Safety First

I have had to purchase a few more things to help keep Avery safe.  The first are slide 'locks' for the bi-fold doors to avoid her pinching her fingers between them.  It's a bit of annoyance to me, but I am sure I'll get use to using them.  The next is a flip lock, which I've had for a while, but I finally installed it, on the basement door.  It's up nice and high so she can't reach it.  Once she fully masters a door knob, which isn't far off, this will prevent spills down the basement stairs.  The last items are ones I am sure will displease her greatly.  I now have two variants of leashes for her.  At last there are times when she wants to walk instead of being carried.  This is great for my back, but it brings new challenges.  I now have a backpack style harness with butterfly wings and a leash and a wrist-to-wrist attachment for the two of us.  She tried both on and seemed to really dislike the first one but found the second entertaining.

We have also been successful in getting Avery to eat a little bit of carrot and broccoli.  She even said "Mmmm" while eating the broccoli!  She's still a bit of a carb and sugar fiend, but who can blame her.  It's hard to tell her no when she sweetly asks for a pretzel after school every day.  Ok, I don't always say no.

Here we are one month before her second birthday.  I can't help but think that 1/9th of it is "over", slipped through my fingers.  Continuing to pray for time to slow down and to enjoy every moment.

Hitting the Pool

I'm so glad I had won some free passes to the Goldfish Swim School's open family swims.  It is incredibly hot here, so to try and cool off a bit we took Avery to the pool for an hour yesterday.  She kept a stern face for a brief period, but lightened up and had some fun.  It was nice to get to play with her and hold her close while we spun and bounced and splashed.  She did some kicking and we practiced a few dips into the water.

We also had an epic fail on the second baby gate I bought for the top of the stairs.  The first one we decided not to use after finding so much saying to use hardware gates for the top of the stairs.  It makes sense, but eesh, I don't want those holes.  I've conceded though - for her.  So the second was a hardware gate that was a bit taller.  It came highly recommended by friends and I thought it would be nice to have an easier reach to open/close the gate as we come and go.  Yeah, it's too tall.  So now I have to ship it back - fortunately, they do free returns, hopefully there isn't a restocking fee that I missed reading about.  I've now ordered another gate - hopefully it will arrive soon as I've been stressing for a couple of weeks now about not having a gate up at the top of the stairs.

Bathroom Safety

I picked up our first toilet seat lock from resale - it was a style I had looked at on Amazon, but couldn't decide.  I figured for $2.50 (instead of $7) it was worth giving one a try.  We decided to put it in downstairs in the half bath, but obviously have plans to procure for the other bathrooms too - once we know if this is a design we want to stick with.

Now that it is in place I hope one of my next posts isn't about me wetting myself because I failed to get into the lock fast enough after returning home.  It's hard to use public facilities w/ the little one in tow - and sometimes you get home REALLY needing to go!