Ava's First Birthday!

The last year flew by in a blur and now our little angel is one! She is so much fun, she is happy all the time and has the sweetest laugh. Evan can make her laugh like no one else can and she continues to absolutely adore him. She started taking steps on her own a few weeks ago but is very tentative about doing it. Her latest 'trick' is to blow kisses. We had fun getting her all dressed up for her special day (which was funny considering I did not even like pink before she was born and I never imagined I would put a headband on my child)! Her cousins and Aunt Amy flew in from Georgia the night before so we were thrilled they could be there as well to celebrate her first birthday. She is an amazingly special little girl who is loved by so many people. Her Nana handmade her a doll, her Aunt Melissa made her sinfully delicious cupcakes and her cousin Julia sent her a special birthday gift all the way from Spain (just to name a few!).

Easter

We had a fantastic Easter weekend. Aaron took the day off on Friday and we all headed to the farm for three days. The weather was amazing, mid-60's and not a cloud in the sky. We were long overdue for nice weather! We had a ball driving around the farm on the new John Deere Gator and checking out the newly created trails for the zip line canopy tour. The boys went fishing for the first time this year and enjoyed toasting marshmallows around the fire. We also had an egg hunt on Sunday morning and enjoyed a wonderful turkey meal.

As you can see Ava is standing up without holding onto anything and she is very proud of herself (as are we)!


The following pictures are from Evan's preschool Spring Egg Hunt last weekend. Within a couple of hours of these pictures he developed a 104 degree fever and we had to rush him to the
doctor where they diagnosed him with two terrible ear infections.

Saying Goodbye

On Wednesday our Rottweiler, Hili's long life came to an end. She had been slowly declining over the last few years, her hearing was almost gone and her hips were arthritic. Her condition worsened in the last several months to a point where she had a difficult time getting out of bed each day. Beginning on Sunday she started to refuse food, she would not lay down and the sparkle in her eyes was gone. We knew the time was near but it still shocked me when I looked out on the deck and saw her body lying still.

When I met Aaron over 14 years ago, he had just adopted Hili a few months prior. A friend of Aaron's had rescued her from a family who was grossly neglecting her at only a few months old. I lived alone at the time and Hili would often stay over to keep me company, she quickly became my guardian. She never realized that she was a large dog and would try to curl her huge body in your lap. She LOVED playing catch and would do it until she could literally barely walk. Just last week Evan was playing catch with her and even at 14 she was running through the yard like a puppy chasing after the ball.

I found this video of her licking Evan through the baby gate when he was about 11 months old.
http://vimeo.com/22671876

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.