AVERY

Age: 34 1/2 months. Turning three soon! It seems like she's been almost three forever!!

She loves to: Play outside, go to the park, play with play doh, watercolor, draw, read books, sing, play games, go to nursery, go to the library, watch movies, and above all DRESS UP. She wears her princess dress up clothes 24/7. I'm not kidding. I'm lucky to get regular clothes on her for a few hours a day. And it's not just the dress- she has to have the whole ensemble. The earrings, the necklace, the crown, the shoes.

Her favorite food: She likes really strange things sometimes - cold hot dogs, uncooked pasta, frozen ravioli, frozen peas. Anything that she can much on immediately. And I thought I liked food that was quick to put together!

Her favorite shows: Enchanted, The Little Mermaid II, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Dora, Olivia, Dragon Tales... etc. She's enjoyed watching new things lately, which is a welcome respite from her Dora 24/7 phase.

Words: She's a great talker, coming up with all kinds of things we'd never thought we'd hear her say. Merrick told her what her job was the other night and she said, "It's my job NOT to help." She cracks us up a lot. She's also got a great memory. She can read about 50+ words now just by visual memorization. She knows all the colors, shapes, some animals, lots of foods, everyone's names, and just all the basic words you see a lot (family, book, tree, milk, etc.). We just write them down and she can tell us what they are. Pretty impressive.

Hooray for: A potty trained 2 year old! She did AWESOME. It seems like every week since we potty trained her she's gotten more comfortable with it. After mastering sleeping without a pullup, she is now comfortable going potty at church, the library, Kohl's, etc. which is really nice. And now she doesn't hardly want to use her step or her potty insert. She's a big girl all the way now. We're pretty stoked.

Avery developed some good fine motor skills early on and was able to draw a face several months ago. Here's a picture of a mouse she drew on her magnadoodle a month or so ago:
I was pretty impressed. Anyways, we think she's pretty dang smart. She's a pretty happy girl most of the time too. We do have our challenges with her (she's two isn't she?) but we love having her in our family. It's so amazing to see your baby grow up a little bit every day. And, boy, do they grow up fast!