Hogle Zoo

On Friday we headed up to the Zoo for an afternoon of fun, Jordan and Amelia came along with us, and to make it even more exciting we stuffed all 7 of us (including 3 car seats and 3 strollers) in our van.Avery loves looking at pictures of animals, making animal noises, and pretty much all things animal...except the real thing apparently! He was not too thrilled with how big and close the Elephants were, and the other one that bothered him were Giraffes. He didn't mind most of them, I think he was just a little weirded out.

We also rode the train they have there, I think that was Avery's favorite part, and the breeze sure felt nice to the rest of us! The little boys also liked the big ball fountain thing, I'm not even sure how it worked, but it was pretty neat. And Avery seemed to like getting water all over himself!!


Of course the battery in our camera decided to start dying, so pictures are limited, but I think we got some decent ones.

The End.

Putting baby to bed

The other day Avery and I were upstairs folding laundry and playing. He came into my room with a baby doll and in Avery-speak he told me the baby was going "night-night" in his bed. Then he came running back in and asked where his scriptures were, so I asked if he was going to pray with the baby too.
He ran (he runs just about everywhere) back into his room and I overheard him saying something to his doll so I peeked around the corner and saw him folding the dolls arms and then he saud "heavenly father, thank you, amen".

It was seriously one of the most adorable things ever! He's getting so big and smart! And...yes, it is okay for boys to have baby dolls!!

The party...

Last night we had Avery's birthday party. We just invited Andy's siblings that are out here and our friends, Jordan and Amelia. I decided to keep it way simple, so we had ice cream sandwiches and cupcakes in our front yard area. Our house is too little to fit that many people comfortable...or even uncomfortably!
Andy picked Transformers cups and napkins for the party, and he picked up some helium balloons on his way home from work. Avery LOVES the balloons, and who could not like Transformers cups/napkins?! :)
We set up some chairs in the shade, brought out our outside toys and water balloons for the kids and we all sat and visited for a while. It was nice, and the weather was perfect!

Avery loved having all the kids here to play with, and he loved all the great things he got for his birthday. It was the year of sports items for Avery. He got the basketball hoop from us, a ball from Mike and Heather, one from Jonah and family, and a mini baseball set from Jon and Jacque. And he loves them all!!
It was a really nice night, thanks to everyone that came! Avery loved it!!

Happy Birthday Avery!

Today Avery is 2!! How crazy is that?!
He's got a dr. appointment tomorrow, so we'll see how ginormous my child really is then.
He's so much fun though, it's amazing all the fun things he can do and say! We're having a small party for him tonight, we told him about it a couple days ago and now he's been talking about his birthday party since then. I don't think he has any idea what it is, but he likes how we talk all excitedly about his birthday!
He also has been carrying around a couple birthday cards he got from my grandma and aunt, he loves them!
We got him a basketball hoop and set it up in the living room so he'd see it when he got up this morning, it's a huge hit! He's been playing with it all morning! He absolutely loves it! Thank goodness!!
And for breakfast he had chocolate chip pancakes, which he called "cookie pancakes", they were devoured in a matter of minutes. Now we'll see if he ever wants plain ol' pancakes again!


Here's the picture we sent out with his birth announcement, he was about 3 or 4 days old.
And here's one of this past week. He's HUGE!!! :)

Hiding

Avery's trying to hide from me. I love the close up of his face, he was trying so hard to hide from me!! :)

Inter-web

Andy and I had heard that the show 30 Rock was pretty funny, so we decided to watch it, since there's nothing good on during the summer...we watched all the episodes in a short amount of time, but that's beside the point.
Pretty much my favorite thing is when Tracy Jordan calls the internet the "Interweb", and I think everyone should refer to it as such. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. love it.

Tracy: The Black Crusaders are a secret group of powerful Black Americans. Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey are the chief majors, but Jesse Jackson, Colin Powell and Gordon from Sesame Street, they're members, too, and they meet four times a year in the skull of the Statue of Liberty. You can read about that on the Interweb.
Liz: Ah, well, it must be true if it's on the "Interweb."

C is for Cookie...

Avery likes Sesame Street, which is fine. Elmo drives me crazy but other than that I can handle it. But...he has picked up on the cookie crumbling/eating that Cookie Monster does. It drives me crazy. He puts his hands up to his mouth and will spew food out while shaking his hands over his mouth violently! but he doesn't only do it with food...grass, dirt, toys, you name it. I have to closely monitor him while we're outside or else he'll eat all sorts of nasty things! I'm hoping it's a phase and he'll stop soon.
I got a picture of him trying to do it with grass the other day.

