Sugar Cookies

Last night we made sugar cookies. I baked the cookies while Avery was napping and then waited until the evening, when Al got home, to frost and sprinkle them.

Avery was super excited about the sprinkles. She grabbed the bottles and shook them pretty vigorously, trying to produce some sprinkles, but I hadn't removed the caps yet. After I frosted the first cookie I put it on Avery's plate and handed her a bottle of open sprinkles. Boy did she go to town!! That cookie was pretty much covered. I moved the cookie to the wax paper to make room for the next cookie. I turned back to Avery and she was emptying a bottle of sprinkles onto the plate!

I quickly grabbed the bottle and put them out of her reach. Avery then began to eat the sprinkles on the plate. That is pretty much how the rest of the evening went for her. She was perfectly content to just eat the sprinkles while Al and I did the rest of the cookies.

No, no, no...

Yesterday Avery and I went and did a little more Christmas shopping at he Mills. I was also looking for an undershirt for Avery.
I decided to take Avery to the Carter's outlet since I was pretty sure I'd find the shirt and because Avery loves that store. They have hopscotch, these clouds that move on the ceiling, and a lego table.

As I was checking out I saw a bin that had these Christmas dolls marked 70% off. It was really cheap after the discount! So I decided that Avery might like to have this Christmas doll. I thought it was pretty cute and festive.

After driving us home and hauling in our bags I excitedly held the doll out to Avery and said, "Look, Avery! A Christmas baby!" She gave it one look and said, "No, no, no." So I tried again, "Here, hold your new baby!" "No, no, no." Finally I just tried to put it in her arms and Avery actually recoiled at the attempt. She scooted away from me several feet. This had me baffled.

When Al came home I told him the story. I tried to give Avery the baby again. She took it and threw it. I grabbed the doll and handed it to Al. I explained that I had thought the doll was cute, but maybe I am off or something. Al just looked at me and said, "Well Jenny, the doll doesn't have a nose..." I was aware of this fact when I bought the doll, but it didn't bother me, it was just a simple face. And it wasn't like just this doll was missing her nose. All of the other dolls in the bin looked exactly the same.

So today my mission was to try to fix this doll. I got some pink felt and cut out a little nose to stick on the doll. I also added some rosy cheeks. I didn't think that would hurt. After I was finished with the minor adjustments I handed the doll to Avery and said, "Look Avery. Mama fixed the baby." I handed the baby to her, she held it, studied it out, and then slowly with her pointer finger touched the dolls face and said, "nose." Then she went and put the baby in her grocery cart.

Secret Hiding Place

Avery found this hiding place Saturday while Al was getting ready. She thought she was being so sneaky. Al called out to me asking where we had more soap. I replied that it was under the sink. Then I came to show him exactly where and I opened the door to find Avery. She had a huge grin on her face. Then she promptly shut the door. I guess she didn't want us to disturb her secret place.

Of course, she proceeded to unwrap all of our bars of soap, so they are all ready to go whenever the one we're using runs out.

Pictures of Avery and Christmas Decorations

OB/GYN grade

Saint Louis University School of Medicine
Summary Clerkship Grade Report for:
Student: Tanner, Allen
Course: OB-301 Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health Clerkship

HONORS

Mr. Tanner had an exemplary rotation on Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women's Health in all respects. His outpatient experience and performance was described by the residents as being superior and exceeding their expectations in all regards. He wrote very complete history and physical examinations. He was found to be a good communicator and had a solid fund of clinical knowledge. His continuity resident rated him as a very strong student as did the attending physicians on the gynecological service. He was noted to be very good with patients, and he received the highest clinical grade among his group of peers. He also showed a strong fund of knowledge on the National Board Shelf Exam, and the requisite clinical skills on the Standardized Patient Exam. He had an excellent rotation in all regards which bodes well for his future training. He receives an Honors grade.

Minnesota Thanksgiving pictures

The Minnesota Shaws

have signed up.

Al's Internal Medicine Grade

Internal Medicine Grades came back! Finally!

