Soccer night, as usual

It was the coach's birthday, so they brought cupcakes! Yummy little treat after running around on the field in this heat & humidity.

Avery is not so content these days.  All she wants to do is go, go, go...and when she can't, she must be fed or all Hell breaks loose!  Here she is trying to escape the stroller.

11 Months

She's on the move and not so happy to be asked to lay still while I took her picture with Piggy! I can't believe that the next entry like this will be the big one...ONE YEAR!!!

Right now, Avery has 5 teeth (2 top centre, 2 bottomcentre, and one top to the right of centre), crawls like a maniac, and is eating table foods (and throwing them across the room) like a pro.

How could you not love this face?

(notice the 4 toofies, too?)

Avery's been eating more table foods than purees lately.  She lives for multi grain cheerios, actually, and will holler at you if she sees you pass over the box in the pantry.  Tonight, we had pasta and mixed veggies with pears for dessert.  I cannot believe how much she can pack away!  (Mind you, some does make it onto the seat of the highchair).  It didn't occur to me to take a before picture of her plate, but there's a part-way pic and an after. Of course, I'm biased, but she's so cute!  Every single bite she takes is followed by an enthusiastic "Mmmm, Ohhh, Mmmm".  If you're in really good standing, she'll even offer to share a few bites ;)

During:  initially, half of the plate was covered in a layer of mixed veggies. Baby pasta is in the bowl on the left and pears on the left side of the plate.

After:  These were only left because they didn't cook very well and were kind of hard & dry.

Hideout

The latest discovery

So once she mastered climbing over things while she crawled, she decided to try out this form of transportation...

I'm guessing she'll be bi-pedal in a week or so?

Papa

Last weekend, the boys went fishin'.  Logan has asked everyday since then when they can go back again.  This weekend was out, because we had a family reunion to attend.  That's OK though, Logan wasted no time wrangling Papa into playing a few rounds of "Sneakers" with him.

Like Father, Like Son

I was outnumbered...

5 kids, one adult.  Luckily it was quiet...even though it didn't work out as I planned with the 3 youngest ones asleep.  They all woke up in a chain reaction of hysterical screaming.  A little snack all around solved everything we ended up with everyone playing very nicely in a confined space. 

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.