ava mae: 12 months

our little bunny is 12 months old.  12 MONTHS!!! i cannot believe its been a whole year since we got to meet this sweet girl.  she has changed our lives, and we seriously are lucky that we got this beautiful baby.

ava is in the 85%ish percentile for both height and weight.  somewhere around 22 lbs and i can't remember how many inches...we JUST had her one year apt last week but i have misplaced the paper where they write down height and weight. bad mom.  she's wearing size 18M clothes and size 4 diapers.

she's eating mostly table foods now, and having about 4-5 1/2 formula/1/2 whole milk bottles a day.  she eats breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a couple of snacks.  some favorites are spaghettios, blueberries, citrus, puffs snacks, yogurt, cheese, and hummus.  she will eat most anything you give her, but she recently has started hating her high chair, so we try to get in and out pretty quick.  she LOVES water--seriously, anytime you give her water she chugs it.  we haven't given her any juice or anything like that yet.  we will wait quite a bit longer before she gets any of that type of stuff.  (i had a few people ask me if she got cake on her birthday--nope!  she will have some at her birthday party, and she had a lick of icing at her 1 year photo shoot, but other than that, no sweets for this girl other than the occasional arrowroot cookie.  mean momma!)

ava is crawling, cruising, and walking with a walker or pushing a chair around.  she is just starting to stand without assistance, but i still think we have a little ways to go before she's doing a whole lot of that.  we are in no rush to have a walker.  :)

she can wave, clap, dance, play peekaboo, and throw fits with the best of them.  we are just now starting to let her watch a little tv before school in the mornings, and she loves the babys first channel.  she likes to dance along with the songs.  she's very interested in everything in the cabinets, specifically taking it all out and throwing it on the floor, and she hasn't met a door yet that she hasn't wanted to open or close.  she LOVES climbing into the fridge and looking around.

i would say she's still quite the mommas girl, especially when she's grumpy or tired, but she lights up for daddy when he's around.  she also does better for him with bedtime--with me, she always puts up a huge fight.

speaking of bedtime, aside from a few off nights here in the last few days, she's been sleeping 7pm-7am with no wake ups.  she has spoiled us, so these past few nights when shots/teething/fever/cough was happening, oliver and i didn't know what to do with ourselves! our poor baby was waking up every two hours.  i am hoping the worst is past us though, and that our good sleeper is back to stay.

ava loves to be tickled, sing the ABCs, to play with laundry (specifically when i am trying to fold it-she likes to UNfold it), and likes to swing.  she hates her high chair, the shower head (this is a recent fear), getting her diaper changed, and momma walking away and leaving her somewhere.

i cannot BELIEVE that we have a one year old.  this year seriously went by so fast.  to all my friends with little babies--cherish every moment.  it FLIES by.


happiest of birthdays to my sweet firstborn.  we love you so so much!

ava mae: 11 months

our big girl is 11 months old! (sob!!) actually, she's 11 months and 10 days old...the bigger she gets, the harder it is to find time to blog.

ava is wearing size 12M-18M clothes, but 18M fits better, and wearing a size 4 diaper.  i don't know what she weighs or her length right now, but we have her 1 year appt soon and they will give us the updates then.  if i had to guess on weight, i would say close to 22-23 lbs?  and she's really tall too!

she is such a busy, active girl. she's been crawling since about 9 months, but now she's LIGHTNING fast and pulling up on everything. she's cruising along furniture and can go from a sit to a squat without help.  she's still not quite standing without help, but i feel like that will come any day now.  she dances anytime there is a good beat, and its so cute to see her bobbing her head along to the music.

she's just recently getting in more teeth.  she only had her bottom two for the longest time, but the tooth fairy opened the flood gates, and literally in the past couple weeks she's gotten in her top tooth on the right, the one next to that, and then also a bottom tooth.  she's cutting them left and right and its crazy how quickly they are all coming in!

she's eating mainly table foods, and she especially enjoys spaghetti-os, strawberries, watermelon, and peas are still a fav.  she eats three solid meals a day with a couple of snacks (puffs, yogurt bites) thrown in.  i am not pumping at work anymore, and she nurses about once a day, sometimes twice, but her main source of milk is formula at this point.  it was a hard transition for me, but i am so happy to not be pumping anymore and so proud that she got mainly breast milk for over 10 months.

she's sleeping pretty well, all things considered.  of course the teething throws things off, but on a  typical night she goes down at about 7PM, sleeps til about 10 and wants another bottle or to nurse, and then sleeps til about 6:30-7am.  on a bad night she's still only up one additional time, which i don't mind.  i usually give her some teething tablets and a bottle/nurse, and she's back asleep in 15-20 minutes.

she can clap, wave, and i am pretty sure her first word was "bye-bye"!!  she kind if mimics you when you say that, but only when she feels like it.  its pretty sporadic, but i am counting that as her first word.  other than that, she says "oh" (not sure if she knows the meaning) BABABABA is a favorite, and she still babbles/screams a lot.

she's very smart and can figure things out quickly. she has a lunchbox toy that she will open and take out her red apple---every.single.time.  she also has a bouncy ball toy which has multiple colored balls, and she always, without fail, picks out the red one.  she loves that color!  she loves to sing songs with momma, and a favorite is the ABCs and itsy bitsy spider.

we love our sweet, active girl and cannot believe she's going to be ONE YEAR in just a few short weeks!