Al copied and pasted the info from the school website:

Tanner, Allen 2009

Final Grade for this clerkship: Honors (H)
NBME Score: 77 NBME National Percentile: 69

Summary Comments on Student PerformanceComments for inclusion in the Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE)

The final evaluation of Mr. Allen Tanner for the twelve week junior clerkship in Internal Medicine from July 9 to September 28, 2007 is based on 1) the subjective assessment by faculty and house staff of the student's performance on the medical wards of two hospitals and in the outpatient setting, 2) the NBME Internal Medicine Subject Examination, 3) the assessment by an observing faculty member of the student's ability to take a medical history and perform a physical examination, and 4) the written histories and physicals performed by the student.

A summary statement of the student's evaluations is as follows: Mr. Tanner showed excellent skills in gathering information through history and physical examination. His knowledge of medicine was described as excellent at this point in the student's education. His utilization of data for decision-making in diagnosis and patient management was excellent. Mr. Tanner developed excellent relationships with patients and co-workers. He demonstrated a high level of motivation.

Comments made by evaluators were: "Mr. Tanner played a very important role in our ambulatory care clinic. He was thorough in his histories and physical exams. He was able to propose a good differential diagnosis and treatment plan He would telephone patients to inform them of their test results. His performance is clearly above average for a beginning 3rd year medical student." "Allen was very motivated and offered to do more work than was ever expected. Very professional. Used Up-To-Date well and appropriately. Enjoyed having him on the team." "Allen did a very good job in evaluating his patients and in his written work. He displayed care that was empathetic and respectful. Very hard working student. He was motivated to learn as much as he could about his patients. Medical knowledge is very good for his level."

Rah! Rah!! Rah!!!

I guess we've found another one of Missouri's passions. Besides baseball, Nascar, and beer they are totally into Halloween. I had no idea.
We drove to the subdivision next to ours, one that is more kid friendly, to do our trick or treating with Avery. When we told Avery we were going trick or treating she couldn't get out to the car fast enough. She was so excited!!

We were pretty amazed at what we found when we parked the car. There were a few houses that had big bonfires going on out in front. A lot of garage doors were open and people had tables set up that were loaded down with hot chocolate, hot dogs, pop, etc. A lot of the neighbors would get together in one garage and have several bowls of candy lined up. They would have you take candy from each bowl and then would try to have you take a hot dog along for the road. Avery got lots of candy, goody bags that had several candies in each of them, bags of popcorn, a full-sized snickers, a hostess ho-ho and hostess cupcake, and a fairly big plush ghost that is holding a pumpkin. Somebody actually gave that to her as a "trick-or-treat."

Avery was so cute at each house. She would hold out her pumpkin and say, "Treat!!" (she conveniently left off the 'trick' part). They would toss in a few candy bars and then Avery would call out, "Thank you!!" So cute! Lots of the people would ask Avery to cheer and she would reply with "rah! rah! rah!"

Most of the houses were decked out with Halloween lights and big pumpkins. One of the houses had a life-sized Freddy Krueger doll waiting for you at the front door. Freddy's eyes would move and he would start talking to you as you approached. Avery just grinned ear to ear when she saw Freddy. The people in the house couldn't believe that she wasn't scared, and was in fact smiling. They got quite a kick out of it.

I don't want to brag, but Avery was pretty popular out there. Have you ever seen a cuter cheerleader??

The Whole Nine Yards...

Well, here we are decked out in our Halloween finery. We've had Avery's costume for months but weren't sure what Al and I were going to do for the big event.

One night I was talking with Sarah and she suggested making it a theme. I went with her advice and dressed as a football player with Al as the couch. Avery is really great at boosting our team spirit :)

Trunk or Treat

Last night was our ward Trunk or Treat. This was Avery's first experience with trick or treating so we were interested to see how she would handle it.

She loved it!

We only stayed for about an hour but Avery had a blast and loved seeing all the other kids dressed up.

Little Songbird

In the past week or so Avery has started to sing songs. It is really cute. At first it took me a while to catch on because most of the words aren't that clear, but when I figured out what she was doing I made her repeat it over and over again.
Avery sings, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Row Row Row Your Boat," and the "Clean Up" song from nursery. She doesn't sing "Yankee Doodle" yet, but makes requests for it by exclaiming, "Doodle!!"

Some other fun things Avery has learned:

She knows her letter "A" and likes to point it out on things.

She knows the colors pink and yellow.

