10 Months Old

Poor Ava has had a rough month of being sick. Immediately after we returned from Florida she developed a cold and after two nights in a row of her screaming I took her to the doctor. They discovered that she had an inverted ear drum possibly from flying. Just this week she developed another cold which resulted in another ear infection (her first was when she was just about six months old). I guess that is the plight of being the second child!

She is developing so fast, it is such a fun time with her right now. She giggles constantly, even just walking down the stairs or watching her brother talk while they are both in the car seats makes her laugh. I have been doing a lot of basic sign language with her over the last several months and now she is starting to do them on her own (she does 'all done', 'milk' and 'more'). She is definitely saying 'Mama' and 'Dada' now specifically referring to Aaron and I which we both just love of course! She also tries to say 'all done' but only I could translate it, it comes out as 'ah da'. She claps now too which is the sweetest thing to witness! She stands on her own for almost a minute at a time and when she realizes what she's doing she quickly lowers herself to the ground. She loves to be read to and gets excited when I pull out one of her favorites. She is also sleeping through the night as of the last several weeks (aside from when she's had ear issues)!! She also had her first tooth come in a couple of weeks ago.

Celebrating Nana's 80th!

Ava and I went to Florida last month for a girl's only vacation to celebrate my fabulous grandmother's 80th birthday. The flight there and back was extremely challenging but aside from that Ava did amazing adjusting to being away from home, being around people she did not know, completely out of her routine and in a different time zone. Ava got to experience several firsts - first time in a pool, first time at the beach, first time in the ocean (although it was just her toes, the water was really cold!). It was amazing how in just a matter of a week how many new things she did by the time we returned home. Poor Aaron felt like he really missed out on a lot by not seeing her for a week! She started actually crawling on her knees (versus the army crawl she had been doing), she completely gave up her pacifier (which she had been quite attached to previously), she started waiving, and she learned to say 'Nana'.

The entire week was fantastic. The weather was perfect and I had such a great time spending quality one-on-one time with Ava, hanging out with my Mom, my Nana and my Aunt Linda. At the end of the week we had a party for my Nana and more than a dozen people came in for all around the country to celebrate her big 80th birthday. She is an amazing woman and I am so glad that we got the chance to honor her.

9 Months!

My little peanut turned 9 months old today. She is doing all sorts of new 'tricks' now. She started crawling last week (mostly an army crawl at this point) and she moves fast! She is also pulling to a stand and she 'cruises' on furniture from side to side while she is standing. She has started babbling quite a bit as well. She says 'Mama', 'Dada', and sometimes 'hi'. We can't figure out whether she actually associates the words with us yet or not. She continues to be an incredibly happy baby, she loves going out and seeing new faces and seems to really enjoy the fresh air when we go for walks. She just adores her brother and wants to play with all of his toys, which he is NOT happy about. She has just recently started to get very angry if we take a toy away from her.

I just had a parent-teacher conference today for Evan and they had great things to say. He is really enjoying preschool now and looks forward to going. He is starting to create bonds with other children in his class which is great, up until recently he seemed to only talk about our neighbor (Molly) who is also his classmate. He is a bright little boy and continues to challenge us daily, testing the boundaries at every turn!

Funny Evan comments:

The other day I brought up what he should do in an emergency if I was hurt (e.g. finding a phone in our house and dialing 911) and he looked at me with a very somber look on his face and said "why are you talking about this now"? I swear sometimes he acts like he is 3 going on 30!

He has been very interested in dinosaurs recently and we talk frequently about the fact that they are extinct and have been for millions of years. At the dinner table recently he asked if I remembered the dinosaurs from when I was little!

One evening after an especially frustrating day with him he climbed in my lap, hugged me tight and said "I love you Mom. I want to marry you."

I don't know why it is that kids at this age seem to talk about marriage but apparently one of his classmates told her parents that she wanted to marry Evan. She even pointed his picture out to her Dad in their class photo. I told Evan about this and he said very seriously "I can't marry her, I am marrying Molly".

