20 Months + 2 Days

It's December. Avery is closer to 2 than 1. This year is flying by.

She is so joyful and exuberant about life. She loves to dance, and will dance to any music she hears. Or to the sound of the salad spinner whirling, which she'll pump up and down while saying "wash wash" and swaying those hips back and forth.

She loves shoes, still. Especially high heels. She likes to try and put her own shoes on by herself and becomes quite distraught if I help too much. She shoved her footed sleeper feet into her sneakers the other day.

She gives hugs now, as well as kisses. Her favorite kisses are eskimo kisses with Daddy. When she sees her Nonnie, she runs to her, screaming, "Hi Nonnie, Hi Nonnie!!!". She points out any minivan that looks like Nonnie's, but always manages to only point at the Honda Odysseys, like Nonnie's. She asks to be tickled, "tickle, tickle" while tickling herself. She asks to "tuddle" before bed.

She brings books to me all day - I want to encourage this love of reading, but sometimes I just can't handle reading any.more.that.day. I reach a point where I feel like yelling No More Reading! But I won't, because she's precious, and I love that she loves books as much as her daddy and I do. Her favorite books are Goodnight Moon, which we read every night before bed, Not a Box ("box box") and Yummy Yucky ("ucky!").

She now points out things around the house that are ucky, like the trashcan and the toilet. She still touches things as she says "don't touch".

Tonight she figured out that laying down in the bath isn't scary, and that her voice sounds different when her ears are underwater.

She can go down the stairs, straight down the middle, if it's only 3 or so stairs total. Otherwise, she holds on, but still has no fear. I don't think she's realized that she can fall yet.

She talks non-stop. I have no idea what she is saying 1/3 of the time. The rest of it I understand. New words pop up constantly. The other day she repeated, "Hi, Precious" to my family. The family dog Coda is now Coco. Aunt Shell is An Dell, and Uncle Nick is Nicksh. Their dog Daisy sounds like Disease. Or Jesus. It varies. "Lunch" sounds like a curse word for a female dog. Uh-oh. She demands milk and juice all day long, but we make her drink water between breakfast and dinner. Raisins are "bee-bees". Crackers are "kikis", which used to be what she called cats, but now she says "ki-cat". Everything moos, unless we give her the correct animal sound which she will then repeat. She thinks monkey sounds are the funniest, or maybe it's just my poor impersonation of them. She can point at all of her body parts when we name them. She has names for her friends. Emme is Em-may. Skyler, Selah, and Analise have become Allah, Lala and Weece, or something similar.

She asks us to put bows in her hair now. I've given up on trimming the hair until it grows out long, so she walks around with her head tilted back trying to see from underneath her bangs.

We have an Advent calendar going this year, and tonight's activity was to introduce her to hot cocoa. She didn't take a breath the entire time she drank it. I guess she liked it. And she wore pajamas that said I Love Hot Chocolate. I didn't even plan that. I swear.

Love.This.Girl.