Averi Kate Lately

She often comes up to me and holds her finger and gets a pitiful look on her face as she lifts her finger toward me. I will say, "Aw, did you hurt your finger?" And she will look pitiful and I will say, "I'm so sorry..." and kiss it, and then sometimes I will hold her and other times she will just walk away.

PS. Her finger was never really hurt.

She has recently become very interested in all things babies. She loves to push a "be-bee" around in a stroller, or to wrap a baby doll (or on occasion, a tennis ball) up in a blanket and carry it around maternally.

She is making the monumental linguistic transition from "ma-ma" to "ma-meeeeee".

She is sweet but she does have a temper, mostly toward her beloved sissy and usually when that beloved sissy is either crowding her space (which may happen up to 341 times per day) or taking one of her toys (which never happens) (except for always.) Whenever this happens, I will hear a resounding "nooooooooOOOOOOO!" Which is her favorite word, sometimes. Except for "cheese."

One of her favorite things to do is to read (short) books together. She says "bee" for "book" and her favorite (besides her picture Bible, which she loves) is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?" It's fun to get her to say the sounds that all the different animals in the book make. She usually remembers that a bear says "roar", but she is hesitant on all the others. For dog, she makes a sound as if whispering the /f/ sound and nodding her head at the same time. On most animals she starts to make that very (un)intimidating "woof" sound until I give her the correct sound (tweet-tweet, meow, etc.), at which point she laughs and then imitates it.

One of her other favorite things to do is to point out facial features. We can be having a very serious discussion (such as how you do not bite your sister) and she will all of a sudden become very focused on my face, start to grin, and put a finger right up my nose ("noooo) or in my ear ("eeee").

She loves playing in the sand and will stay at the sandbox for long periods of time, just scooping and pouring and stirring and eating.

Sometimes she will say "poo-poo" and point at her diaper. I will say, "Do you need to poo-poo?" And she will answer in the affirmative. So I will take off her diaper and help her sit on the little potty, where she will make a straining face for 3 seconds and then get up. The bowl will remain empty. I will go to get her another diaper, during which time I will become distracted by something else and forget what I was doing. 5 minutes later she will come and find me and say, "Poo-poo! Poo-poo!" And I will say, "Averi Kate, did you poop in the floor?" And she will once again answer in the affirmative. And then Claire and I will have to go on a poop hunt until we find it.

Oh, my life.

As for stats, she is low in her weight for age but average in weight for height (she's just a shorty). She is pretty on target on her clothes sizes (12-18 months) and she pretty much never wears shoes so I don't know what size her feet are. Except I do know that they are tiny. And they turn in pretty dramatically, so that she trips over them all the time. She is nursing just twice a day (morning and night), and she despises all other forms of milk. Really, she doesn't drink much of anything else except water. She loves cheese, fruit, cheese, bread, and cheese.

And that's AK lately!