Wordless Wednesday

A Day at the Farm

We went out to visit Grandpa & Grandma on Saturday. My dad was pretty excited to steal Avery for a bit and take her on a four-wheeler ride. She LOVED it! I think they rode together for almost 45 minutes! She must like having the wind blowing through her hair. :)

She also liked "feeding" the fish with Grandpa. (She only tried to eat the fish food once!)


And splashing in the water.


Checking out Grandpa's flowers.


Silly girl. She looks like she's floating. :)

We have a crawler!

Avery's been working on crawling for a few weeks now, but in the past couple days, she's finally figured it out! It's so weird that my baby's actually mobile now! I've been spoiled over the past 10 months in that she'd be in the same general spot when I'd come back into a room as when I'd left. It's so fun to see her crawl and explore her space. She's never really been able to do that before. She never really rolled around; she'd only just roll over. She never really scooted much. A little here and there, but not really moving much more than a foot or two away. But now she can move. And she thinks she's pretty big stuff. :) She also likes to stop and do this every once in a while:

... and thinks it's hilarious to see Mommy or Daddy upside-down. :) Silly girl.

My Almost-Ten-Month-Old

Can you believe my baby girl is going to be 10 months old on Sunday? We'll be planning a birthday party before we know it! Some of the things she's been doing lately are:

She's recently figured out how to put the rings on.

She laughs when other people laugh.

She claps her hands and gets very excited.

Dances when the Casey's commercials come on tv. :)

She loves to sit there with a link to chew on, just like this!

Starting to eat chopped foods, as opposed to pureed. (But I sure do love my immersion blender!)

She learned how to get from her belly to a sitting position. Yay! No more crabby baby because she's stuck on her tummy. She hates to be on her tummy.

She's thinking seriously hard about crawling. She doesn't start out on her belly like a normal baby might. She goes from sitting to the crawling position. Then she sometimes pushes herself backwards.

She also scoots backwards sitting on her bottom.

Have you noticed this little girl does a lot of things backwards? :)

She also loves standing at her activity table to play. Now if only she could figure out a better way to get down than crying for help or falling... :)

Current "favorite" foods include blueberries (big fave!), peas, rice & broccoli & chicken casserole, yogurt, peaches, nectarines, mangoes, squash, pears, applesauce, bananas, & sweet potatoes.

Major dislike: carrots!

She also loves "flying", and when Daddy kisses her feet. :)

These have been the fastest, most amazing almost ten months! We love our sweet little Avery. :)

Sit-N-Scoot

That would be Avery's newest form of transportation. Sitting on her bottom and scooting. She thinks it's quite hilarious when she does it. But she is also getting even closer to crawling. But not when she's on her belly. She greatly dislikes that. She can just about get to the crawling position from sitting. She just has one foot that gets stuck, and once she figures out what to do with it, she will be off!

Cute as a button...

Spending some QT with Daddy after his week long trip to New York. She was very excited to see him. She missed her Daddy (and Mommy did too.)


If you'll look closely, you'll see what that Daddy did to my hair.

Avery has some Fuzzi Bunz :)

Okay, so I can't get these pictures to flip the right way, but you can still see her cuteness. :)

We've recently decided to make the switch from disposable diapers to cloth. In the above pictures, Avery is modeling her new Fuzzi Bunz cloth diapers. So far, I'm in love. I have become ridiculously excited about cloth diapering. We've been doing it for not quite a week yet (part time), and I just got some more ordered so we should be cloth diapering full time by next week! I'm even so crazy that we're switching to cloth wipes, too. Cloth wipes do SUCH a better job then disposable wipes. It was really surprising to me, but I figured I'd give it a try. And if I'm having to wash the diapers, then what's a few wipes, too?

So why did we switch? Yes, it's good for the environment and whatnot, but we mostly did it because we wanted to save some money on diapers. Yes, we had to drop a chunk of change up front, but we'll save several hundred dollars on disposables before she's potty trained. And that's not even mentioning the money we'll save on disposables for any other blessings God may choose to give us, because we'll be able to reuse these diapers. :)

And this shouldn't really surprise you. Not really. Because you already knew I was kind of crazy. :)

Josh & Jenna's Wedding

My brother got married last weekend! It was a beautiful day (once it stopped raining!), and we couldn't be happier for the new Mr. and Mrs. Platte. :)

This is my ever-growing family:

Avery had a great time hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa.

Avery with Jenna and the other flower girls.

She actually made it all the way down the aisle in her wagon...

Even though it was way past nap time!

Hanging out at the dance.

She did amazing! What a sweet little girl. :)

Trip to the Park

Yesterday turned out to have some beautiful weather, so we took Avery to the park.

She tried out the swings, which she was pretty indifferent about. She was having more fun watching the people next to us pushing their little ones.


On the other hand, she totally loved the slide. Her mouth was wide open the whole time! As I've mentioned before, that's a sure sign that she likes whatever she's doing. It's amazing that she didn't catch any bugs though. :)


That is one cool chickie in Mommy's sunglasses. One of her favorite things to do lately is to take off people's glasses. She thought it was pretty funny to have them on.


So this picture doesn't really have anything to do with the park, I just like it. She loves the computer, just like her daddy. (And maybe just a little like her mommy, too. :))

9 Months Old

My child looks kind of scary in this picture!!