Christmas

We had an awesome Christmas this year. Evan was really into it which made it that much more fun for all of us as a result. As he was opening gifts on Christmas morning he kept repeating 'This is the best Christmas I have ever seen!". Ava did amazingly well as we took her from place to place disrupting her nap and night time sleep schedule.

6 Months

Ava turned six months last week and although I say it all the time, it has really gone by in the blink of an eye. A few weeks ago she started sitting up and scooting backwards across the floor. She's gotten really good at sitting up now and rarely tips over. She seems so much more content being able to sit up on her own and play. She also 'talks' constantly and I just cannot get enough of hearing her sweet little voice. After a month of eating solids she is really getting the hang of it and seems to especially like a few of the foods I've introduced. Another huge development is that she is actually sleeping through the night! After my Mom's visit she started sleeping a lot better and was getting up typically only a few times each night. Then about a week and a half ago she slept in a 7- hour stretch and has continued to do so every night since (with the exception of last night, she had a cold and was miserable all night). I feed her before I go to bed and she sleeps until at least 6 am and then goes back to sleep usually for another hour. I cannot tell you enough how happy I am about this new development!!

Starting at about 4 months Ava got upset when almost anyone but me held her, she would stick her lower lip out repeatedly and then after a few minutes she just couldn't contain it anymore and she would start wailing. As of yesterday it seems this phase has completely passed. We had a family birthday party at our house last night and despite the fact that she had a cold and was up two hours past her bedtime she was a very happy little girl. From the minute the first person arrived she was smiling and putting on a show, she really seemed to love being the center of attention. It was a different side to her personality that we had not seen yet. She is quite a charming little peanut, I think she is going to have all of us wrapped around her little finger!

Recap of November

November was a great month for us, we had my Mom, my sister-in-law and nephews in town visiting. Having my Mom here was fantastic, not only did it give me a much needed break but the kids got to spend some quality time with her. Ava bonded with her right away which was surprising given that she is experiencing a serious Mommy attachment right now. Evan got along great with her as well and really enjoyed the one-on-one attention she gave him. She gave him little presents (early Christmas gifts) every day so he got quite spoiled!

We had our first snowfall (about 4 inches) of the season which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately it kept us from seeing my sister-in-law and nephews as much as I would have liked to during their stay. I had a nasty case of bronchitis and laryngitis so I was in bed during the course of the few days we had snow but Aaron stayed home from work and took Evan out to build a snowman, sled and have a snowball fight with the neighbors. We almost missed Thanksgiving due to the snow but fortunately in the late morning it warmed up and everything melted quickly so we were able to get up to the farm for our traditional Thanksgiving dinner in the Kristoferson cabin. It was wonderful having Amy and the boys with us and Evan loved having his cousins to play with.

The Sunday following Thanksgiving we went to a tree farm to cut down our Christmas tree as we've done the last several years. We went with our neighbors and after trudging around for about an hour in the mud and not finding anything we liked we all ended up buying one on their lot that was already cut. What is ironic is that Aaron thinks they had their pre-cut trees shipped in from someplace else! The kids got to visit with Santa so it was still a fun event for everyone. Evan was tentative with him as you can see from his very awkward smile!

"Mommy, what do I smell?"

About 7 or so months ago it seems as though a switch turned on in Evan's olfactory glands. He never made any reference to smell whatsoever and then all of a sudden he started talking about it constantly. It all started when he smelled exhaust fumes and now he smells things that we don't even smell. He is quite proud of this new talent and tells everyone "I have a great sense of smell". It is hilarious to hear him describe what he smells, he comes up with the most random descriptions. The other day he walked out on our front porch, sniffed the air and said "What do I smell?". As usual, I did not smell what he was smelling. He paused and said "It smells like pomegranate juice or wine". A couple of months ago we were in the parking lot of the grocery store and he asked again "What do I smell?" and then answered his own question with "it smells like breast milk". He sure knows how to make me laugh!