Game Night

Brent & I decided to dust of the Scrabble board and play a game last night. It was lots of fun. I was in the lead in the beginning, but even with horrible letters, Brent managed to outscore me in the end! The game was so exciting our house shook! (anyone else feel that rumble late last night?)


Avery was helping me find good shopping deals this morning. She especially liked the advertisement for $1.00 Disney board books at the Dollar Tree. We might have to go check that out... especially since she loves making her current books super sticky with all her spitting up =) We might want to invest in some cheaper books to "ruin!" Avery always has great ideas!


"Let's go! I'm ready!"

Sunday Stuff

I'm not sure how else to dress Avery so she won't get called a boy! It happened twice today while she had this cute pink/red DRESS on! (oh, and thanks for the dress, mom! we love it :-)


Avery's getting better at picking up pieces of food and getting them to her mouth.


The door is lots of fun to play with:





Life is good... Avery has a book and the train in her lap.

I can't believe it...

"Daddy, I can't believe they made this a major!" ;)

Balls and Books and Teeth, oh my!

Avery still loves that volleyball!


In other news, she's getting her 8th tooth! Phew.. she's on the fast track. Her 9-month doctor's appointment went great the other day. She didn't even flinch when they pricked her big toe to draw blood! What a champ. I can add that nurse to the LONG list of people who've called Avery a boy! I always feel so bad saying, "um, actually she's a girl... notice the pink/purple girly clothes she's wearing?" so I don't do that! I just answer back with "SHE'S....." and then they say "OH! I thought she was a boy." That's the best way I know how to fix it!

Avery got a new book from the doctor. Boy, was she excited! Books are BY FAR one of Avery's favorite things to play with, along with the volleyball. She'll sit in her room and crawl around books and open them up and turn the pages for a long time! It's so cute to listen to her babble as if she's talking to the books. In the evenings she will crawl over to Brent's lap and sit there while he reads to her. I love watching them together. Brent luckily doesn't mind reading them over and over and over again. I think he has The Rooster Struts memorized.

I can definitely say Avery is crawling now! She's getting better and better by the day. The doctor asked if she was "cruising" yet.. nope. Not yet. She's still working on the crawling thing. She does like to pull up on things and will get up on her knees a lot (especially in her crib when naptime is over). She's pulled up to standing a few times. She's very active and wants to get into everything! It's so fun. Here she is standing for a very brief second:


Here she is sitting still for a moment while plotting her next move!


And, lastly, here's AB with a remnant tear dripping down her face from when I didn't rush in quick enough to get her after she woke from her nap! How sad!

Swagbucks

Ok, so I'm always very skeptical of places on the internet where you earn points and redeem them. But I think this one actually a good thing... it's called Swagbucks. It's a search engine powered by Google, I believe. Each search you do is a chance to win "swagbucks." Then you redeem the swagbucks for things like giftcards or other items. The giftcards that stand out to me are amazon.com, Target, and starbucks giftcards.

I usually get 1 to 3 swagbucks a day for doing searches. Anyway, i've accumulated 53 swagbucks in a few weeks and I'm working towards a starbucks gift card. You might like it.. I dunno... it's kinda fun to see the swagbucks pop up when you get one! It's totally free to sign-up. Click here to check it out.

What a nice day for a walk

What do you do when naps are abandoned? Go outside! So Avery and I took advantage of the 67 and sunny weather (sorry, Krista!) and took a nice, long stroll around our neighborhood. I brought the camera along, too.



This is the reason I groan every time I'm asked what my address is. Try saying this out loud and having someone write down what they think you said! Then they ask if that's road, street, lane, etc. and you reply with "well 'rue' is the French word for 'road'" blah blah blah and hope they don't think you're talking down to them for having to explain it! Ah, the joys of living in Les Chateaux :-)



Phew! We're back home...

A Recap

Each month I take a picture of Avery to document how she's growing. Here's what we've got so far! (it started out in her bouncy seat, then moved to the rocker when she was too mobile for the bouncy seat) The first picture is from Day 3 and then each month up until month 9.


