It is April right??? In Wisconsin, I guess that still means winter…
So again, I say…What gives?
We are supposed to get 3-6 inches of snow today; a lovely little birdie (who will remain nameless…Emily) informed me that it is supposed to get up to 60 in St. Louis today…that doesn’t seem fair now does it? The power has gone out four times today; Avery is not quite sure what to think of that. Okay, I’m done with that for now.
Update: since I started this post, we are up to six power outages…seven, eight, nine, ten…(long post), okay I’ve stopped counting…
Other funny stuff…
For those of you who have not seen these photos…
I have NO idea what was going through his cute little head at this moment…he started to put his hands up to his forhead (like they were horns). He did this a few times so I figured by the time I got the camera, he would be done with this talent (like usual) and moved on to something different. Well, I was right…funny boy.
Food…and doctors
For those of you who have not heard…our little boy is officially on solid foods.
Side note…
We had our appointment with the Ear Nose and Throat doc who gave us the okay and informed us that his laryngomalasia/stridor are improving by leaps and bounds and he thinks Avery will grow right out of it. That was some of the best news I have heard in a LONG time…that means the chances of surgery are pretty much null!!!!! Whew!
Back to the subject at hand…
We started with Carrots; as you remember, he did NOT like them. We moved on to sweet potatoes (yuk) and he really seems to like them.
”These are my sweet potatoes, and I like them”
From there, we tried some bananas (yum) we still aren’t sure of these. I have stopped those and will try them again later. Our next attempt will be peaches (again, yum). I am trying to alternate between veggies and fruit, so he is getting a balanced diet. From there we will go to squash, then some other fruit, green beans, etc…
I think the problem with the bananas is two fold..One…I think the consistancy is a little too different for him and he is trying to figure that out…Two…I think he is having some ‘digestive’ problems that commonly accompany this particular fruit. Things on that ‘front’ have been very different lately. Okay, I’m done with that subject.
Big, big, big…
At our doctor’s appointment on March 20th, Avery weighed in at a whopping 15 pounds, 5 1/2 ounces; at our ENT appointment on April 5th, he weighed in at an even more whopping 16 pounds, 9 ounces! Obviously he is NOT starving! At our regular appointment on March 8th (his SIX MONTH birthday) Dr C said that Avery is going to be a small boy. He said that Avery is just going to take after his mommy…we’ll see, he seems to be growing rapidly right now if you ask me.
Zoom, old…
On Easter Sunday, Avery turned seven months old! That still shocks me. Pretty soon he is going to be a year old! Scary thought. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter, I wish we could have been there! Here’s a picture of Avery’s first Easter…
The Easter bunny arrived on Friday night (in the form of Uncle Dave). He came bearing an Easter basket dressed up as a baseball (ironically, it was the one that I was looking at getting for him at Target). In it was a few outfits, and Pablo dressed up like the Easter bunny. He’s cute, you can pull back the ‘hood’ from the bunny costume and see Pablo’s beenie. For those of you who are not hip on the kids shows these days, Pablo is from the Backyardigans. Maddie (Dave’s daughter) and Ben (Emily and Neil’s son, for those of you who don’t know) watch it and really like it (and apparently Neil too)
I, myself, have watched it multiple times and have found it a cute show. I don’t let Avery watch it yet, because as you are aware, he is only seven months old. I have, however watched it with Maddie (as well as by myself while Avery naps) and I am hooked too. (On another note…we actually arrived ON TIME to mass on Easter Sunday – problem was, there was no parking and we had to go searching; as bad as this sounds, we ended up parking in the cemetary, so it took us longer to actually get into church, but it still counts right?)
Wiggle, wiggle, hop, hop…
He is not quite crawling yet, he kinda does this hopping inchworm/military crawl to get around, but he is getting around very quickly now. I have the baby gate up and I have taken all the cushions off of the couches, however, he learned after THREE days, how to climb right over those and head for the kitchen and dining room table and chairs. Not sure what I am going to attempt next, but I hope whatever it is works longer than 3 days! I have tried a little makeshift fort. We have two escape routes from the middle of the living room, where it is safe for him to play. He basically has a U shaped area to run around in. One of the escape routes goes from the end of one part of the couch to the kitchen bar…the other goes from the end of the other couch to the wall holding the entertainment center. My new fort consists of his toy basket lined against his excersaucer agains a laundry basket tipped on it’s side (because, as we all know, he loves to play in those), then a few pillows. So far, that is working. On the other side, I have another laundry basket against two couch cushions piled on top of one another. We will see how many days this will work. So far, he hasn’t figured out that he can probably fit through the excersaucer itself…hope that doesn’t occur to him anytime in the near future!
Eeek, where’s Mommy?…
Avery is going through what seems to be some separation anxiety at the moment. He cries when I am out of eyesight, when I leave the room (even if he can still see me) and even when I am in the room, but not touching him. It’s sweet and makes me feel loved and needed (like I didn’t already), but it makes getting anything accomplished throughout the day nearly impossible. It even makes it difficult to take a shower. I used to sit him in his bouncy seat in the bathroom while I showered; that is until he tried to take a swan dive out of it. Then more recently I have been hauling his excersaucer into the bathroom (not an easy feat) and taking a shower, but even that is difficult now. He doesn’t seem as thrilled to play in his excersaucer as he used to. I don’t know what I am going to do next, aside from getting up at 4 am to take a shower before Todd leaves. I guess we will cross that bridge when we come to it.
Bottle…
He is getting really good at holding his bottle up on his own. He has been doing it for a few months while you hold him on your lap and feed him, but couldn’t quite get the hang of doing it himself while in the high chair. One day, he just put his mind to it and said ‘mom, I will take that’. (okay, so I know he can’t talk, so maybe he just grabbed the bottle from me… technicality) He is doing really well at it. It makes it so I can give him the bottle while I prepare his cereal and baby food. Much easier…and great independence for him. He learns so much every day!

Funny new game…
Okay, so Avery has this zoo animal train that Aunt Emily, Uncle Neil and Ben got him for Christmas. When he pushes the ’smoke stack’ it plays a song. When he pushes the place where the girraff stands it plays a song, one of four each time he presses it. Originally, he would move the girraff and it would activate the song. He didn’t know why the sound happened, he just enjoyed it. In the last month or so, he has figured out that if he pulls the girraff out completely, he can reach his hand into where the girraff was and push the base to make the music himself. (I think that made sense). I know that he is doing that intentionally because he will lean the train over, reach his hand in and it starts a song. He plays with the wheel until the song is over. When the song stops, he looks at it and either reaches his hand in to push the base or pushes on the smoke stack to make a song start, then smiles real big at it. This goes on over and over…
Normally, because I’m weird, I sing along with the tunes because I have heard them enough times to know them (and the order they play in). I was being silly this afternoon and being very dramatic with my singing; Avery ate it up and started laughing. He started (or I started, not sure which) this game…He reaches in and pushes the base, lets go of the train and turns and looks at me, waiting for me to be goofy. I do, of course ‘cuz that’s who I am, and he laughs and laughs. The song stops and the process happens all over again. He is a funny little boy and is really learning cause and affect very quickly. He is very deliberate in pushing buttons and making things make noise. Funny.
He also ‘talks’ to his toys, bottles, sweet potatoes, mom, dad, kitties etc. I was telling Mom and Dad today that while I was feeding him his breakfast I heard something that sounded like “I love you,” though I’m sure it was not. It was followed by what sounded like daddy (which could be), followed by Oahu (I think that is one of the Hawiian Islands). He’s going to major in geography (or at least be better at it than his mommy).
”Cheeeese”
Funny boy…later gaters