Family Moments and Memories

“You’re going to jail! You speeded the limit!”

(Avery) “Can I have more juice?” (Clint) “No, son, you may not have more juice.” (Avery) “No dada, I’m asking mama!”

(while playing a tune on a plastic trumpet) “I’m going to play music so God will come.”

Avery, mom and dad were enjoying a nice meal at the table. Avery pointed to his plate and asked, “What’s that mommy?” We replied, “It’s pork, honey.” Avery then exclaimed, “From a porcupine!? Are porcupines rats?”

Lately, Avery has really gotten into creating “Worm Adventures” drawings. He asks us to draw a worm onto his paper. Then, he quickly steals the pencil and draws “things that happen to the worm”. All of these things are ornery. Some examples include the worm being surrounded by shaving cream; sprouting octopus arms; getting tied up; being throw around by elephants and growing a donkey tail. He laughs and chortles while we say “Oh, poor worm!” It’s really cute when he decides to feel sorry for the worm and draws ideas to help him.

We frequently visit the library and allow Avery to pick out his own books. He seems to base his decisions on the illustrations. Several of the illustrations that catch his attention include things that are odd, fanciful, or include a lot of details and movement. These things are fascinating to him because he often cannot differentiate from reality and his imagination. Interestingly, sometimes he picks these stories/illustrations because he is curious about them, or he thinks the pictures are frightening and wants to safely explore them while sitting on our laps listening to the story. One particular story included a boy who was trying to rush to school so he would not be late, but he kept getting held up by preposterous situations. One evening, after we had read that story earlier that day, Avery was having trouble falling asleep. When I went to check on him, he had his covers off and was hunched up at the top of his bed hugging his knees to his chest. When asked what was wrong, he said he was scared of the spiders. He thought the illustrations on his bed sheet looked too much like the spiders from the book. We were able to get the book, touch the spiders in the picture, talk about how they are not real, run our fingers across the bed sheet to feel that there weren’t spiders on there, and then think of other nice things to dream about.

New Ways We Noticed How Avery is Growing Up

1.) he can open the refrigerator door by himself

2.) he can use the bathroom by himself

3.) for the firs time, we noticed he has morning breath

4.) makes his bed (with help)

5.) brushes his teeth (with help)

6.) asks us to call someone to come over and play

7.) he figured out how to open doors that have the child safely knob covering them

8.) we no longer have to cut up his food in tiny pieces

9.) he can drink from an open adult-size drinking glass

10.) he is quick to honestly verbalize his opinions