Birthday Baby/Toddler/Sob

It's that time of the year- the time when I dust off the old blog to spotlight a birthday child! Saturday was Avery's 2nd birthday and I have to say, she's gotten so darn cute that I can hardly stand it. Sometimes she'll be ridiculously adorable and Jeff and I will just look at each other and roll our eyes with slight exasperation because her cuteness is just OUT OF CONTROL.

I mean, seriously???

There are so many things I could tell you about our Avy. Lemme get some bullet-points together.

• Avery is SMART. Holy cow, I don't even know what to do with her sometimes. I think what always surprises me is that, with Adam, most everything he knows he knows because we taught him. Avery just picks up stuff and it sometimes really freaks me out how naturally intelligent she is. Recently, I was in the car with the kids and I was quizzing Adam on some phonics, so I asked him what words start with P. Before he could answer, Avery jumped in and was like "Puppies! And piggies!!" I just was flabbergasted and turned back and looked at her and she said, "Mickey start wit M." I'm not saying that she has that business down (at ALL), but she does frequently walk around practicing the sounds letters make, and I'm always like, "OK, you're a baby. Go somewhere and drool, don't tell me what words start with Z." I don't know where she picked all of this up, but somewhere she learned all of her letters, numbers, counting (I've heard her go up to 18, though 12 is her norm), colors, shapes and recently she's started writing some letters. She's pretty bright- I thought about getting her a MENSA card, but she keeps pooping on the floor, so...  

Avery and her purple Q- the first letter she ever wrote. "I did it! It's Q!"  

• If you're suddenly filled with the desire to come and converse with this genius child, let me be clear- she probably won't talk to you. She usually saves her genius for me, which is fine because I have to hear her say "Holdmeholdmeholdmeholdme" all day long. Avery's funny. I don't even know how to describe her socially. Frequently, she's really talkative and friendly. She was telling this random lady at the store today about her birthday and her "Mee-mode" cake (That's her word for mermaid) and the lady was smitten, but about a week ago we were at the indoor playground at the mall and she refused to play and instead would just yell at the kids who she thought were running too fast or who came too close to her. She can be a bit mercurial, or at least is generally a little less happy-go-lucky than Adam. I think she also gets uncomfortable in situations where she thinks that I might leave her. (Author's edit: I felt like I was maybe being too hard on her and then I spent a few days parenting her. She can be difficult.) 

Yelling at the kids.

• Avery is small. Or at least, that's one of the most frequent comments I hear from people. "She's so small and dainty!" Avery gets called dainty a lot. (Please remember, she does poop on the floor an awful lot.) She is small- under 22 pounds and in the 11th%, but that really doesn't seem all that bad when you look at her genetics and 28 pound brother. 

I still wear Avery a fair amount. Like I said, she's not that heavy.  Adam prefers to walk most of the time and if he's walking and she's alone in the double stroller, things get gnarly. She loves walking, but is a pleasant combination of  being super-slow and a firm refusal to follow.  I can usually convince her to go in the Ergo if I know that Adam wants to walk. It's fun. She gives my back hugs and kisses. 

• Avery's favorite food is pizza. She loves pizza. She also really likes steak, toast, carrots, applesauce, cereal, Greek yogurt, fruit snacks and eggs, which she calls "eggies." She really likes all meat, (she strangely calls meat "meep."), which makes dinner interesting because she usually will eat more of the meat parts of meals and avoid veggies, whereas Adam is violently the opposite. 

She also likes sandwiches.

• Avery loves her Bear. My kids both have beloved stuffed animals, and Ducky is oft discussed, but Bear (pronounced Bee-air) is a pretty strong contender. She makes Bear talk a lot (Bear has a super high voice) and if she's hungry or stinky, she'll blame it on Bear. Me: "Hey, Avery, do you need me to change you? Are you stinky?" Avery: "No. Bear stinky." Bear: "Bear stinky." 

Avery and Bear had matching tiaras for her birthday. This is a sweet picture, because Jeff was gone for a couple of weeks (a pleasure cruise throughout the former Yugoslavia- or something like that) and he came back on her birthday. 

