Avery at 20 Months Old

For being so petite and soft spoken Avery sure is a risk taker and an accident waiting to happen.  Lately our little girl has been in a strong climbing phase, trying and succeeding on climbing on the coffee table, couches, chairs and even the dining table.  Just the other day as I was cooking and Brian was playing with the girls, Avery wandered off and decided that she wanted to touch the flowers in the vase on the table.  She climbed on the dining room chair and then up on the table with such ease that we didn't hear her through her endeavor.  It wasn't until Brian gasped and bolted up from the couch that I turned around and noticed she was so calmly standing on the dining table with a flower in her hand.  That was a close call!  One day I heard small shouts from the girl's bathroom and found Avery had climbed up on the toilet but couldn't find a way down.  That doesn't stop her from still making her way in there and trying it again so I have come to keep the door closed to that area.

Teething is still a big issue at this point and it bothers Avery so much when she is getting a tooth out that she tends to wake up more often at night.  This will happen for a couple of weeks before we see a small inkling of a tooth poking through her gum.  We use lots of bubblegum flavored fever reducer and try and keep her pacifier close by for chewing through the pain.  Teething has led to some biting incidents at school and Avery almost got sent home the other day because she bit three times in one day.  They didn't call for a pickup because the last bite was right before I was about to get her anyway.  Of course not all of the biting incidents are because of teething as Avery has learned that when people get too rough with her she reverts to biting as a defense mechanism.

Although Avery doesn't speak much she does have a big vocabulary and can name objects if you ask her what they are.  She also knows her numbers in English and Spanish from 1-5.  I love to hear her speak Spanish because she really enunciates the letter O of the word.  For example, when saying uno she enunciates the O so it sounds like un-Oh and when saying dos she says, d-Oh-s.  It's hilarious because she also strains her face to make the O shape with her mouth.  Now I have to get her to tell me what she wants instead of pointing at it.