Avery's Art: Port-A-Potty or Bear?

Oh my word. I haven't blogged in AGES. But this was too good not to share. I get to brag on my big girl's art work and share a funny conversation between Troy and me? WINNING!

Avery has been going to school on tuesdays and thursdays all day and she absolutely loves it. She is quite a talented artist, loves to color and paint, bringing home all kinds of projects every day that she has done at school.

Last week, she brought home a picture that was AWESOME. I knew what it was immediately. Her teachers always label her pictures, but this one didn't need it. Or so I thought.

I thought her picture was so awesome, it deserved the center spot on the refrigerator.

Troy came home from work and started unpacking his lunchbox (tupperware in the sink, uneaten items back in the fridge for another day) while I was getting dinner started.

I noticed him staring at her picture on the fridge.

Like, intensely staring.

I got all excited.

Natalie: "Troy, isn't her picture great?!?!"

Troy: "Um, I guess so. I'm not sure it should be on the fridge though."

Natalie: "What? What do you mean?"

Troy: "Well, it's a little awkward."

Natalie: "What are you talking about? It's a perfect bear!"

Troy: "Well, I hate to say this, but the only thing I see when I look at it, is what you see when you use a port-a-potty."

Natalie: "WHAT?"

Troy: "You know. When you look down the hole and there's just a giant pile of poop at the bottom of a dark hole."

Natalie: "Are you kidding me right now? You are looking at a perfect bear and all you see is poop?"

Troy: "SORRY! It's just unappetizing to look at right when I am opening the fridge to eat and all I can see is poop."

Natalie: "You are awful. You tell Avery how amazing her picture is right now."

Troy: (gives Avery a big throw up in the air hug) "AVERY!!! I love your picture! That is the best bear I have ever seen!!

Avery: "HE'S IN A CAVE"

Troy: "I KNOW! It's called a port-a-potty cave!!!"

Natalie: "TROY STOP"

I guess that's the difference between moms and dads. But here is her picture. It's great right? I've probably ruined it because I told you it's a giant pile of poop. Sorry about that.

Anecdotes with Avery

I thought I'd start a series about funny conversations with Avery. She's hilarious and makes us laugh everyday. I thought we could share the joy!

The other night I am tucking Avery into bed:

Me: You are SO silly!

Avery: NO, I'm Avery Barnes!

Me: You're right. Am I Mommy Barnes?

Avery: No, you're Natalie Barnes!

Me: (laughing) Is Daddy Daddy Barnes?

Avery: NO! That's Troy Barnes!



We were making homemade cookies yesterday:

Avery: OH NO! OOOOOPS!

Me: Oh no, what happened?

Avery: I licked the spoon. I'm sorry.

Me: Why did you lick the spoon? Was it an accident?

Avery: I put it in my mouth. It's yummy in my tummy.

Me: I think we need to learn the difference between an accident and on purpose.

Avery: Yeah. It was good.

Me: I know.


Every night we say the EXACT same dinner prayer and let Avery fill in 3 things that she is thankful for. Normally she says baby Caris, baby Kinley, Optimus, fruits, or candies. It's 3 of those 5 things in various orders. 2 nights ago she said this:

Dear God, thank you for a pretty day. Thank you for Jesus, Cinderella, and Jasmine. In Jesus' name we pray, AMEN!

She opened her eyes and looked at us and Troy and I almost started crying. It was SO unexpected and amazing. I mean, she put Jesus in the same category as 2 Disney Princesses, but she also didn't say any of the 5 things that she normally says.

I looked at Troy and we both had watery eyes. Baby girl thanked God for Jesus. We talked about it later and I was like, "I heard her say 'Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to die on the cross for me.'" Now, I know that's not what she actually said, but that's what I heard. And my heart was singing.

Avery Singing "What Does the Fox Say?"

I cannot get enough of this girl. I really can't. She is precious. And possibly tone deaf.

You may remember when I talked about her obsession with Ylvis last year. Well, now she sings the song. The video is kinda dark, but it's about her singing more than the fact that she's sitting on the couch in her Rapunzel dress, playing with stickers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xGx0KpXvGo8

Avery Developing her Fine Motor Skills

I'll be the first person to tell you that I am TERRIBLE about teaching Avery things. I generally have the attitude of "she'll learn it eventually and there's no reason to push her." As a result, Avery didn't learn her colors until about 2 months ago. She said that everything was orange. Not kidding. Troy and I finally were like, "ummmmm, what's her deal?" And then we realized it was because we weren't making a real effort to sit down and teach her.

