Lemonade

Well I seem to have fallen behind... So let me recap the weekend. 

On Saturday morning, Avery went upstairs with Josh because she likes to play with the exercise ball. He had her birthday present up there, which was a big basketball hoop. It was still in the box, but he hadn't covered up the box or taken any extra measures to conceal it.  So when she went up the stairs, she saw it. 

I told Josh that she could just look at the pictures of kids on the box, she didn't have to know what was actually in there. But he felt bad for her, so he set it up. 

Her excitement lasted about 10 minutes. But Josh's excitement still hasn't worn off.

I think I know who this gift was actually for...

Later in the morning, Avery (surprisingly) let me dress her for dance class (with the exception of princess shoes in place of ballet slippers, of course).

She practiced her moves before we left..

Passe:

Tendu:

Arabesque:

Plie:

Chausse:

After Avery was asleep last night, I started steaming our clothes and prepping for our family photo shoot (for Avery's 2 year pictures and our family Christmas card photo), which was today. Just to emphasize the importance of this day, let me interject here that I booked this photo shoot a year ago. A YEAR ago. 

So naturally, here's where things started to fall apart. 

I had misread the calendar when scheduling my hair appointment prior to the pictures.  So my hair appointment is NEXT Saturday. By the time I realized I had scheduled it a week later than I wanted it, it was too late to change it, as Julie was not working this weekend.  So she suggested that I just get some blond dye at the store to touch up my roots before the pictures, and then she would take care of the highlights next week. 

I don't know if I just got the wrong color, or if I just didn't apply it correctly, but my hair turned out bright orange. ORANGE. Not an exaggeration. I looked pretty much like a Golden Tamarin. I completely freaked out, and assumed I didn't allow the bleach enough processing time, so I decided to go for a second round.  This of course made my hair even lighter with patches of yellowish white mixed in with the orange, so then I looked like a 50/50 bar.  (This is why I usually leave my hair to a professional).

By the time I was done with the second round of dye and my second tearful phone call to Julie, I gave up and went to bed, with the depressing plan to buy a hat in the morning to cover my head for the pictures (and for the workweek).

Fast forward to this morning. I woke up, wishing it was all a nightmare as I stared at my Carrot Top reflection in the mirror. Then Avery woke up with a pimple on her cheek. Yes, a pimple. (!?!?)

I zoomed out of the house at 11:00 (when I knew the clothing store near our house would be open) and came home with one hat and a couple of headbands. I was pretty happy about one of the headbands, which seemed to cover the worst spot on my head, but Josh hated it and told me it looked like I was wearing a dead bird. (He really has a way with words).  Well, between drunken-clown-orange and dead bird, I chose dead bird.

Let me add in here that Avery wouldn't nap, so Josh somehow managed to get her to crash out for 40 minutes in her highchair because she wouldn't go in her bed.  So she had purple circles under her eyes, which was adding to my stress. Every time I try to orchestrate things perfectly and construct a plan around her schedule, she manages to completely botch it.

But despite the various debacles, the lemons found their way into lemonade, so to speak.  Avery miraculously went on the big girl potty for the first time in the middle of all this chaos. The forecast said rain, but the sky cleared this morning and we had beautiful sunny skies for our pictures.  And somehow, some way, with my orange head and Avery's pimple and dark circles, (and one talented photographer), we managed to pull it together.

[Disclaimer: this is the only photo I have seen. So there is still a chance that this is the only decent one out of all the hundreds we took.  But I'm hoping for lemonade!]

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.