A Milestone

Today was a milestone day.

Avery pulled herself up to stand!

All by herself!

And then cried and whimpered until I got her down.

Standing is scary!

Tenacious A

Having a crawling baby in the house has simultaneously made it more important and more difficult to keep our house clean.  We went on a rampant baby proofing spree this weekend in hopes of getting all the non-baby items above 26".  And still she manages to find the one thing she shouldn't have.

We swapped out our glass shelved TV stand for an old dresser (that I plan to refinish) so Avery wouldn't be able to reach all the electronic stuff anymore.

The dresser is a little wider and taller than the TV stand was.  While arranging the new set-up, Kyle expressed his great concern that the new configuration would mess up the surround sound.  So he promptly tested it out on Mission Impossible: 3 and sat in all of the seats to make sure the sound was still "just right."

And he thinks I'm the weird one?

And back to the baby business...  in all our baby proofing, we underestimated Avery's unique ability to reach anything and everything she wants.  Today's nap time ended with a huge crash from the nursery where she had somehow managed to pull my beloved milk glass lamp off of her dresser which is easily a foot away from the crib.  I also found her curtains pulled through the crib rails.

She might keep us on our toes, but I just love her tenacity.

Lunch Date

Kyle forgot his lunch today so Avery and I decided to take a little trip to his office to bring it to him!

She's an executive in training.

Not a bad typist either!

Under Things

Since Avery has become mobile, she likes to scoot herself underneath pretty much everything.

Her only problem is she can't get herself out.

Here's just a few things I've found her under lately:

Back to Boise

We were missing family so we went back to Boise over the holiday weekend.

Traveling more than 30 minutes in the car is nerve racking when you have a baby who HATES the car.

But it started off not so bad.

 We stopped about half way for a break from the car and to give the baby a chance to smile at a bunch of strangers.  The return to the car was not so happy...  it took an hour and a half of playing Baby Einstein on the iPhone to make it through the last leg of the drive.

(bless you, Baby Einstein)

Saturday morning we went to our nephew, Darin's basketball games.  Most of Kyle's family (and some of mine) live in the Boise area and it always makes us sad that we live so far away.   When someone has a game, the whole family shows up!  I love that everyone is so supportive.  And it's quite the party!

Poor Bryant.  Avery is pretty much terrified of guys.  I bribed her with some snacks and a book so she would remember that she loves him.

 Avery & Aunt Elise

We totally took advantage of being with family so we could have a date night.  We had a great dinner at Bardenay in downtown Boise (where I totally fell on my butt in a crowded restaurant) and went bowling for the first time in years.

Clearly, we need some practice.

 

I swear, Avery has got to be the squirmiest baby I've ever met.  Good luck sitting through 3 hours of church on Sunday because she can't even make it 10 minutes holding still.

She's gotten even squirmier now that she's a professional crawler.  I mean, why sit when you can move?!

While trying to change her clothes, we barely got the diaper strapped on before she was outta there.

My sister also lives in the Boise area so we got to spend some time with her and her family.

 She is a great photographer too so she snapped a couple of cute pictures of my 7 month old baby face!

I love that face.

As we were getting ready to head home, Kyle wanted to stop at Bronco Stadium on our way out so Grandma tied on a bandana to keep Avery's ears warm. I can't decide which version I like better: the prairie child or gangstalicious?

  

 The bandana didn't survive the drive to Bronco Stadium, but we were able to enjoy a few minutes admiring the blue turf.  It's one of Kyle's most favorite places on earth.

On our drive home, we stopped in Twin Falls to see one of my very best friends Kristen and her new baby Leah!  Leah is 2 weeks old and right now is the same size Avery was when she was born.  She is so sweet!!  It's hard to believe Avery was once that tiny.

*sniff*

Isn't she SO precious?!?

(My sister took this one too.  I told ya she's good)

After a couple of hours in Twin Falls, we were back on the road.  We tried EVERYTHING to entertain this kid on the way home.  Let me tell you, 6 hours in the car is no picnic.  Even though it was, at times, kind of fun.

She slept a little, but woke up mad that she was still in the car.

See that glare?

She's got it down.

By the time we FINALLY got home, not even Baby Einstein would cheer her up.

But the trip was totally worth it.

The Power

Sometimes when we are bored we like to walk around Home Depot.

Home Depot is like my place of dreams.

I love that place.

This time was Avery's first experience sitting in the cart without her car seat and being the germ-conscious mom that I am, thought I'd sanitize the cart for her.  I had a thing of spray sanitizer in my diaper bag and sprayed away!

Only Avery was already sitting in the cart and I kind of sprayed her in the face.

And she cried big baby tears of sadness.

Fail.

A trip down the lighting aisle and she was good as new.

That's the power of the Home Depot.

Holland's Not So Bad I Guess

via

A few weeks after we first received the news about PKU, I was talking with a friend about what the experience had been like so far.  I realized in talking to her that I literally felt like my baby had died.  It probably sounds so dramatic, but I was, in fact, in mourning.  I was overcome with sadness and I became depressed and incredibly angry.  The reality was that the baby I thought I had and some of the experiences I'd thought we'd have together no longer existed and I was grieving for the loss of those dreams.  When I finally realized that, it helped me to get through those most difficult first couple of months.  I put away the ideals I'd so long held of what having a baby would be like and fell in love with my perfect tiny baby all over again.

From blogging about our experiences with PKU, I've been able to meet other moms who are going through the same thing.  One of them has a baby almost exactly Avery's age!  I mean, what are the odds?  She shared thisamazing essay on her blog (Hi, Kate!) about what it's like to go through something like this.

I think about this essay a lot and every time I read it I can't help but cry.

It's written by a mother of a child with a disability but I think it can apply to any shattered dream or trial we might go through.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."  "Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.  The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.  It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."  And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.