I'm not above bribing. Every day, after lunch and dinner, Avery sat down at the table with Troy or me and we learned colors. With M&Ms. That's right. She was allowed to eat the candy if she got the color right. We gave her good incentive. And then she was constantly like, "can we do chocolate colors?" It took about 2 weeks of daily effort, but she now knows almost all her colors. The main ones anyways. She has a really hard time with things like gray, teal (or any shade of that kooky teal/green/aquamarine color) and marigold (where there's a fine line between orange and yellow).

She knows about half of her letters, but again, we aren't really pushing it. Like at all.

She recently got SUPER interested in coloring and drawing pictures. I could not be more proud of her tripod grasp on a pen or marker. It's gorgeous. She colors for at least an hour a day. Here are some of her pictures:

Her VERY first smiley face!

Look at that detail:

She colored this whole picture by herself:

I love how she colors the letters at the bottom. She notices the weirdest details to color. Most kids would color the dress and focus on the main part of the picture. Not Avery. She colors the spines of the books and the architecture in the background:

I helped color some of the blocks on the left side, but she colored the rest of this one too:

I just love it. She is actually out of pictures in her coloring book now, so I have to go get another book for her to start on. In addition, I want to get a handwriting book that is similar to Handwriting Without Tears especially since her grasp and control is so good! Here are few free downloadable pages if you are interested in how the program works. The program teaches numbers and letters using basic rules and funny directions for kids to learn the proper way to write. It starts with easy concepts first, like horizontal and vertical lines. So letters like E, F, L, T, and I are first. Once they master certain skills, it goes to other letters that are curved like C and O. Then it combines the 2 concepts for other letters like D, P, B, and G. You get the idea.

So anyways. Hopefully we can get some of those books and some blank lined paper to practice. As a side note, we enrolled Avery in preschool for the fall, starting August 26, 2014. She'll be going on tuesdays and thursday all day. Troy and I were really impressed with the school when we took a tour. The FIRST GRADERS were diagramming sentences and doing basic algebra (4 + X = 7) and Troy almost started crying. We were both like "ummmmm, what?!?!? We didn't diagram sentences until middle or high school." Crazy.

Visiting Santa with all the Kiddos

I think we have found the REAL Santa. And he lives in Las Vegas. More specifically, at the Fashion Show Mall. He was here last year:

And he was here again this year with all our kids. He seriously is awesome. BEST looking Santa I have EVER seen.

We brought all of the kids to the mall in their comfy clothes and then when we got to the parking garage there, we changed Avery into her Christmas dress. We put the twins in their stroller and walked in front of Macy's, where Santa was set up with his elves. Troy was prepping Avery the whole time to "ask for a bicycle, ask for a bicycle, okay?"

We were TOTALLY that family who took forever because we changed Caris and Kinley's clothes when we got there. Lucky for us, there was only one family behind us and they were super patient. It's a funny thing. You have two infants and people are suddenly patient and inquisitive everywhere you go. And by "a funny thing," I mean a weird thing.

**side note: We went to Costco last week and Troy was pushing the twins and I was pushing the cart with the food and Avery. Troy got cornered for almost 10 minutes by an older woman (maybe late 60s) and her husband. The lady was CRYING when she saw them! "They are so beautiful! Are they real?!?!?" She was praying over them, crying, and asking all kinds of questions and Troy was seriously uncomfortable. BAHAHAHA! I just hid 2 aisles over and laughed. Poor guy. My friends with multiples were not joking when they told me that going out with them turns into a show and everyone stopping you and telling you about their sister's cousin who is a twin. It's a circus every time we go out. It's hilarious.

Anyway. Santa.

We made sure all of the kiddos were presentable and waited for Avery to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She told him she wanted The Little Mermaid. Not a doll. Like the actual mermaid Ariel as a friend for a visit. Bicycle completely forgotten in favor of Disney Princesses. Then we handed the twins over to Santa for our picture. How cute are they?

