Right now Aviana is looking through and simulateously eating and demolishing my Body Shop catalogue. Luckily, I already know what I want to order. I had a spa party last night and we pampered our feet. They are still smooth and sandal savvy. Probably walking around the farm barefoot isn’t the best way to keep them in shape but I eschew shoes. As does Baby A. She much prefers to be barefoot as to better display her “perfectly pink” toenails. She can stand alone! Albeit for a few seconds at a time, but the strength is there, she just needs to master the balance.

Ok, now she’s nursing and I hope you appreciate the talent it takes to type one handed. Today we made muffins and I let Aviana lick the spatula. She was a study in opposites- by the time the spatula was clean, she very…wasn’t. Then we played keepaway as I was trying to finish sewing on some buttons that I had started before she got up and she wanted to “help”. later I had to track blue thread all over the house because Baby A had a hold of some unbeknownst to me while I picked her up and carried her downstairs to feed Ellie. Then I made her laugh until she fell over by running and jumping over her. I tell ya, there isn’t a more beautiful sound in the world than that of your daughter’s laughter.

Tonight we are going to work on my craft room and hopefully it will be scrap ready tonight!

He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. Isaiah 40:11

Tue, Jun 21, 200511:14 AM

Eleven months! I can hardly believe it. Aviana is climbing the stairs now and anything else that holds still- even her rocking chair which really doesn’t! Today I am primarily occupied with keeping her off of my sunburn which hurts worse today than yesterday & I got it Sunday on our bike riding marathon. STOOPID! You heard it here first folks! I am so irritated with myself. The ride was fun though. We rode 16 miles along the Mississippi. Aviana was unhappy at first, but when we finally took her helmet off, she was fine. She slept on the way back, until K and I ran into each other and capsized her trailer. She was unhurt, just very startled from the rude awakening! Then we picked up my dad from the airport and went back to our house. She crawled all over him, which I think sort of surprised him since she is such a mama’s girl. Then that night we went over to a friend’s house to hang out and Aviana had another calamity. She is used to going into our baby pool on her belly and I didn’t realize how much deeper theirs was than ours, and she ended up under water. She was VERY surprised and I was completely freaking out. I was right by her, but I felt like I was in slow motion trying to pull her out of the water. It scared me so badly! But again, she was fine. Yesterday she was climbing off the couch, (with my assistance! I had ahold of her!) and somehow she landed on her head! and then today she was playing at my feet and slipped and cut her eyebrow on the rung of the barstool. I should not be allowed to be alone with her. Isn’t there some law? And she’s not even walking yet! And the crawling- she has bruised knees and a sore on the top of her foot, not to mention the Thread Burn I gave her on Wednesday when I realized that the thread that she had been playing with followed us all throughout the house like in the story of the Minataur, and when I pulled it to reel it in, it must have cut her poor ankle, which I didn’t even notice until later, since she didn’t cry or even complain. She keeps coming back for more though, so… she must think I’m doing an okee job.

Yesterday we just hung out a park and then went to Goodwill. I found some really good deals. We got some more shelves hung in my craft room; it looks so good, K said we should sumbmit it to one of my scrapbooking magazines, or the newspaper at the very least. He doesn’t think all that work should go unrecognized by the world! 🙂

Thu, Jun 30, 20056:58 AM

The last two weeks have been amazing. Aviana is picking up something new every day. As a matter of fact, at this very moment, she is “meowing” in hopes that Ellie will come back in the room. She pants whenever we see a dog (or often any animal, she over-generalizes, or she’s thinking about a dog). She is signing “all done” on a regular basis now, and has signed “kitty” and “eat”. She sort of smacks her lips when she wants to eat or drink. This communication thing is SO COOL! She also can “click” her tongue now, but I’m not sure that she is actually communicating anything when she does that.

We went to the big pool for the first time and I found out the purpose of swim diapers. It was hilarious how GI-NORMOUS her diaper got absorbing all that water! My friend took pity on my ignorance (and on Baby A’s basketball butt) and gave us one of her swim diapers.

We had yet ANOTHER accident. Baby A & I were at the chiropractor’s and the doc and I were both right by her, but like so much herring, she somehow defied our grasp and fell onto the floor onto her head. She was fine, (again, thankfully), but received her first sub-dermal hematoma, right on her forehead. Of course I had her pictures scheduled for the next day, so I had to postpone them until today instead. How any of my children are going to survive childhood is beyond me. God is taking special care of children of clumsy moms.

Later that night, Kevin and I were in the midst of a “discussion” and he asked me if I couldn’t just drop the topic at hand. I retorted, “No, I only drop the baby” referring to the past couple of weeks of clumsiness and calamaties. He said “Well, then just pretend this argument is the baby.” It doesn’t translate that well to outside of my head, but I laughed for at least five minutes.

We finally got some rain (about 6/10 of an inch) last night, but it came in the form of a severe thunderstorm, complete with high winds and damage to the corn. We have some fields with corn down now.

One of our friends loaned Aviana a “walk behind” that Aviana loves to toddle behind and push it, at least until she runs into an obstacle and is forced to cry for assisstance. It is wonderfully touching to see her “walking”.

May the Lord be loyal to you… and reward you with many deomonstrations of his love! 2 Samuel 2:6