Avery likes to chew gum. She found some in the car the other day and helped herself to it. She will chew it for a very long time and doesn't swallow it. I'm not sure where she learned this from.

Al has been working the nights and sleeps during the day. The first day Al came home and was sleeping I had to sneak into the bedroom to get dressed. I thought that Avery would stay in the other room playing, but she barged in a few seconds later. I whispered, "Daddy is night-night. He's sleeping." Avery looked at me with serious eyes and put her finger to her lips and said, "Shhh!" It was hard not to laugh.

We have a pop-up Halloween book that I was given several years ago. It is aimed at older kids and is a little on the spooky side. Avery loves to get this book out and have you move all of the things that move or pop out. She gets really excited and giggles or puts her hands on her cheeks and makes a big "O" with her mouth. But there is this one part that absolutely terrifies her and she will burst into tears and run away. I told her that we had to put the book away because it was too scary. A few minutes later she brought me the book again and was begging to read it. I gave in. Once again she loved it until we got to that one part. She ran off crying again. The funny thing is that she keeps bringing me the book, several times a day, even though it creeps her out.

The Pumpkin Patch

Twins!

Today Avery's best friend Em came over to play. We were tickled when we saw that the girls we dressed almost identically--we had to get a picture.

I wish I could get one where they were both smiling, but that seemed impossble. Anyway, they are still cute!

Halloween barette and shirt

I bought Avery this Halloween shirt and barette quite a while ago. Avery likes the pumpkin on the shirt, but really gets excited about the bat barette. Every day since I've bought it Avery has brought it to me at least once a day asking to have it put in her hair. I have even caught her on several occasions trying to put the bat barette in her hair herself. I've explained that we can't wear it until it cools off outside.

Today it was finally cool enough to wear long sleeves. I told Avery that she would get to wear her pumpkin shirt and wear the bat barette and boy was she excited. She was practically bouncing off the bed while I was trying to put the barette in. When I was finished I told her that she had the bat in her hair. At first she looked really pleased. Then she looked puzzled and reached up to touch the barette. I watched as she tried to pull it out of her hair. I think she had decided that it was more fun to play with the bat barette than to wear it. I explained to her that she would have to keep it in her hair. She thought about this for a second and then her bottom lip stuck out about as far as I've seen it go. I wondered how long the bat barette would last.

Avery actually left it in the whole day. Every once in a while she would reach up and touch it, I guess to make sure it was still there.

Early Celebration

Since Al had the entire weekend off after finishing his rotation we decided to celebrate our 4th anniversary a little early. We kind of did a big celebration this year since we have a little fun money from the babysitting job. Al planned for us to spend the night at a hotel and to take Avery swimming.

All of Friday Avery carried her swimsuit around the house and would say, "pool! pool!" I would have to explain over and over that we had to wait until daddy got home from taking his test.

When Al got home we packed and headed off to start our little mini-vacation. There were cookies in the lobby and Avery and I helped ourselves while Al checked us in. We were off to a great start! Then we went up to our room. Avery thought it was the greatest. She was obsessed with that telephone on the nightstand. She would pick up the receiver and say, "hello!" and then proceed to have a gibberish conversation. When she was done talking she would hang up. A few seconds later she would place another phone call. She had a lot of people to talk to I guess.

The pool was great! We were the only people in it and the water was actually not too cold. Avery had a blast swimming around with Al. She mostly wanted him to swim with her, so I was on camera duty. After quite a bit of swimming we sat in the hot tub for a while and then decided to head to dinner.

We ate dinner at Qdoba, which is a step up from Taco Bell and really tasty. After that we did a little shopping and then decided to head back to the room so Avery could go to bed. She had other plans though. I guess she was pretty wired being in a new room and maybe we shouldn't have let her drink sprite at dinner...she did not want to go to bed! At least she was being good. She just rolled around in the pillows on the bed.

Avery has been sick for the last few days and if we had another free weekend we maybe would have postponed the activity, but this was it. It was a terrible night's sleep. Avery was coughing all night, crying, etc. I think all three of us spent much of the night awake.

After breakfast we headed to a mall and did more window shopping. Then we went to kind of a ritzy area and went into some little shops. Lots of antiques and home decor shops. We did make a very important stop to the Lake Forest Confectionary. Al bought our traditional chocolate-covered strawberries. They were delightful!