After we retrieved twins from Santa, Avery hopped down from the bench and ran over to us. Troy said, "so did you ask Santa for your bicycle?" And Avery goes, "OH NO!!!" And she runs back over to Santa (while he's saying hi to the next family) and yells, "I NEED A PINK BICYCLE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

We started laughing so hard. Everyone was super nice about it...probably because she's so cute.

So, all of our Las Vegas amigos, if you want to see a great Santa, head over to the Macy's at the Fashion Show mall on the strip.

A Fairy Princess

SOOOOOOO sorry about that. I've been absent for about 3 weeks now. Radio silence. You all must know what that means...the babies are here!! I will be posting about that very very soon. As in, maybe tonight after Avery goes to bed and I can start writing. But in the meantime, I need to do a Halloween post, before it gets too far away.

Last year, Troy and Avery had coordinating outfits as Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat. You can read all about that here.

I looked back at that post and seriously, my heart was breaking. She is SO big and grown up now. And talking constantly, trying my patience. Thank you Jesus for making her cute because seriously, if she says "mommy" one more time I might kill her. This is my life right now:



Anyway.

For Christmas last year, her Aunt Taylor bought Avery a dress up box, but she wasn't really interested in it until about 2 months ago. Like, she lives in her Rapunzel dress. For us, it was a natural choice to let her pick things out of her dress up box to wear for Halloween. Oh yeah, and I was hugely pregnant and not really feeling like DIYing something cute or creative either. Pinterest mom of the year right here! And Caris came home from the hospital on oxygen 2 hours before Avery left to go trick or treating with Troy. We were ALLLLL about easy this year.

So Avery decided to wear her Rapunzel dress and fairy wings with her sparkly TOMs and be a fairy princess. And Troy wore his Uncle Si costume. He's getting good use out of that thing, huh? He said that more people were commenting on his costume while trick or treating and he felt a little guilty about stealing the spotlight from Her Royal Cuteness.

Here are the trick or treaters before they left. Avery was very excited because she got to wear makeup for the very first time! Grandma did a GREAT job with the eye shadow and blush :)

Here's a family photo (excuse the puffiness...I don't even look like myself...)

Here's a side view of Princess Avery's wings:

And here's one of Avery and me. Gosh, I love this girl. Even if she drives me nuts. Like I said...thank God she's cute.

"What Does the Fox Say?"

First of all, if you haven't watched this video yet, a) you're missing out and b) this post will make NO sense to you. It's Avery's new favorite. She asks to watch it at least once a day. So watch the video.



And here is Avery and her crazy Daddy singing and dancing. Avery is just transfixed.



When you ask her "what does a fox say?" she says "ring a ding ding ding." DYING. So funny.

In different (but related news) I splurged on some treats for Kinley and Caris. At Avery's baby shower, my mom's friend Brenda bought Avery a "JellyCat" teddy bear from some boutique. Well, Avery LOVES him and sleeps with him every night. And his name is Bear-Bear. Real original, right? Meet Bear-Bear tucked into her bed:

He is a pink, corduroy teddy bear. He has been dragged around all of our moves, thrown up on, drug through the dirt, made some road trips, and been washed about 50 times. When we took her pacifier away when she was a year old, she used his nose as a pacifier. He looks pretty good, I think. The fabric is thick and durable enough that if we ever had an accidental amputation or laceration, he could easily be stitched up.

Luckily, we had left Bear-Bear's tags on and I was able to Google the company. And because Amazon is awesome, they sell ALLLLLL kinds of JellyCat corduroy animals. I was ecstatic. Bear-Bear is soft, has held up, is cute, and is a great size. We definitely wanted to buy something for the girls that was "just because" from Mom and Dad. So we sat down and scrolled through all the choices. We wanted them all to be different colors, so there was no confusion, and wanted them to all have different animals. There was an ADORABLE elephant, mouse, horse, alligator, bunny, kangaroo, etc.

We settled on a Rhino (my choice):

And a Fox (Troy's choice):

I. AM. OBSESSED. They are SO soft and cute. They came in the mail and Avery was immediately like "MINE." And we had a sit down talk about how those belong to her sisters. And she has HER Bear-Bear. Which we never make her share. She seemed to understand and handed them over.

