Last July, I excitedly constructed a fort with the baby jail gate we setup in the living room for Avery. But not just any fort, it was a Ninja Turtle fort and I was quite proud of myself. It was a story worth sharing with the network of professionals from book blog tours to craft an exciting book about it!

I’m not fond of the Nickeldeon version, but this is the only blanket I had with my favorite teenage terrapins, so I made it work. I thought it was pretty cool, but Avery, on the hand, not so much.

She eventually warmed up to it, kinda, but we ended up taking it down after about a month.

Back to current day, we just took down the entire gate setup in our living room giving Avery a wider range of freedom throughout the house. The dog, Abby, is still stuck behind gates, but even she has a little more freedom than before.

I prefer Abby to keep in one main area since sheds so much and gets a little too crazy around Avery. She’s a sweet dog, but for some reason I get annoyed by her too easily. Sorry, Abby.

With our living room back to normal, I decided to make it not normal again by tearing out the cushions and taking a shot at building a couch fort. Of course the Ninja Turtle blanket had to come back out, but my plans were quickly thwarted by our apparently hungry toddler.

I don’t blame her, it was a pretty weak setup. I wouldn’t trust crawling inside either.

I think Avery tried to make me feel better by pretending to enjoy putting her face into the pillow next to the fort though.

Or maybe she was cursing and trying not to let me hear. After messing around with the arrangement a while, I brought part of the baby gates back in hopes of making a better fort. Once again, Avery was there to derail my hard work.

Guess she’s had enough of the gates after they’ve been between her and freedom for literally her whole life. So who can blame her? Instead, she took to doing her crazy spin dance with her toy kitty after taking down the fort.

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I wish I could say she gets it from her mom, but that would be a lie. Instead, I think I owe my mom, G-Ma, a huuuuggggeee apology. Sorry, mom.

The fort will make a comeback soon. Hopefully bigger and stronger than before and one she actually wants to play in. After expending so much energy in fort destruction, I was positive Avery would sleep well, but when my wife discovered an incoming tooth right before bedtime, that thought quickly went the way of my couch fort; crushed.

Sure enough, right before midnight, Avery woke up screaming. My way of dealing with this is to let it go most of the time unless she has a distinct “I pooped” scream. This sounded like that scream, but I wasn’t getting up yet. Instead, Going Mom came to the rescue to soothe our screaming child.

I came in a few minutes later when the screaming didn’t stop and found that her diaper leaked, but no poop. I changed the sheets and Kelley nursed Avery back to sleep.

The screaming returned at around 2 a.m. and this time I went to see what magic I could work. Turns out, no magic. I held her constantly squirming body and rocked in the chair as she re-enacted the Texas tornadoes we’ve had around us. Gone are the days of that little baby that fit so easily in our hands and calmly rested on our chest like this…

With the screams still going strong but I could feel her wearing out, I just laid on the nursery floor with her in hopes that she’d settle down. At first she stood up and cried some more, but finally she crawled on top of my chest and fell asleep in minutes.

It was sweet, and something I don’t want to forget, but my airways were also blocked making it hard to breathe. I passed the time by thinking of different book ideas I want to write some day before using my Turkish Get Up skills to stand and lay her in her crib.

Poor girl, she didn’t move an inch through the process and slept through the rest of the night. Hopefully this tooth pushes through and we don’t have another night like that, but only time will tell.

I want to write a series of kids’ books called “Avery Eats” where each book is centered on one food that Avery learns about while trying it out for herself. There’s more to it than that, but with the help of book blog tours and the vast network of publishers and authors, I could definitely bring it to life!

Are you good at building couch forts? Any pointers?

Have any aspirations to write a book of your own or have you already? Again, any pointers?