Trick-or-Treat

Alright, so we got off to kind of a rocky start because someone did not want to wear her princess costume...

At this point I was pretty much over all the costume shenanigans and I wasn't going to let this amazing hairstyle by Lizzy go to waste.  (I think this is my "Ok, shush, that's enough. You are fine. You are a princess, you're not going to die" face): 

I decided to pull a "trick" to get the "treats."  I cheerfully asked her if she wanted to go on a walk. She loves to take walks at Gammy's house so she didn't protest when I strapped her into the stroller.  When we got to the first house, I was loudly whispering at her to say, "Trick-or-treat," and I think she got a little freaked out because she had no idea what was going on and strangers were suddenly in her face.

But we said, "Look, Avery, you get candy!"

 

As we walked away from the first house, the tears instantly dried as she dug into the bucket and remarked, "Oh... candy?" 

Now mind you she has no idea what candy is, as we do not give her candy.  But I guess she was just excited that these strangers were putting new things into her princess bucket.

That was all it took. I had planned to trick or treat at only 5 houses. We ended up hitting about 25 houses, stayed out way past her bedtime and filled her bucket up.

My favorite part of the night was walking down the street I grew up on with my brother, who noted, "I haven't trick-or-treated this neighborhood in years!"  I then calculated that it had probably been close to 20 years since I had trick-or-treated there either. And we were happy to discover that a lot of the neighbors still live in the same houses.

As we rounded the corner, he said, "That's the house that used to give out the toothbrushes!"  We started laughing about it, and I suggested that we go ring the doorbell.  Aaron agreed but told me that he was pretty sure that the dentist who lived there had moved out years ago.

A woman answered the door, and we could barely contain ourselves as she handed Avery a little cellophane bag and said softly, "Here's a toothbrush for you!"

It's nice to know that some things never change....

And we did get a few smiles out of Avery before granting her wish to take the dress off.

Happy Halloween!



Sweet Dee

Meet Sweet Dee.

You might be thinking that she looks an awful lot like Dexter. As it turns out, the vet staff mislabeled Dexter as a male when he was just a tiny kitten. And "he" is actually a "she."

Oopsy!

The good news is that we weren't really calling her "Dexter" anyway. But the bad news is that Josh was calling her "Little Guy," I was calling her "Mister," and Avery was calling her "Nonny Boy." So those monikers will all have to go.

Although aggressive for a female, Dee is still very friendly and patient with Avery. 

Piper, too, is learning to become more patient as her house is taken over by babies and kittens that drive her crazy.



Magical Lizzy and the Awesome Octopus

I had a brilliant idea this morning...

Since Avery doesn't like to listen to her mom and dad, 

I brought the octopus costume to Lizzy.



Diagnosis: Neurotic Mother

Since Lizzy was unable to take Avery on Monday or Tuesday of this week, Josh stayed home with her yesterday and I am home with her today.  By a stroke of luck, Fairmont was having their annual family pumpkin patch event yesterday afternoon, so Josh was able to take Avery over to see Gammy and Uncle Aaron and play in the jumper.

Unfortunately he didn't do too much better at getting a good "pumpkin picture," as Avery seems to love making a scowly face at us at every opportunity.

To everyone's horror, somewhere between the bounce house and the playground, Avery sustained an injury.  No one is exactly sure what happened, and she never cried, but she suddenly became unable to walk. She would take a couple of steps like a wobbly baby trying to walk for the first time, and then her left leg would give out and she would collapse onto the ground.  After a few attempts, she gave up and only wanted to be carried.

When I arrived home from work, Josh told me what had happened. She was fine as long as she was not trying to put weight on it. So I decided that we should let her go to sleep and I would call the doctor right away in the morning.

This morning her leg did seem slightly better, but she was still grabbing at her knee and hesitating to put weight onto her left side.  She looked less like a wobbly baby and more like an old lady who is afraid to walk across the room unless she has something to hold onto.  I encouraged her to play on the floor until the doctor's office opened at 8:00.  Dr. Messinger told me that he wanted to see her, and that he would most likely be ordering X-rays, so I packed some food and prepared myself for a long day at the medical center.

Avery did really well on the "big girl" scale for the first time (she is now a whopping 27.4 pounds), and even sat very quietly while the nurse took her temperature and listened to her heart.  But as soon as the nurse left, she started asking for "house?" because she wanted to bolt out of there and go home. 

When Dr. Messinger came in, the screaming and clinging started. It's amazing to me how long we can go between visits and yet she still remembers how much she hates the crinkly paper on the exam table and the sight of the doctor.  I explained to him what I knew about her injury, and then he examined her ankles, knees and hips while I held her sobbing in my lap. 

Everything checked out okay, but he wanted to see her walk so that he could observe the limping and collapsing that I was describing. Since Avery was clinging so tightly, I suggested that I set her down at one end of the hall and then jog down to the other end and let her try to walk to me.