So now, here is my poll for you. Troy and I SUCK at naming things. The only reason our dog has a bad ass name is because we didn't name him. The SPCA did. I mean, how original is "Bear-Bear"?

What should we name the Fox and the Rhino? Troy was like, "how about Rhino and Fox?" Negative. Any suggestions for the twins' snuggle friends?

So there is a full blog post about foxes. And a rhino. Suggestions on naming encouraged.

Avery's First Trip to the Dentist

HOLY MOLY long hiatus from blogging. I'm back. Promise. I have time to blog. Seriously. But life is pretty boring. Which is a good thing. We are now back to regularly scheduled blogging.

When I took Avery to her 2 year well baby check, they asked all kinds of questions. I took her almost 3 months late (oops). Many of the questions were about her dental care. Apparently I was being too passive and not forward enough regarding her teeth. The pediatrician told me that by the age of 2, your kids should have a trip to the dentist scheduled. From asking around now, the age that kids go to the dentist varies pediatrician to pediatrician. But either way, Troy called the next day and had Avery added to our dental plan so that we could start hunting around for a dentist.

We asked around and got a recommendation from a family in our bible study group. I hemmed and hawed and procrastinated. My mom came to visit almost 2 months AFTER we got Avery added to our dental plan and she made me call the dentist. Luckily, I was able to get an appointment 2 days after my call so my mom could take her. See, I'm still on bedrest (boooooooring) and Troy is working full time so options for adult supervision at the dentist were limited. We took full advantage of my mom's visit and she took Avery to the dentist.

Avery did great. I keep wondering if it would have gone worse if I was there. She might've been all "moooommmy, mooooommmmmy, nooooo." Either way, she did awesome and my mom documented the whole thing for your viewing pleasure.

Avery in the waiting room. Seriously, how cute is the decor? I asked my mom if it was painted on or wall paper, and it was painted. There was a television inside a tooth shaped frame too. ADORABLE.

Apparently, Avery jumped right up into the chair and laid down. Shocking, I know. This is Dr. Amy. She showed Avery everything and let Avery touch everything before it went into her mouth.

Using the scrubber on Avery's fingers so she would know what it felt like.

They had a flat screen mounted to the ceiling playing Ice Age. Which helped. Avery pretty much fixated on the TV the whole time and was fine. This was Avery's view from the chair.

The first thing Dr. Amy did was floss Avery's bottom teeth. Apparently, Avery's teeth are a little crowded on the bottom, which is indicative of crowding when adult teeth come in. DARN! Braces are in our future. But her top teeth were great. No flossing required.

Next it was time for cleaning. She let Avery touch the brush again and gave her a dinosaur to hold.

That's the water squirty thing and the sucky thing. Yes, those are technical terms and you all know which thingys I'm talking about. She cleaned Avery's teeth and then told her to kiss the sucky thing. Which she did. Unaffected. While watching the movie.

I LOVE this picture. She looks like such a big girl with all that stuff in her mouth. Haha.

Getting her back teeth cleaned.

And she got flouride too. It was really tacky and Avery wasn't allowed to brush her teeth until the next day. Which was very sad for her because she got presents from the dentist. Including a new ELECTRIC toothbrush with all the Disney princesses on it. She was very disappointed. Like scream and throw the sealed package because we wouldn't open it disappointed. Anyway.....she got a balloon (one of her favorite things EVER), the electric toothbrush, a tooth shaped fan, and a squeaker frog (so annoying and was immediately confiscated by mom). But overall, she was GREAT at the dentist and I'm not worried about taking her again.

Thank God for Her Puddle Jumper

Troy's schedule is going to be weird the next few weeks. His hours are scheduled from 12noon to 8pm. He leaves for work around 11 so that doesn't give us much family time in the morning.

On Troy's first day of his crazy schedule (and me on my own for the first time since the cerclage), I decided to take Avery to the pool. I thought this was a good idea. Avery can get in/out of the car/car seat by herself, in and out of the pool, and walks in and out of the facility. And we spend some time in the sun and Avery burns off energy. And it makes my hips feel good. Win win all the way around, right? WRONG!