Getting Avery "Wiggle Worm" Ustick to sit still this time was quite a challenge! Why sit still when there's books and blankets and papers to explore?? This is what happened in two minutes time:

She let me know she was done with having her picture taken by doing this:

Avery really loves playing with our volleyball. I think she wants to grow up and be like her mom and dad who both love playing. She comes out to support her dad at church this year as he plays. She likes it best when he spikes the ball down on the other side of the court-- his team does, too! Maybe she'll grow up to be a middle hitter? (her Grandpa Rudy would love it!)

9 months

Wow. 9 months old today! Brent thanks everyone for wearing green today to celebrate! Avery is becoming mobile... FAST. I love watching her explore and babble all day long. She has quite a vocabulary of non-words! "Baa baa ba" is her favorite phrase. Here are some photos from the past few days.


This is Avery in one of the most comfortable outfits (Go Patriots!) from her Auntie Sarah. Don't you just love her legs??

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Avery likes to straighten her legs out when in the crawling position

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Avery playing with my favorite clown as a kid!

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Our little book-worm (shhh... don't tell her it's actually upside-down!)

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A Trip to the Zoo

Yesterday while it was raining outside, Brent & I took Avery to the zoo. She saw lots of animals. There was an elephant, a pig, 3 dogs, a duck, a racoon, a lion, and one cookie monster. Avery had lots of fun getting up close and personal with the animals! The animals played nice, too. The best part was that the trip was free, and snacks were included. We spent lots of time at the zoo. It was the best zoo I had been to before. There were no "please don't feed the animals" signs. There was no litter on the floor, no lines to wait in, no silly birds chirping like crazy, and no public restrooms to have to use. It was the best zoo EVER. We can't wait to go back!

java junkie

Avery B takes after her parents.... gotta have that coffee! ok, ok, I know what you're thinking... she did NOT actually get her mouth on the straw or have a taste... it's just cute to see how much she WANTS it =)

Just for Daddy

It's me, Avery again... I miss my daddy and I wanted him to see what I was up to today while he's at work. I love you!


Who's that in the reflection?


What's up with my hair today? Mommy didn't dry it very well last night! I have major bed-head hair today.

A post by Avery

This crawling stuff is hard work, but it sure is fun!





At last, I made it to my target :-)

A second post in one day!

I forgot to add a picture from the park yesterday. Avery enjoyed the swings immensely. She sat and watched kids play for almost 30 minutes!

Daylight Savings

Well Avery slept less last night than usual and therefore didn't make it through church today. If only church started like an hour earlier.. then we could make it through the whole thing before breaking down in exhaustion and need for a nap! (Avery, not me) Thankfully we did make it through the first hour. We got to see Avery's sweet cousin, Addison, dance around during worship. It was so cute!

I've been horrible at posting pictures lately. Avery and I had bad colds for about 2 weeks. We finally got over them a few days ago. Here's a few pictures from this afternoon. Avery is moving around so well. She's not technically crawling yet, but she can move from one end of the room to the other doing sort of an army crawl on her tummy. Once I figure out how to post videos from our video camera I'll post one of her moving. I can't believe she's almost 9 months old! It really snuck up on me.

Her favorite items to play with lately are keys, Brent's watch, my wedding rings (on my fingers, of course!), and a toy train from Grandma R we're borrowing. And by play with I mean chew on really hard! Brent's nose was the target of a major chomp-down earlier today. OUCH!

We're also in a phase right now of moving from 3 naps a day down to 2 naps. It really all depends on what time she wakes up in the morning. She's been waking up anywhere between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. I know, I can't believe I just said 8:30 a.m. for the girl who wouldn't sleep more than an hour or two at a time for the first 6 months of her life! God is so good. He's really been gracious to us for allowing a nice chunk of night-time sleep the past few months. I seriously thought for a while our little girl would never learn to sleep well. I know that's totally irrational thinking, but hey... my brain wasn't on the top of its game last year! =) Brent and I LOVE Avery's night-time routine. She gets a bath every night. It's a riot to watch her in the tub! She loves it. We've done baths before bed since she was a month old. We started it to help her know it was bedtime! She started to give Brent kisses a few nights ago while in her tub. It's adorable! Hmm.. I'll try and post a photo of that tomorrow.

Well I'm rambling now... I just wanted to write a bit to fill you all in on the recent happenings in our life! Thanks for reading =)