We made it home pretty early and we all just crashed. Everybody got the medicine that they needed and naps were taken. It was a very fun weekend.

Halloween Cupcakes

I know it is a little early but I couldn't resist baking Halloween cupcakes. Avery gets all excited about the holidays, just like her mom, so I decided it would be fun to make the funfetti Halloween cupcakes.

Al took some time off from studying and helped Avery put on the sprinkles after I frosted the cupcakes. Avery did a couple of them but mostly liked to watch Al do the sprinkles. After every cupcake was finished Avery would look at it and exclaim "pretty!!"

Avery's favorite part of the activity was eating the sprinkles that fell onto the plate and then of course, eating the finished product.

Into Make-up

Avery usually hangs out with me in the bathroom every morning while I get ready and put on my make-up. She is fascinated by the different shaped containers and bottles and likes to line them up along the vanity or on top of the toilet tank. Today started off as usual. She came in and climbed up on the toilet (this is where she sits) and then she carefully stood up to gain access to the make-up. Normally I would agree that this doesn't sound like that safe of a situation, but I keep a very close eye on her.

Anyway, I was in the middle of brushing my teeth and putting my contacts in when Avery reached for my moisturizer. She didn't set it on the vanity like she usually does. Instead she pretended to put some in her hand and rub it on her face. I stopped what I was doing and watched in amazement. She followed with the foundation, like I always do, and pretended to rub that on. She went through my entire routine, except for the eye-liner. It was crazy how accurrate she got the whole thing! I mean when she reached for the blush she only pretended to apply it to her cheekbones! I'm not even kidding. One thing that made me laugh is that she pretended to put the eyeshadow and mascara below her eyes, not on the eyelids and lashes.

After her facial was complete (he he he) she proceeded to go through my hair products and apply them to her hair. Avery is just too funny! She is definitely a girly girl.

Other cute Avery things:

Today Avery gave her baby doll eskimo kisses. This is something that Al and I do with her. It was the cutest thing ever!

Today we went to the post office. They had decorations up for Halloween, one of which was a ghost figurine. I pointed it out to Avery, much to her delight, and she started squealing and had a huge grin on her face. She was doing knee bends and started saying, "boo...booo...boooo!" The post office worker was getting a big kick out of it. I wish I would have had my camera with me.

One of Avery's new favorite games is to have me or Al draw pictures on her magna-doodle and then she gets to guess what the picture is. She will bring us the magna-doodle, set it in front of us and say draw. It is pretty fun and she is really good at it!

Avery will take out Al's deoderant, while I'm getting ready, state, "dada's." and then put it away.

Avery can read!!

Okay. It's not quite reading, but Avery has memorized half of this book! I think it is so cute! The other day I was reading it to her and before I could say the words she started to say them.

I have made up some actions that I do along with this book. Avery not only says the words but she does the actions too. The first time she did it I yelled down to Al and had him come up so he could see it for himself. I was so tickled by the whole thing.

Truthfully there aren't too many words or pages in this book. Every page shows a Sesame Street monster with a different expression on their face and words that describe the emotion. Avery's favorite pages/words are the "sleepy face," "silly face," and "naughty face." She also likes the "worried face" but mostly because it has a picture of Telly monster trying to get away from the bee. Avery just gets excited and jabs at the bee exclaiming, "bee! bee!"

The Butterfly House

On Monday Al, Avery and I went to the Butterfly House at Faust Park. It is only about 15 minutes away from where we live.

We all thought it was really neat! There is a movie to watch about butterflies, exotic bugs in aquariums on display (I didn't like this part), a shadowbox with a map of the world showing what butterflies are particular to certain parts of the world, and a lot more.
The butterflies were in a huge green house that was extremely hot and humid. There are over a 1000 butterflies flying around. You are not allowed to touch them, but they fly around and land on you and are everywhere!! There are also tons of exotic plants and a waterfall in the greenhouse.

After we looked around at the butterflies for a while we explored the outside grounds and the classroom that had tons of puppets, puzzles and toys for kids to play with.
Faust Park is huge and has a large outdoor playground and carousel. We didn't have time to do everything, but I know we will go back.