A few weeks ago feeling much steadier with Daddy Daddy Daddy. Love her hiked up britches.She knows where her toes, belly button, tummy, ears, nose and hair are. She loves to try to eat her feet and when I tell her "Don't eat your toes, you're going to need them later, I swear" she giggles and tries even harder to get them into her mouth.
You name it, she'll point to the right object much of the time. Balloon? Baby? Ball? Dog? Cat? She'll nail it.
Signs in her vocab include fan, dog, milk, more, baby, ball, banana. She sees us with any food whatsoever and will immediately sign "more." "I'll have what she's having."
Favorite words are Daddy (which I'm now convinced she uses for either of us), dog, and yum yum. She said "nigh nigh" (night night) the other night, and you probably could have heard our hearts breaking.
She’s using objects for their intended purpose—she'll brush her hair with her brush, try to put her socks and shoes on, or will hold my phone to her ear (which is funny because that’s what I do with my phone the least).
She loves her walk-behind dinosaur but will also push her music table around like it's a walker. It ends up all over the place.
She’ll pick something up from the floor, something teeny tiny—fuzz, a piece of dirt—pinch it between her fingers and either give it to me or bring it to her mouth. Sometimes she genuinely wants to put it in her mouth; other times she just wants me to react and grab it from her. This is hilarious.
She crawls into our laps. Usually brings a book. It’s one of her favorite spots.
She can entertain herself with books for an hour. There's nothing that breaks my heart more than looking out and seeing her flipping contently through a book.
She's increasingly fascinated with the toilet and wants to flush it. And grab the toilet paper off the roll.
She loves to beat me to the dog dish and splash in the water.
She loves Marti and looooves that she can get Marti to react. It's hilarious to throw food off the high chair and hear Marti scramble to snarf it up. And she just learned that she can lean over and give food directly to the dog; this is the best thing since sliced banana.
Here Avery has discovered that extra Cheerios sometimes pop out of her snack bowl and fall to Marti. She can hardly contain herself.
She loves being "scared" of Marti. If Marti comes racing in, she loves to come to me like she needs to take cover. Which, let's be honest, sometimes she does.
If you have her on your hip, sometimes she'll lean to the side to get right in your face and give you a huge smile.
And now a few pics for fun.
Checking out pony rides recently on the farm.
Not entirely sure how I managed to hold her up to the cow.
Her pictures should come with sound.
Strike a pose.
I gave up on those jeans weeks ago.
Definitely more belly, no? The pants can no longer comfortably button, I'm already wearing a belly band, and I'm about to just give in to maternity jeans. While I look forward to the impending comfort when I make that move, I know that I will be wearing them for an eternity and will be so sick of them, so I'm holding off.I wasn’t apprehensive about going on a cruise earlier this month while battling bouts of morning sickness. Which is surprising because I’m the type who gets carsick on winding roads. Who pops a Dramamine when going on a 3-hour whale watching trip because I’d rather deal with the guaranteed-sleepy of a pill than the possible-vomitty of seasickness. So it’s a bit funny that the cruise didn’t have me rattled, especially because I didn’t check with my doctor to okay the use of Dramamine, and had it been okayed I’m the type who chooses to “tough it out” rather than pop a pill when pregnant unless absolutely necessary. So I bought some Sea Bands, which I didn’t even use. Cruises are leisure. Smooth sailing over smooth waters. And I was totally fine for the first four days, morning sickness and all. One minor dry heave when the boat lurched while I was in the bathroom, par for my morning course.
The first four days: I was a rockstar seawoman. I started thinking of joining the Navy. Writing Bridget Jones-isms in my head like: I am stud pregnant woman who can deal with open water; must look into buying fishing boat.
And then Day 5 happened.
Oh, Day 5.
We woke up during the night to drawers opening and closing. No, our stateroom wasn’t haunted. Or actually, it was haunted. By a little hurricane named Katia. We remained in the grip of the storm for an eternity. An eternity that made it look like everyone on the boat was drunk, stumbling around, trying not to vomit all over the place. And some people failed in their attempts to hold their vomit. I am one of those people. Here is my story.
Wanting to take advantage of the kids’ playroom, which weirdly limits the times kids under 2 can spend in there, we headed up for a couple of hours of crawling mania and toys that weren’t books. The attendant commented on the rocking, saying that because the room was at one of the highest points of the boat, you really feel the boat sway. I almost told him I didn’t know what he was talking about; I could barely feel it as we were practically flung back and forth as the boat pitched. I don’t know how Avery could even crawl straight.
Avery had a blast. Made friends with another little girl and adorably crawled through a caterpillar. I was fine. Still thinking of captaining a boat some day. Until everything changed. All of a sudden, I stood up, left Avery where she was and headed in Alan’s direction. “We have to go.” And then I put two toys away. Maybe mumbled “Uh oh” and high-tailed it to the bathroom.
I’m sure the attendant saw me turning all sorts of shades of green as I ran toward the bathroom. I’m sure he was hoping that I wouldn’t barf all over the carpeted kids’ room. And I was hoping the same thing, as I covered my mouth just feet from the bathroom. Let’s just say: I didn’t make it to the toilet, but I did make it to the bathroom. Barfing while simultaneously trying to dislodge the door stop that prevents kids from going into the bathroom unsupervised and locking themselves in.
I managed to hit the toilet, eventually, after hitting the diaper pail and oh, the floor. It seemed fitting to puke all over a room that I’m sure has seen its share of puke before. I then had to clean my mess up, which was about as fun as creating it had been. I blew off Alan’s offers of help; I love him for the offer, and I love him enough not to do that to him. He also explained that I was pregnant to the attendant, whom I hope was relieved at the extensive cleaning I had done, even if he would have to restock the non-absorbent paper towels.
I think I was one of the lucky ones who actually made it to a bathroom, kind of. I got the impression that others weren’t as fortunate, as I saw what looked like moist, freshly carpet-cleaned areas throughout the ship the entire day. I felt a ton better after my episode though, and didn’t have another incident the rest of the day. I did, however, carry a barf bag around, just in case.
*If that's not an enticing post title, I don't know what is.