Today, my baby girl turned 9 months old. We went to her checkup this morning, and she weighed in at 18 lbs, which is just under the 50th percentile. She was 28.5 inches long, and that's between the 75th and 90th percentile. (Why they couldn't just tell me the number that it is in between those two is beyond me!) So she hasn't gained much weight, but has grown 2 inches in the last 3 months! That is just amazing. She's finally growing into those cheeks. :)

After her checkup, we ran some errands and ran into her Great-Grandma and Grandpa Platte at the grocery store. Avery loves seeing her great-grandparents. She thinks my grandma is funny when she laughs. :)

Some things Avery is doing lately that I don't want to forget:

• Her smiles have now turned into huge, mouth wide open, whole faced, toothy grins, kind of like so:
  

• She's still not a big fan of tummy time, but she is getting better. She will roll over a little, but once she's on her belly, she pushes herself backwards.
• She can also spin herself around when she's on her tummy.
• I've suspected several times that she can go forward, but this usually happens when I'm out of the room, so I'm still not sure.
• She has 5 teeth, going on 6. 2 on the bottom, and almost 4 on the top!
• She's started feeding herself a little. She will pick up puffs, and put them in her mouth. We're working on remembering to let go once it's in her mouth so she can eat it. :)
• Recent food additions include yogurt (yum!), cottage cheese (um, not so sure), and fresh pureed blueberries, which she LOVES!
• She is finally doing what I would considering babbling. She has always been loud, and likes to makes shriek-y sounding noises. But now she says the "buh" sound. Along with blowing plenty of raspberries. :)
  
• Avery also has started laughing when other people are laughing. Cuz she totally gets it. :)
• She just moved from 3 naps to 2 a couple weeks ago. She usually sleeps from about 9 to 11, and then again from 2-4.
  
• Wakeup time has been about 6:30, and bedtime is around 8.
• She loves going for walks and wagon rides.
• Speaking of walking, she has taken a few steps when I've held her up and held her hands. (Oh my! She really is going to skip crawling and just go straight to walking!)
  
• Avery loves standing up next to her activity table. There is a button on it that makes balls pop and she will push it up and down a thousand times, all the while with her mouth wide open.
  
• If her mouth is wide open, then that's a sure sign that she loves what she's doing!

Next weekend, she's to ride down the aisle in a wagon in my brother's wedding. That shall be interesting. :)

Thanks for sticking with this extra-long post. :) You must love her just as much as we do. :)

Wordless Wednesday

(Can you see two of my three newest teeth?)

(She can hold onto stuff and stand up already-what?!?!)

(Love her...)

(...to pieces!)

(Okay, so the whole "wordless" part may have been a bit misleading today. But it's okay, because I put it all in parenthesis, right? :))

Three Teeth & a Party

Avery has been cutting teeth like crazy lately! In the last couple weeks or so, she has gotten three more teeth on the top, and has one more on the way! I can't believe how fast they are coming in. It seemed like her first two teeth took forever to come in, but these top ones are in a much bigger hurry!

We went to my best friend's little girl's first birthday party today. There were lots of other babies there, so Avery had fun watching them. She also had lots of fun "helping" unwrap Sophie's presents.


She's tried several new foods lately, too. Yogurt, blueberries (Yummy mixed with the yogurt!), and broccoli (Yuck, mom! Disgusting!).

Avery is also transitioning down to only two naps a day. She'll go down around 9, and then 1:30 or 2. I'll kind of miss that third nap, as it was nice to have a break after the other babies left for the day, but it's also kind of nice to have her and Elise sleeping at the same general times. Now, if only we could talk Lelan into doing that... :)

She's still not crawling, but we have been practicing putting her up on her knees. She's not quite sure what to think about that, and her arms are still not quite strong enough to hold her in that position for very long.

Avery is starting to do all kinds of fun (and funny!) things these days. We were watching Daddy through the window tonight, and every time she saw him, she'd get all excited and laugh. But when Daddy went out of sight, she got very serious and leaned forward and looked all over for him until she could see him again. Silly girl. :)

Busy Girl

Avery has been learning all kinds of new things in the last week and a half. About a week before she turned 8 months old, she finally, FINALLY, learned how to roll over! We'd been working with her (aka forcing her to roll:)) for several weeks, and were practicing more right before bath time one night. So I gave her her bath, and after she was dressed, I put her down to finish picking up the bathroom. And the little stinker just rolled right over onto her tummy! That was a pretty exciting moment! Two mornings last weekend I woke up to her screaming because she had rolled onto her tummy and got stuck there. :) Mommy had to come save her. And after a week of practicing rolling from back to tummy, she learned how to flip back over, and even started rolling several times in a row. A couple days after that, she started trying to get up on her knees a bit, and every day she figures it out a little more! I can't believe how fast she's figuring everything out! She'll be crawling before we know it!

She has also figured out how to blow bubbles (very loudly I might add :)). She sometimes does it just in playing, but lately it's mostly been when she's mad. It's kind of funny. And lastly, she's doing pretty good at standing up next to things. We've stood her next to the couch and the walker. She stood forever playing with the toys on the walker. Her favorite game when standing next to the couch is to throw herself backward so I will catch her. She thinks that's pretty hilarious.

It's so fun all the new things she's learning, but a little part of me is just wee bit sad, because with every new thing she learns, she grows one step closer to "big girl", and one step farther away from my baby. But I do look forward to all the fun we're going to be having, now that we have a mobile girl on our hands!!!

These were our Mother's Day projects this year. (Please ignore the wilted looking ones on the left- they perked right up after a little drink!) I painted them and did the babies' hand prints on them. They turned out so cute! Mine is the one on the right; Matt and Avery worked on it together. The other two are my daycare kiddos'.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!!!

Wordless Wednesday