Hours of Entertainment

Faces of the Season

"So, Avery, what do you think of the new season coming around?"

"What?? I can't hear you under all these layers!"

"AVERY, ARE YOU EXCITED FOR THE FALL?"

"Oh, yeah, sure, you know. That's when the leaves fall on the ground and stuff. Sounds cool."

"Yep, and Halloween will be here soon and we could go trick-or-treating!"

"MMM, candy!"

"Well, except no candy for you, baby."

"But, mom, how can you resist a face like this?"

"Sorry, Avery, but when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, we can travel to visit family!"

"Oh boy, long hours in the car. I think I'm feeling sick already."

"I'm sure you'll love to see all your cousins and grandma and grandpa!"

"Okay, I'm listening. Does this mean presents are involved?"

"Yep."

"Yahoo! I can just imagine pulling off that bright, colorful wrapping paper and sucking on the ribbons, and eating whatever I can get my hands on..."

"... oh yes, tasty ribbons and paper... I can just feel them on my tongue now."

"Silly Avery, you know that whatever goes in has to eventually come out."

[no caption necessary]

"That's alright, though. I'm sure you'll have plenty of fun in the leaves and snow and playing with family and eating yummy baby food and rice cereal and eventually crawling and walking..."

"Crawling?? WALKING!!!!!! Oh happy day!! There'll be no stopping me then!! mwahahahaha!"

"Oh boy...here's to the coming season."

Applause, Applause

Avery waves her arms a lot and likes to slap/bang things. She's also learned how to coordinate those hands and bring them together to clap. We never purposefully encouraged her to do this, but she just picked it up by watching us and she's getting really good at it! She can also hold a bottle really well (can't quite keep it tilted up, though) and she can pick up her binki and put it in her mouth (right side up) with no problem. She tries to grab for her spoon while I feed her and put it in her mouth, but I haven't let her loose on that one yet! I love to watch her pick up her toys and hold them in the air to examine them. She's starting to pick up the crawling motions as we practice together but my friends think I'm crazy to encourage her to crawl sooner... One said her son didn't crawl until he was a year old and it's probably the biggest blessing she's ever had. Hmmm... they have good a point! Maybe I'll let Avery put forth the effort when she's ready. Overall, I'm really pleased with Avery's coordination skills.

Dance

Avery likes to dance and shake to the music! Usually she giggles and smiles with her mouth wide open the whole time but she's still cute in this video even though she's not as jiggly and bubbly all the way through.

Who cuts your hair??

I've been cutting Brian's hair for 2.5 years and by no means am I a pro, but I feel like I've finally got the hang of it and do a rather decent job. Saturday afternoon I whip out the buzzers like normal and begin to ease my way up the back of his head to trim up that bushy hair. Only one difference. Instead of getting a #3 guard cut up the back, he gets a numero zero guarded cut. Translation: I forgot to put on the guard!!!! Somewhere between the hair dropping to the floor and my eyes popping out of my head did I realize the extent of my botch-up! Have you ever gotten that lump in your throat when you realize you'd just done something so terrible and irreversible?? Kind of like clicking the "reply all" on accident or sending a heated e-mail to someone that you regret later. Deed is done. Now you have to live with what you've done and attempt to deal with the consequences.

I began to apologize to Brian before I even said what I'd done! He figured it out pretty quick. Because of feeling so ashamed and sorry, I asked if I could just go to my room and cry. Thankfully, Brian didn't freak out too bad (or I seriously would have cried) but just said "no, you're gonna stay here and finish what you've started." In no way did he say this cruelly... more like "have fun fixing this one."

So he handed me the #1 guard to finish up the back. Sad thing is that the first buzz I made went a bit past the crown on accident so I knew it was going to look even more ridiculous because of that. I also had to do some blending where #0 buzz met the #1 buzz. Can you see the mark still? Later on, I was feeling so nervous trying to get this super short hair cut just right that I made a little gash on the right in the back. Ah!

After spending much time blending, we both admitted that I had surprisingly made a decent recovery afterall.... at least from the front. I can't vouch for the back much. Good thing he'll be meeting people at the career fair this week from the front!

This is the left side; it looks quite a bit better from the right side so I didn't show that one.

Seven months old

Within this past month (or two), Avery's learned a lot....

Rolling Around: She's become somewhat more comfortable on her tummy and can roll both ways on her own even though she doesn't do it much and struggles some still. She likes pushing off of the crib bars with her feet for leverage.

Scooting: Avery likes to migrate on the floor ever so slightly while sitting up. She can pretty much bend in half to reach for her toys, too. She's gonna love it when she can crawl!

Baby Food: She's been eating Gerber once or twice a day now (depending on her appetite) and she's been wonderful with trying new flavors. She does, however, dislike bananas and beef. I think it's too early for meats anyway and the bananas tasted horrible to me as well. Fresh ones are 100x better.

Sleep: Oh, she was going to bed at 8pm for a little while, but we botched that up in one night at Steve & Jen's (but it was worth it). [By the way, Avery's cousins love to play with her and keep her quite entertained! See the pictures below.] I'm not a real stickler on bedtime, so it doesn't bother me; however, we will try to gear her towards about 8pm again. Not sleeping through the night yet.

Reading: She'll now sit down and be entertained with books longer than before.

Bath Time: For about a month, she's been in the real tub since she can pretty well sit up on her own. She's enjoying being in the water more and more.

Jabber: When she's in the mood, she can jabber away. She mostly says "da-da-da," "ga-ga," and "buh-buh-buh." Don't be mistaken, though, "da-da," isn't technically her first word since she hasn't associated it with her dad yet... I'm still rooting for "ma-ma."

Morning Strolls: Since she's up by 8am now and the weather is cooling, I'm doing a routine stroll every morning for about 45 mintues. I like this routine. Brian and I also try to get a stroll in every evening too. He's also started to walk to school now.

Teething?: So, I don't really see any teeth yet. For a couple days at the beginning of this month, though, she went through a really tough period in which we think she must have been teething. That's about it.

Overall: What a sweet, happy, GOOD little girl! She's truly a delight to be with and we're extremely lucky!

Here's our trip yesterday to the Little Cottonwood Canyon. We had a beautiful hike:

Brian and I get a kick out of this face! Even her whimpers/fusses are kind of cute.

The running water through the rocks behind her is gorgeous!

Photography Practice

Since we can't really afford professional pictures for Avery or ourselves, I thought I might whip out the camera and do some practicing on my own to see if we can get some professional-looking shots. Besides, who needs to go to a studio when you've got the beautiful outdoors! If anyone has any basic tips for me about lighting/shade and good times to do shots (or how to do good indoor shots), let me know! We want to do family pics next month, too, so our friends, Russ & Adri, have agreed to help us out (thankyou!).

This is the only indoor one; she's just so cute!

This shot with the hat reminds me of some wallpaper we had in our laundry room growing up. It was some cute doll-looking children with big hats like this.

I love this one. I think it's my favorite because it shows her curiosity up close!