Milestones

Avery has been crawling around like crazy for a while now.  She can be really quick when she wants to be!  Like this morning, when I put her down on the floor after she woke up, went to get her bottle, and she scrambled over to the couch, stood up, and then started cruising along the couch all one-handed & stuff!  This was the craze of the day :)

Winner!

Anticipation

The swingset is a work in progress.  Logan watched from his perch all afternoon while the big guys worked on it and was soooo excited to see them hoist the roof up and top off the climber/fort.

Happy Canada Day!!!

Cool again

But of course, that doesn't stop the kids from enjoying a freezie at halftime!

Driving Distance

Just one of many reasons why I love living within driving distance of the beach.  A spontaneous evening drive down to the beach got us views like this.

Graaaa-duation, time for graduation

Look who's standing....

We are in sooo much trouble!!  I'm sure she'll be cruising by the weekend and walking on her own well before her birthday.  Brand new experience for us...but wow, I'm worn out!

The hottest bleeping day of the year

Which was, of course, accompanied by an afternoon thunderstorm. So the fieldtrip was cut short...but I think the kiddies still had fun!

Two of a kind...

A bad weed....

Avery is growing so quickly.  Life with her is certainly much easier this past month or two.  It's funny - I thought I'd always remember when things finally got "easier" with her, and the screaming calmed down, and we got to have a normal life with a happy baby.  But strangely enough, it just kind of happened and I'm not really positive when that was!  I'm just greatful to have things the way they are now.  We also got some bad news about a young family member recently, and so Avery's screaming seems pale in comparison with what they are dealing with. 

Avery is generally happy these days.  She's even getting better with strangers and not-so-strangers! YAY!  She's now more like what Logan was always like...but not quite, she still puts her personal twist on things :)

Our little bald gummy bear is also growing quite a bit of hair!  ... at the back, at least.  The top and front are still pretty bare, except for some peach fuzz, but the back is really coming in now.  I like to think she is preparing to rock the mullet!

She is officially on the move, too!  Now the fun begins.  She was soooooo slowwwwww when she first started crawling.  It's just been within the past few days that she's really bothered with it.  Prior to that, she would go a couple of paces crawling and then revert to rolling because that was just faster.  Her slow-as-a-snail crawling pace was so cute, though!  She reminded me of the chameleon from the commercial (Telus, maybe??) where it was like it rocked away and took 2 steps forward, 1 step back.  I wish I had gotten that on video.  She's pretty quick now, though, and quite the daredevil, too.  She will even go one-handed and use the other to wave or smack things.  She's got pretty good balance and can also transition from crawling to sitting, laying to sitting and so on.  She spends a lot of time balancing/standing on her knees.  She doesn't really have the strength to stand up on her own just yet, but I have no doubt that she'll be walking before her birthday.

(and this is an example of the white smearing that my broken down camera is producing)

Big brother on duty

Logan begged to have a go at feeding Avery tonight.  I decided to give him a chance since she's already starting to devour finger foods on her own and I'm sure it won't be too much longer that we'll be allowed to feed her!

A new era

I figured that since Avery has been trying to stand up in her baby tub that it was time to make the switch to the big tub.  She had her first tubby over the weekend and she LOVED it!  I had to lay her down to rinse the shampoo from her hair and she didn't like that, but all in all, it was a hit.  She even cried when I took her out. 

Camera Shy

Logan prefers to be on the back end of the camera these days, but I managed to snap a picture of him wearing his "good luck clothes" while he played a very important game of Go Fish with his Granny (also known as "I'm going to delay getting my pj's on so I'll con Granny into playing a game with me").  I can hardly believe this is my same chunky monkey who was 95% and greater throughout his baby & toddlerhood.  He was over 20lb at 6 months and I heard no end of comments about how chubby he was (which is fine with us, because he was the cutest chunky monkey around!).  Look at him now!  All that remains is in his cheeks :)

Nature Photography by Logan

We were outside and Logan asked if he could take some nature photos.  Sure!  Great idea.  He's a pretty decent photographer for a 4 year old and I love seeing what he sees.  So he took a picture of the millet grass in our front garden...

And then this one.  Cracks me up!  He insists this is a nature photo:

Look-alike

TJ and I often comment on how Logan & Avery are so much alike, and yet so very different.  They look alike, but yet they don't.  They've got some similarity in their personalities, and yet they're different people.  They even share some similar expressions....

Oops!

I dropped the camera. On the ceramic tile floor.  It dropped, bounced, opened up and the memory card and batteries came flying out.  Oh nooooo!!! For a while, it wouldn't even turn on, but it does now...though the quality isn't very good.  I'll try to keep posting, but the shots are pretty questionable at times.  There seems to be blurring on the right side and white smudging/glaring.  UGH.  The camera is barely a year old.  Thumbs down.

Summery Picnic

Logan started a "tradition" last summer of eating his lunch on the front porch, while he watched all the construction vehicles drive up and down the street.  This year, we can't all be out there on the porch because Avery would either end up with a concussion or a broken neck from rolling off the porch.  So we put the picnic blanket out on the front lawn and ate lunch out there and played soccer for a while.  Avery loves being outside, too, so she happily played on the blanket with her sand toys and picked away at her whole grain Cheerios while we ate our gourmet lunch of Kraft Dinner. 

10 Months Old

I can't believe it's been 10 months already!

Buzz, Buzz

Logan got his first buzz cut.  He's pretty particular about his hair, so I wasn't sure how he'd go for it, but he LOVES it.  I'm happy it'll take a while to grow in, so we won't have to keep going back over the summer to get it done.