We get to the pool when it opens and everything is going fine. Avery wears a puddle jumper floaty (which is Coast Guard approved...and cute) and spends MOST of the time at the kiddie pool climbing out of the pool (which is about 2.5 feet deep) and jumping back in. Over and over. There is a beach walk in area on one side and it gets to about 2.5 to 3 feet on the other side. The kiddie pool has 3 lifeguards and is about 20 feet from the deep end of the big pool with the diving boards. When I take her alone, we just hang out in the kiddie pool. When Troy comes with us, he takes her to the big pool to swim and they watch the people jump off the diving board. She likes being in the pool with HIM, I think, more than being in the big pool where she can't touch the bottom, but floats great with her floaty (which we call her "Shark").

Here is Avery and Shark:

I was sitting with my back against the deep end of the kiddie pool and Avery 2-3 feet from me, jumping in and out of the pool. I would count to 3 and she would jump. Over and over.

Well, this time, she climbed out and took about 3 steps towards the big pool and pointed and said, "daddy over there?" And I said, "no, daddy's at work." And she took off RUNNING at full speed towards the big pool. I immediately stood up and tried to haul my pregnant ass out of the pool, with no ladder, 3 feet deep and started yelling her name.

Avery jumped RIGHT into the 12 foot deep end of the pool. She went down about 3 feet and floated right back to the top.

I was only halfway out of the kiddie pool when the lifeguard pulled her out. The lifeguard only had to stand on the edge and pulled her out of the deep end using the straps of her puddle jumper and another hand under butt. I got over to her and I said, "AVERY, you CANNOT swim over here alone. Are you ok?"

She looks up at me with a BIG smile and says, "that was FUN!"

Seriously? Child, I almost had a heart attack.

I felt so judged by the lifeguards. I mean, I was right there watching the whole time! It wasn't like I was sitting on a lounge chair, scrolling my Facebook newsfeed. I'm hugely pregnant and she's fast. And she had on a life jacket. I'm just not as physically able as I normally am.

I guess I have a water baby on my hands and will definitely make sure to put her in swim lessons. Like ASAP. She has no fear. None. She gets that from you, Troy...

And seriously...thank God for the puddle jumper. I recommend them to ANYONE with a child from 30-50 pounds. She loves hers and asks to put it on, even at home in the plastic baby pool. It doesn't inhibit her movement, but it's Coast Guard approved. Go buy it.

UPDATE*** Here's Troy's response when he found out. Such a dad...

Troy and Avery's After Bath Routine

Avery LOOOOVES bath time. And I'm convinced it's because she looks forward to this:



So thank you Aunt Kathy for the homemade kids towel...without which these nightly giggles would not be possible.

PS Please make 2 more. Please and Thank you.

Independence Day Festivities 2013

As a side note, there are some fires in the mountains pretty close to our house and they were raging huge on the 4th. I took this picture from the exit ramp on the way home. You can really see the smoke funneling up there in this photo. So pray for all the families who have evacuated Mt. Charleston and the firefighters up there.

On the 4th of July this year, both Troy and I had to work, so we didn't get home until about 530pm. I raced over to Carolyn's (our nanny) to pick up Avery and Troy got some BBQ stuff together. We are blessed with a wonderful small group from church that we have spent the last few holidays with. All of us are not Las Vegas natives and don't have family around, so we spend holidays together...how cute are we?

For Easter, we had a potluck at our house. On Memorial day, we went BBQ'd at another couple's house and for the 4th we had another HUGE potluck with everyone at another couple's home in our neighborhood. It was a BBQ and everyone brought some meat and a side and we all kinda shared when everything was done.

I was the most impressed with the desserts, which the hosts provided. HOLY COW they were awesome. There was a Chips A'Hoy lasagna thing with layers of chocolate chips cookies dipped in chocolate milk and layered with Cool Whip and chocolate sauce. I died. It was awesome. There were brownies, fruit salad, and cupcakes where you could pick your icing of choice. There were a couple preggos there, so be assured, there were some seriously happy fetuses. And children.

After eating, we headed outside for some kid friendly fireworks. There were these things called "Pop its" that you throw at the ground and they make a cracking noise. Avery preferred to step on them. Poor girl seems to have gotten her coordination from her momma, so aiming and stepping at the same time was not easy for her...

