With Bravery Comes Blood

Poor little baby Avery hit the roof of her mouth so bad on the dishwasher yesterday that her perfect little mouth started bleeding. She didn't cry for long at all and felt a lot better after gumming on a frozen chunk of honeydew, which she quickly got excited about. This may have been the most painful moment of her life thus far- and it wasn't easy for Casey and I either! It was way worse than getting all of her shots or recent bumps to the head from falling.

Afterward she ate all of her dinner (carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower), climbed over daddy's guitar case and found a cabinet in new territory to open and explore, clapped a lot, played in her room, laughed a lot, drank some warm milk (formula), and went to sleep by 9. She didn't wake up until after 6:30 this morning when I was almost out the door.

Daddy is keeping her today instead of being at daycare.
(Full report later on today's adventures with "da da" -her first and favorite thing to say)

Falling Down

She crawls, she pulls herself up, she falls down. Hard. Then cries. Hard. Last night she ate the coffee table and had a nice cry- I try explaining to her that her legs don't work right yet but she doesn't get it. Most of the time she will fall square on her butt, with her diaper padding her fall. Lately these types of falls have been followed by a nervous look around the room to see who was watching, a big grin, and two or three big claps. The bad falls result in ear piercing screams in between long, silent and red-faced, deep breaths. You can tell how loud the scream is going to be by the length of the deep breath and the redness of her little teary face.

Fight Club

To show off her toughness, Avery has been sporting a pretty sweet bruise on her forehead. The ladies at school said she fell down and into the wall- but she told Casey and I that her and Tyler Durden have secretly been fighting each other in the social hall at daycare on a daily basis. She said they've even been recruiting other babies and even toddlers into their ring of aggression.

I had to sign an accident report stating I was made aware of the incident and gave a copy to Mrs. Linda Lamb, the Jasper Spring Childcare Director, while a battered Avery giggled on my hip.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Avery copies Casey and I when we clap our hands together.

Then she smiles real big. It's one of the cutest things she has ever done in her life.

That's all!

Chunks, Sippy Cups, and Counting Calories

Up until Thursday night Avery has only enjoyed liquids and pureed foods. I was cooking some sweet potatoes for her (one of her favs) and thought she might be able to try eating some soft chunks before I threw it in the magic bullet. No, she still doesn't have a tooth yet, but her little gums chomped away at the soft little sweet potato cubes quite well. She ate about 5 and that is a milestone.

Another milestone of Thursday night: sippy cup operation. For the first experiment we filled sippy cup number one with water and tried giving it to Avery like a bottle. She just chewed on the.. sippy part? until she realized what was going on, the proceeded to shake it all over her face, neck, and chest. Ok, who am I kidding, it didn't get on her neck. We actually are still not sure if she has a neck, Casey said he has seen it before, and I may have felt it once while giving her a bath I think... ...but anyway, for the second experiment we used a different sippy cup- one with grip handles on both sides and she got the hang of it quickly.

For now she has just had water. (Well, her aunt Patsy has given her a sip of cranberry juice - and she has had a little bit of green tea... and some prune juice...) But her pediatrician recommends (and I completely agree) that she should learn to love water, drink it every day, and not be given juice too often because of unneeded calories. She eats fruit every morning anyway, so she might as well get those calories from fresh fruit as a meal rather than juice. ..but we're really not counting her calories.

$1.9 Million

Grammy,

All you have to do is buy that 100 acres and those farm houses mommy told you about and I could see you every day! I miss you and will see you next week! Give Grampa a big hug for me. I love you!

Love, Avery Lee

Chatter & Heartaches

It's so hard being so far away from Avery. Seeing her on the web cam helps a lot and listening to her chatter on the phone does too. It only makes me want to hold her though, to smell her little neck and kiss her little rose pedal lips. She's so so sweet. I love the way she holds her mouth open when you kiss her as if she wants more or wants to kiss you back. I can sit and stare at her till my heart aches.xoxogrammy

Sleep, Stand

Avery slept from 5:30pm yesterday afternoon until 5am this morning.

This morning she stood straight up, holding on to the laundry basket with one hand, for over 5 whole minutes.

Progress.

First Camping Trip and Words

Saturday morning Casey, Avery, our nehpew Dylon, and I set out towards Okefenokee Swamp in search of some caches. We recently learned about geocaching since buying a hand held GPS. (you can read details about it here: www.geocaching.com) It's kind of like treasure hunting. We had six caches on the list, all of our camping gear, and plenty of batteries.

Avery slept through the first find, which was ok since it was right off of the road and took just a minute to find. Dylon kept a boy scout badge from it and we left some baby temporary tattoos (purchased here: http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2202)

We found 5 out of the six caches. Dylon took some kind of prize from all of them execpt one and we left some tattoos at each one. Avery came along on most adventures of the trip strapped to her daddy's chest in a little carrier. We went to four caches on Saturday, set up camp at Laura S. Walker State Park, then went to the last two caches on Sunday at the Okefenokee Swamp.

Avery liked being at camp. We didn't have room to pack her pack 'n play so she tumbled around on the ground and in the tent. I wasn't sure how much she would move arond in the tent and I didn't want her to roll off of her little palette we made her, so we brought the car seat in the tent and she slept pretty good for a long time. The campsite was a lot more luxurious than we expected, with a spickot and electrical outlets in between each campsite, so we were able to wash our bowls and utensils and Avery's bottles. We used the outlets a couple of times to heat up water for Avery on a small burner we have, but if we had a fire going we warmed her water in a pot over the fire.

On Sunday at Okefenokee Avery got to ride a train and pet a baby alligator and a lot of snakes at the nature show. She got to see deer, goats, chickens, an otter, and two black bears. In the middle of the nature show she blurted out DA DA. I'm not sure if we're counting that as her real first words or not. The day before we were on a hiking trail at the state park and Avery talked the whole time, most of the words sounded like aaayy bllmem eh ya or something, but there were times when it was definitely ma ma ma ma. Casey might claim this one, but it's still up in the air. The ma ma's were during a babble, and the da da was an isolated proclaimation. However, the da da was directed at the man giving the nature show holding an alligator. I can see how she'd get the two confused, but she definitely wasn't calling Casey. More developments in this case are sure to arise this week.

In other news, she is pulling up on everything and taking steps while holding on- sometimes with one hand. Little show-off.