Riley and Avery

Avery has a new skill: climbing the stairs. For some reason the stairs at my mom's house are really appealing to babies. Riley learned to climb stairs when she was here for her first birthday. Avery likes sitting up on the landing and overlooking all the activity below. She also makes this really funny sound, like a possessed person, that really amuses her. I think she's trying to bark and growl like the dog. She also chases after Duke, which is made funnier by the fact that Duke doesn't know that he's being chased. He just goes around his daily activities while Avery crawls as fast as she can after him. Avery has gotten really lazy about walking, although Mina saw her take a couple of steps yesterday.

My mom watches James on Thursdays, so I thought that would be a treat. Not so. Riley whacked Jay with a dinosaur yesterday, so he was really sensitive to what she was doing today, and she was eager to prod him. Not a good combination. So we took Amy up on her offer to have us over to play with Abby. After a rough start, the girls got along really well. They ran and climbed trees, after pretending to eat ice cream for a rather long time. Riley came home covered in sap (and several souvenir sticks and pinecones), so she disrobed in front of everyone without a thought, and washed herself in the sink. Jay, Allan, and Ben are always so scandalized by her penchant for nudity. We also had one of those days where Riley pees in her pants more than she pees in the potty.

Avery skipped her afternoon nap, and Riley didn't have a nap at all. So they both went to bed rather early, around 7:30 after which I ran out to Party City and got some stuff for Avery's birthday party. No character plates, and I'm done with the pink. So Avery's having an ocean theme whether she likes it or not. I'm sure she doesn't care.

We are running rather low on money, so I think that the kitchen that I originally got for Riley will now be for both Riley and Avery. It's probably better that way since they'll both be playing with it and it's easier for Riley to share when she knows ahead of time that she's expected to. And if it belongs to both of them, she'll know that she has to share. We'll see...