The second she stepped on one, she would go chasing after Troy, who was holding her box, saying "more please, more please, more please" and making her best begging face. I mean, who could say no to that?

She loved it and went around stomping on the wrappers of ones that were already popped. She was actually pretty good at spotting ones that had been thrown, but didn't pop, so she sure showed us! Cackling the whole time. Love her.

No "in the air" fireworks were allowed. Hunter had bought a package of permitted ground fireworks for our viewing enjoyment :) The kids loved it! Avery kept wanting to run up to them... between Troy grabbing her shirt and the other kids holding her hands, we kept everyone safe. As of right now, Avery is the youngest child in the small group...but that will change soon because 3 of the 6 of us are preggo. Something in the water, huh?



As you can see, Noah kept trying to hold Avery's hand, but she would rip her hand away to get closer to the sparks...eeek! But look how cute all the kids are!

Here's a front shot of the kiddos all being sweet to each other. And Avery standing in the back, protected from running up to the fireworks.

We eventually pulled her into Troy's lap, which made them both very happy :) Even though after every firework, she would jump up and clap and say "AWESOME!!" Her Dad taught her that...he was so proud.

After the fireworks were over, everyone headed over to a neighborhood park for an HOA sponsored Independence Day celebration. I went home. I had to be at work seeing my first patient at 630am. Yuck. Too bad I forgot it was the 4th of July and apparently fireworks are involved. ALL AROUND MY HOUSE. So even though I had good intentions to go to bed early, it didn't really work out in my favor because people were celebrating. But that's okay, I got some good snuggle time with Optimus because he is terrified of fireworks. And Avery slept until about 945 the next morning.

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! Anyone else do anything fun?

Avery is Home and We are Loving Life

Woooweee it's been a while since I posted. Sorry about that.

Avery came home on June 19th and we were very very excited. Troy was on midnight shift the day that she came home. He had worked from midnight to 8 and got home around 930, with intentions to sleep for a few hours before we picked up Avery and my stepdad from the airport. But then my brother called (he was on TDY to Nellis for a deployment training) and asked if we could go to lunch. And Troy was too excited to sleep. So to help pass the time until reunion time, we spent a few hours with Tyler.

Then it was time to go to the airport. Troy made Avery a sign. Yes. Troy did. I had nothing to do with this. At all. I think that other people thought that we were welcoming home a deployed soldier or something. Nope, just our 2 year old. And there is Tyler photobombing. Typical. And Troy's eyes are a little scary. Sorry about the poor quality iphone photos.

This is my first hug with Avery. She came down the escalator sitting between my stepdad's legs on one of the steps. She stood up right at the bottom and jumped into my arms, IMMEDIATELY talking and talking and talking. About what? I'm not really sure. Just long winded babbling with an understandable word every 15 words or so.

We took a family picture in baggage claim too. Troy insisted her sign be included.

We have been spending lots of time at the pool. Sometimes at the YMCA (it's a little crowded there some days), some days we went to our youth pastors house who has a pool, and another day we went to my friend's neighborhood pool (MUCH less crowded). Avery has one of those puddle jumper life vests and is getting more confident in the water. We've been reading a lot and Troy and Avery do puzzles a lot. We've had a couple play dates and I don't think Avery remembers her friends initially, but seems to warm up to people quickly, so yay!

Troy took a bunch of leave when Avery came home and he got to spend almost 2 weeks home with her, which was amazing. I worked for about half of that. Speaking of which, I worked a 40 hour work week last week. It's the FIRST TIME I've done that since before Avery was born. I was feeling pretty awesome about it. Troy was making me go to bed at 830 every night, which was annoying at the time, but a good choice.

I'm glad Avery decided not to squirt her mom, holding the iphone...



Avery has been GREAT in her big girl bed. She hasn't gotten out once. She goes right to bed at night and sits in bed yelling for us in the morning until we come get her. A couple people have asked how the edge of the bed "noodle technique" is working and so far, so good. She hasn't rolled out of bed in the middle of the night. My only complaint is the the noodle will slide off the edge and get caught in the elastic of the fitted sheet so you have to push it back up onto the edge of the mattress. But other than that, it seems to work well and is certainly cheaper than buying a rail. Win-win.

Seriously, I just want to watch her sleep stalker style. She's just so cute.

