Our Girl

This pretty much sums up Avery's feelings about the cute bows I try to put on her head! 

Sweet blue-eyed girl, at 10 months. 

Well, Avery has not gotten nearly the face time on my blog that her brother did. BUT...there are so many more things to keep up with when you have two children instead of one.

Miss Ave will be 11 months old in a few days and I cannot begin to describe how quickly this first year of her life has flown. She is such a joy and has THE best smile you have ever seen! She has an adventurous little spirit and lately, loves to explore everything that she is not supposed to get into...favorite spots being: bathroom drawers and the laundry room closet where all the shoes are. She also wants to be everywhere her big brother is. She follows him around to see just what he is doing. She still crawls everywhere, but we think it won't be long before she is running. Yes, running. There's a good possibility that Avery will just skip walking all together. She's just like that! She walks along the furniture and will take a couple steps toward us if we bribe her. She will be hard to slow down once she figures out she can walk on her own!

Avery is a great sleeper. She takes a nap in the morning, an hour and a half on a good day, and a nap in the afternoon. She sleeps all night unless she's having tooth pain (like last night). I think she might be getting a mouth full. There are two teeth on top that are just poking through, and another one that looks like its pretty close.

We've discovered that she is not a girly girl. She does not want to leave bows on her head or cute shoes on her feet; she'd rather chew on them. And she loves to dig in the dirt; she chews on that too! Sometimes she forgets that she is just a little thing and makes her way right in with the big kids when we play with friends or go to the county preschool program with Luke.

Avery loves getting attention and playing with her family. She knows just where to find Mommy, however, when she gets tired or hungry. She's quite opinionated when it comes to what she wants:) Our family dinners are filled with squeals, sometimes shrieks, when she's not getting food in her mouth fast enough. Luke just sits there and covers his ears! She loves her thumb when she gets sleepy. It's the sweetest thing to watch her pop it in her mouth and crook her pointer finger over her nose. Her head goes limp too, the instant she starts sucking!

We thank God every day for the blessing of our little girl. I can't wait to see all the personality and passion that continues to blossom in her sweet body! We love you Avery Renae!

Fall Kiddos

Sweet Avery Renae is standing all the time. Surprisingly, she just stands still. The second this girl starts stepping, there will be no keeping up! 

Our loving Luke Michael just can't get enough of being outside! He is getting quite good at his baseball skills and at digging holes in the front landscaping beds. 

Rainy Fall Day...

I woke up feeling pretty sleepy this morning and not incredibly motivated to get anything done. However, I was given a good reminder at our Mom's Connect group at Hillside Community Church this morning. Even though I am in the midst of stinky diapers, potty accidents, piled laundry, dirty dishes, and rainy weather, I can glorify God today. I can choose to do all of those things to His glory and praise Him the whole time! So I'm trying:)

We are a few days behind on the preschool front because of a busy schedule this week. But I found an awesome blog where this wonderful mom has taken time to compile packets full of themed ideas for preschool at home! I have LOVED looking through it and already have used some of the ideas this week with Luke. We collected leaves outside, before it started raining for days, and brought them inside to sort and match and rub. Do you remember doing that? You put the leaf under a piece of paper and rub over it with the side of a crayon. We used fall crayon colors and made beautiful leaf prints! As soon as I get some googly eyes from the craft store, we are going to make some leaf puppet on popsicle sticks too!

This is Luke's paper apple with his wonderfully traced letter  A! 

We did some fun apple things a couple weeks ago. I saw this great idea for an apple sandwich snack that we haven't tried yet, but plan to! I'm convinced that I'm having just as much fun with all our little projects as Luke is!

Preschool, Home Style

So Luke turned 3 in May, and of course, we think he's a genius! He needed to start preschool. We decided not to send him to school yet for several reasons: he's still pretty young, it costs money, and I am slightly qualified to do some teaching of my own:)
I've been so excited about all the stuff we are doing, and I'm going to try to blog about it regularly. We are doing a simple alphabet theme the next well....26 weeks! More to come.