singing miss mary mack and then starts laughing.  she insists on taking off her shoes and jacket off as soon as she gets in the house and demands that everyone else does as well:  "daddy, shoes off".  she says "excuse me" when she burps and will tell charlie to say it, too if he forgets.  she says goodnight to her 'fireplace' and 'elephant' each night before going to bed and always reminds me to put a blanket on her.  she loves the real fireplace downstairs and is a little ocd about having her hands clean at all times.  she says "bye, love you" whenever we get off the phone with someone and will randomly tell charlie that she loves him.  she's so excited for grandma, grandpa, and alex to come out and keeps talking about how she's going to take everyone to the playground.  she calls herself avery and "avery do it" has been a very popular sentence this month.  she's also still my little baby who wants to be held, pats me on the arm when she's happy, and always wants to hold my hand outside and sit in my lap when we're playing.  she gets angry and frustrated but can usually stop from completely freaking out with some help and say 'please' or 'help me'.  chasing her around is exhausting but also so much fun.  i love watching her learn and grow and i love that i'm the one around to wipe away her tears and fix the broken things in her world when she needs it.

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