Avery's *NEW* Big Girl Room!!

Avery comes home on Wednesday. YAY! Troy is laughing at me because I have been nesting in preparation for her homecoming. Her room is done, the house is sparkling, the nursery is starting to look like an actual room, and I'm buying her some clothes and toys. Which I haven't done in almost 3 months.

I have been slooooowly collecting things for Avery's big girl room. Like, over 6 months. When she left for my parents house in April, she was still sleeping in her crib and very happy in there. No attempts to climb out or anything. However, I started buying things for her big girl room transition in January. I was very excited...I don't really know why. This is an overview of her room:

We decided to transition her now for several reasons.

1. With the babies coming, we want her to see a tangible difference between what babies do (sleep in cribs) and what big girls do (sleep in big girl beds).

2. I didn't want to be dealing with new babies and also trying to keep her in her room/bed without her getting out.

3. Her crib was a drop arm crib (OH THE HORROR!) and I was always fearful of her trying to climb out and somehow getting crushed or hurt if the side dropped down with her in "mid climb."

4. Her crib was not a transition to a toddler bed crib. Even on the lowest setting, her crib mattress was super high so we needed to buy her a new bed whenever she transitioned out of it. I'd rather have time to shop around for one and get a good deal than feel panicked and buy one on impulse.

I started shopping for a bed on craigslist in November? I'm talking early. We wanted to find something that was a good deal and would also transition well to her being a teenager. I don't want to keep buying and buying. For example, crib ->toddler bed -> another bed. So we just went for it.

We decided on a day bed for several reasons.

1. It is a twin bed, so it's good/not too huge for a kid.

2. It has a pull out/pop up trundle underneath so she can have sleepovers and the other kid has a bed.

3. If we have family visiting with kids, no matter what the gender, they can sleep there too.

4. If we have adults who need to sleep there, it's 2 beds OR it pops up and turns into a king size bed which is good for adults or multiple kid sleepover situations.

With those things in mind, I set out for something on craiglist. I looked at IKEA, but I really wanted quality wood that would last, so all the pressed board crap was out. It took me about 2.5 months of daily checking before this beauty came up. I paid $280 and it included the all wood day bed frame, metal pop up trundle bed and the 2 mattresses, which are BRAND NEW! And now covered with a pee protector since baby girl is still working on the potty training thing. The edge of the mattress also looks huge because we are trying that Pinterest trick, where you put a noodle underneath the edge of a fitted sheet to keep the kid from rolling out of bed in the middle of the night.

The dresser I snagged in March for $50 off Craigslist and that sucker is HEAVY and QUALITY wood. Troy said that when he went to go pick it up, he felt guilty. The quality of the dresser and mirror is AMAZING and he felt like he should have offered more money. I was like "ARE YOU CRAZY!?!?! YOU GRAB IT AND RUN!" The wood of both the dresser and bed match super well. Troy still needs to hang the mirror. We need to get the hardware for the back. That will happen when my stepdad is here next week for sure. Troy won't let me lift anything over a gallon of milk and it's pretty annoying. So no holding up 40lb mirrors. I like that it's a classic shape.

I got the cube self at IKEA with the plastic cubes for toy and book storage. The lamp is from Target and the duck was a gift from my stepmom. My grandfather makes homemade wooden toys and he made the phone. Avery loves phones. So she has a play phone in her room :)

All of the paintings on the walls are Natalie originals from those group painting classes.

Aunt Taylor saw this laundry basket at HomeGoods while she was visiting and decided that her niece HAD to have it for her room. I love it. It has a draw string on the inside, so it'll be good for traveling in the car also. Toss snacks, toys, books, diapers or whatever in there, close it up and toss it in the car. It's awesome.

I bought 5 dresses for $7 from our online community yard sale thingy on facebook too. Apparently, with Avery getting a hang of this potty training thing, she is refusing to wear pants. Dresses only. So I figured I'd stock up. It was exciting, especially since they were all name brand dresses from H&M, Gap, and Gymboree. SCORE! I feel ABSOLUTELY NO guilt about buying Avery clothes because I know we are going to have 2 more girls to wear them. Muahahaha. Imagine me doing my evil laugh and tapping the ends of my fingers together.