• Speaking of bodily-functions, Avery keeps begging me to potty-train her. Whenever Adam says he needs to go, she says "Me tooo! Need to go potty!!"  Sorry, Avy- not going to happen. I know how frequently you pee and they don't make underwear in your size. 

It is hard saying no to that face.

• She calls herself Avy, Sister, and Piggy. 

• She loves getting her hair and nails done and likes to pretend to put make-up on. I sorta hate doing her nails- she wipes them off and then gets mad when they come off- but I usually enjoy doing her hair. She does a pretty good job sitting still if I give her Mr. Potato Head. She loves Mr. Potato Head even more than being girly.

She loves wearing MPH's glasses.

• Avery loves animals. She adores going to the zoo and her absolute favorite thing in the world is to watch Bao Bao's (the baby panda at the National Zoo) live webcam stream. She talks about Bao Bao dozens of times a day and still brings up daily the time that a chick pooped on my jacket. She seriously just talks about animals all day long. Her favorites are pandas, piggies, and elephants.

• As seen in the above video, she has the most adorable way of saying some verbs in the past tense. I'm such an enabler and do it too. She says things like "hit-ted, pet-ted and ride-ded" all the time. It's so charming.

She still talks about when she ride-ded the pony.

• She is such a sweet girl. She's just always worried about if other people are sad, maybe even obsessively sometimes. We watched Cinderella a few days ago and she still keeps asking what happened to Cinderella to make her sad. (Apparently she doesn't remember that it has a happy ending). "What happened to Cinderella?? Cinderella cry. Cinderella time-out?" She constantly worries about Adam's welfare, and brings him things that she thinks he wants (she is usually incorrect). Avery is just so sweet and caring and it's my absolute favorite thing about her.

This is her new stuffed panda. Ok, it's actually Adam's, but he decided that it wasn't big enough for his liking (um, ok?) and so Avery has adopted him. She named him Oliver, which is the name of my family's dog, who does not look like a panda.

• Avery loves the Disney Princesses. I really don't know where the obsession sprung from. I mean, I like Disney movies, but we really seem to watch a lot more of the Pixar ones (due to Adam being more vocal in our movie choices). She is just crazy about the Little Mermaid and has seen it twice. When I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she immediately (and adamantly) decided she wanted princess things, so that was our theme. (And by theme, I mean that she basically just wore a tiara and had a cake with some princesses.) 

OK, getting that cake was a TRIAL. The bakery lost my order and told me that I was crazy and didn't know the difference between ordering cakes and asking about ordering them. They were seriously so rude that I cried- especially since it was the lady that I had ordered the cake from two days ago (and who had no recollection of me or my order at all) yelling at me, telling me that I was a liar and to go find my mythical order form. I went home and got my copy of my order form and got the manager.  I feel like there's a good chance that she spit in it, but the cake (and flowers, and balloons and ice cream) was free. And Avery adored it, which is what matters. She started crying when they told us that they wouldn't make her princess cake. Seriously, that lady was the worst. She didn't even apologize when I proved that she lost my order, she was basically just like, "Wait here for a half hour and I'll make your stupid cake." Her meanness has made my ensuing trips to Safeway quite awkward, as I can no longer walk past the bakery department.
Ugh. And now she's stolen my blogging time.

•  Her favorite thing in the world might be carousels. She adores them and is quite put out when they inevitably are over, usually so much so that I try to avoid letting her see them at all.

Adam is quite lukewarm about carousels.

Avery, I'm really tired, so I need to go to bed (you haven't been sleeping well, remember?). Thank you for the last two years, they have been wonderful. I have to admit, a few nights ago I laid in bed and cried (your dad did too- I'm totally outing him) about you growing up too fast. It is really one of the cruelest parts of life to watch children grow and change when they already seem perfect to you. Hey, I know that I harp on you for your undiscriminating use of screeching and I know that it'd be cool if you wanted to lay off on asking me to hold you, but Little A, you are still just perfect to me. Your beauty, intelligence, and sweetness are a strange combination of overwhelming and miraculous.  You are my daily proof of the Divine.

I wouldn't have you any other way, screeches and all. 

RECAP!

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Two!!