And doesn't he look huge in this pool? It's from last summer, but the other day it was so hot we were desperate to get water into something to take outside...maybe we'll invest in a real kiddie pool soon!

He's also quite the "helper", and loves to sweep the kitchen for me. A couple times I've had to re-wash the counters as the broom often finds it's way above the floor...!

What I would look like if...

...I were old,

...a man,

...Asian


...or a cartoon

Some of these are quite frightening! I sure am glad I'm not a man...for some reason that man picture of me creeps me out! :)
I saw this on Tiburon's blog, try it for yourself here!

A couple of Andy and Avery, for fun -

Andy

old

Asian

Woman

Black

Ape

Avery

Old

Asian

Ape

The cow says "Moo"

Avery sat like this for about 20 minutes, pushing the button on the cow over and over again. A little annoying, but pretty cute!He was being a little camera shy, usually he moo's with the cow. A lot.

almost 36 weeks

This is for Karen, because she asked if I'm huge yet. I sure feel like it. A month from tomorrow is my due date, it's coming up SO fast!!!

So here I am. Blah.
Someday I'll have Andy take a picture for me instead of propping the camera on the stairs! Maybe it'd turn out better!! Right? :)

Yard sale purses

The other day while we were out hitting up some yard sales I realized the last 2 purses I've gotten myself have been from yard sales for .50...true story.
They're cute though...

I like purses, I just don't like to spend a lot of money on them...and I also like yard sales, so I guess it works out for me! I was just realizing that maybe I shouldn't make a habit of it. I buy new diaper bags...just not purses! Someday I'll treat myself to a brand new purse! :)
Maybe I'll check out Ross next time I go to that side of town, that's a few steps up from yard sales, right?

Bath time trauma

A post on MC (about cleaning up puke) reminded me of this slightly traumatic incident from a couple weeks ago. I was laughing about it later that day, but at the time it was horrible.

Avery was taking a bath after making a huge mess during breakfast, and since he loves the bath I was letting him play for as long as he wanted. I hadn't cleaned him up or anything, when all of the sudden he decided to relieve himself in the tub, if you know what I mean, I think I may have screamed, not sure. I got him out really fast and tried to fish the nastiness out but it just got stuck in the drain, and I was crying and gagging so bad! So I got Avery cleaned up closed the bathroom door and went down stairs.
I tried to call Andy to complain but he didn't answer his phone, so I sent him an email telling him what happened and it was making me almost throw up and I didn't know what to do. When he called I immediately started crying and told him I couldn't get it out and could he please come home and fix it!?
And being the awesome guy/husband/dad he is he actually came home from work and get everything out of the tub, he even cleaned the tub so I wouldn't have to! Thank goodness he only works about 5 minutes away!
I felt pretty dumb about crying, but it was not pleasant. Andy also helps (by "helps" I might mean that he does most of it!) me clean up puke messes, he's pretty great!
I'm chalking it up to pregnancy hormones...but who knows, I may have cried anyway!
Hopefully that never happens again!! I guess I couldn't expect to make it through any time with kids and not have bath time accidents!

Buddies

Avery has a friend! :) But his parents went and moved a whole 2 miles (maybe..) away! Sheesh! We sure miss having them next door, but we've still seen plenty of them. Avery and Jonah like to pretend to be interested in each other, sometimes they play together, but they seem to enjoy being in the same room at least. Avery even asked where Jonah was today when we took him to nursery.
These pictures are from one morning when Jonah came to play while Amelia cleaned/packed next door. On this particular day they actually had fun playing together! They were pretty cute.

Pool side casualties

The other day we went swimming and while we were getting ready to leave the pool Avery bumped his head on one of the pool chairs and cut the back of his head, the sore doesn't look to bad now, but it sure bled a lot at first! And it's pretty hard to get band aids to stick to a squirming, crying toddlers head full of hair! But...it's even worse ripping them off!
he's got quite the bump on the back of his noggin, but he seems to feel better. At first he wouldn't lay on his head for diaper changes or to sleep or anything, it was pretty sad.
He still loves the pool though!! :) And that's what's important...and he's alive!

Is he really that hungry?

Avery helped himself to some cheerios the other day. I really do feed him!