So we did. I took a screaming Avery out into the hallway, put her down, and made a quick 20-foot dash to the other end and held out my arms. And down the hall she sailed, without so much as a hitch in her step.

I was dumbfounded. The doctor said, "Um, let's try that again." At this point I actually found myself wishing that she would start limping so that I would not look like a complete freak show. So I made her come back down the hall to me, and again she whisked like a spring gazelle.  I couldn't decide if I was more relieved or embarrassed as Dr. Messinger remarked, "Well, looks like she is ready for the Olympics!"

I spared him a bunch of the other theories that Josh and I had concocted after spending some time scouring the internet last night for clues.  I decided it was probably best not to mention that we suspected our daughter, who has perfect vital signs and just completed a flawless sprint down the hallway, has leukemia or toxic synovitis.

But I did decide to ask one last question. "Um, can you check her ears before we go?" He seemed a little confused, but said, "Sure. What's going on with her ears?" So I stammered through a story about how she has randomly been saying "Bugs?" and grabbing at her right ear.  I always tell her that there are not bugs in her ear, but then I think about that news story about the kid with spiders living in his ear and start to panic. What if there actually IS a bug in her ear, and I am just brushing her off? What if it lays eggs in there? I would be the worst mother ever. 

"Nope, no bugs..."

I am lucky I didn't walk out of there with a doctor's order to check into the mental hospital.



Pumpkin Patch

We took Avery out for a visit to a local pumpkin patch today. When we were pulling into the parking lot, she saw the three big bouncers and started screaming "JUMPING!"

So we let her jump for a little while before attempting to make her pose for a Fall photo shoot with the pumpkins, which I will admit was my primary intention in bringing her there.

Unfortunately, the jumper photos turned out to be the best photos I got. 

Once we put her shoes back on and directed her to the pumpkins, she wandered aimlessly, refused to smile, threw a tantrum, and was distracted by the "petting zoo" (which was 2 goats and 2 chicks. Hardly a "zoo"! But she liked it anyway).

I was a little disappointed at not getting my perfect pumpkin picture, but she would turn off the smiles anytime we dared to remove her from the jumper.

Naturally, as soon as we pulled out of the lot, she started singing "Hey Jude" and flashing me big toothy grins. Just to spite me, I know it.



Princess Octopus

Here I am at exactly Avery's age. This was the Halloween just before I turned two, and apparently my mom had no problem convincing me that I should be a bumblebee.

 When I chose Avery's costume this year, I was well aware that this would be the last year I would get to pull the wool over her eyes (literally).  I wanted her to be something cute, unique and cozy, so I ordered this adorable pink octopus costume.  I was adamant about getting something other than the typical girly princess getup, as we will have many years ahead where she can insist on being a princess.

 

Boy did I underestimate her.  (That seems to be happening a lot these days).

When the octopus arrived, I excitedly took it out of the package to try it on her. Avery completely rejected that idea.  She protested and became tearful so I figured she was just tired and put it away for another day. 

Then last weekend my mom printed out a whole sheet of pictures of kids dressed up in octopus costumes.  I tried to get the costume on Avery again after she had spent time looking at the pictures, which again ended with her shouting "NO!" and "Put back!" while pointing to the closet from which it came.

On Wednesday, my mom ("Gammy") and Uncle Aaron came over for their weekly visit.  With their added encouragement, I was successful in getting Avery to put on the hat portion of the octopus. 

 Aaron then set up the laptop in front of her highchair, and tried to brainwash her with this octopus video on repeat while she ate her pizza.

However, our mission to get the rest of the costume on her in the days following turned out to be a failure.  We hung it on the edge of her changing table for several days in order to allow her to touch it and conquer her fear of it. We tried putting a tutu on the octopus and convincing her that it was a "Princess Octopus." Josh and I tried to distract her and put on her "pants" (i.e. the costume) in a true sneak-attack fashion. This resulting audio from that scene probably had our neighbors on the verge of calling CPS. ("No, no officer, we weren't trying to shred our daughter's skin off with potato peelers and pour salt into all the wounds. Really. We were just trying to put one of her legs into this darling pink octopus suit...")

So here we are now a week away from Halloween.  At the end of my rope, I finally surrendered to the fact that we need a backup plan. I grudgingly trekked to Target this afternoon for a princess costume, even though I still didn't feel ready to cave in and abandon my dream of a furry pink octopus baby.

No captions needed. The overabundance of glee oozing from these pictures is pretty obvious.

And I get it. I spent every year (after my bumblebee year) dead set on being something "pretty" for Halloween.  I was a unicorn ballerina, a bride, a cancan dancer, Scarlett O'Hara (all pictured below), a ladybug, Miss America, Ginger from Gilligan's Island, a Swiss miss, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Pony, a butterfly, and Daisy Duke, among others.

    

I didn't like to be ugly or scary, even when my choices made me the proverbial black sheep of the family.

I just didn't think Avery had gotten there yet.

...Oh, but this octopus! So warm and soft. Such a sweet little round face. 

And look at the little suckers!

Turns out I'm the sucker.