ava mae: 10 months

well, this is only a couple of weeks late.  oops.  its going to be short and sweet....i debated just waiting until her 11 month blog and doing a 2 for 1 deal, but i know i would regret it later.

so.


ava is 10 (and a half) months old!  her little personality is coming out more and more every day.  she is testing boundaries, both literally and figuratively, and she's challenging us and entertaining us on the regular.

ava is still breast-feeding, nursing in the mornings, typically once a night, and then taking half pumped half formula bottles to daycare.   i am so proud that we made it this far, but i am happy to see the end in sight.  when she's over-tired and i try to nurse her, she bites me on purpose and then laughs when i react....so thats not fun.  she made it 9 months with breastmilk as her primary source of nutrition so these last two months mixing in formula doesn't bother me.

she is eating most everything we eat, with the exception of sweets.  i cut everything up pretty small because she does tend to shove everything in her mouth, but this girl EATS.  tonight she had meatballs, ravioli, carrots, and apples.  she also likes hummus and mexican rice and beans.  we still do baby food at daycare, just because i worry about them cutting up her food, but i am going to make that switch soon and let them give her real food there too.  she drinks (and LOVES) water from a sippy cup, straw, water bottle....really anything that has water in it, she wants a drink from it.  she can also suck the baby food out of baby food pouches, which makes it handy when we are on the go.

she's officially pulling up and cruising, and walking with the assistance of a walker.  she hates to be confined, and loves to go go go!  we have only one real baby friendly area at our house, so its been tough to get things done with her being so active.  i don't know if we will "baby proof" or just wait this time out.  we will see.

ava got tubes in her ears a couple of weeks ago, and since then she has been sleeping better (about 7:30PM-7AM, with one wakeup to nurse), and i am so glad we did the surgery.  it was super easy, quick, and the hospital and doctor were both great.

she's wearing a size 12M in clothes and 3 diapers, but we really need to move her to size 4 diapers.  and i think she will be in size 18M by her first birthday.  if i had to guess at her weight....i would say around 22-25 lbs?  i just got her a convertible car seat so we don't have to switch carseats back and forth from mine and olivers car, although her infant seat is good up to 35 lbs.  she will stay rear-facing in the new seat to the weight restrictions, which is 40lbs.

she's very opinionated, and for that i call her the diva.  her other nickname is "bunny"....and we are basing her first birthday around that!  i can't believe i am planning a first birthday party for this sweet girl.  its been a whirlwind 10 months.

she loves baths, daddy, harley, FOOD, singing songs, and being outside.  she's not a fan of momma walking away, being confined, or new faces.

we love our big 10 month old girl!

ava mae: 9 months

our booger bear is 9 months old! only 3 months away from being a big ONE YEAR OLD!  as always, its hard to believe.  this has been the fastest 9 months of my life.  as my mom said the other day, she has been outside the womb for as long as she was in it.  that is crazy to think of!

ava is 19lbs5oz (70%), 28 3/4 inches long (88%), and her head is 18 inches around (92%).  she is still rocking that big noggin!  she is wearing a size 12M in clothes and a size 3 diaper.

she is now getting three solid meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  she typically gets pureed fruits and veggies, sometimes with oatmeal thrown in, and i also give her yogurt melts after she eats.  lately i have been trying to give her some type of table food at each meal too--cut up pasta, bananas, green beans, etc.  i don't think she gets a ton in her mouth, but she likes to try and feed herself.  she gets water from a sippy cup with her dinner too.  she still is breastfeeding, taking about 16-20 oz with her in bottles to school each day, and nursing once before and once after school.  some days if i don't pump enough, we do supplement her bottles with an ounce of formula, but 90% of what she is getting is still breast milk.

sleep is getting better, finally.  she has added a third nap in to her schedule right at the time we pick her up from school, so her bedtime has been pushed back to 8-8:30ish.  once she's in bed, she can sleep until about 4-5AM when she wants to nurse, and goes right back to sleep until about 7am.  then she naps at about 9AM and 1PM, each for an hour or so.  one night this week she slept from 8:30PM-7AM!  which was amazing.  i finally let her have two lovies in the crib with her, a dog and a duck, and she sleeps between them.  i think she likes feeling secure with them in here with her.

we officially have a mobile baby in the house, as ava is now CRAWLING!  well, really, she scoots, but she is able to get to her destinations pretty quickly.  she can go from sitting to crawling down on her belly and back to sitting quite easily.  she makes the cutest grunting sounds when she is trying to crawl around--i can tell when she is trying to escape her play area in the living room by the sounds she makes.

she still only has two teeth, but they are getting bigger.  i don't see any others trying to come through, but those two bottom ones came in so quickly, i don't know what to expect with any future teeth!

the biggest hurdle we are facing right now is her 6th consecutive ear infection.  we are finally giving in and taking her to an ENT in the next week or so.  i am fairly certain they will do tubes for her ears. i am bummed and worried about doing the tubes, but also i hate the fact that she's on antibiotics just about every month.

she also had a bad cough this past week which turned into some wheezing and trouble breathing.  i took her to the doctor yesterday and they agreed that she was wheezing, so we did a breathing treatment there in the office. luckily her oxygen levels were good, so not an emergency, but we did bring home a nebulizer for continued treatments as needed here at the house.  the doctor thinks its just seasonal allergies and reactions to all the pollen.

i know i say this every time--but we just love this baby. she is so sweet and funny, and her reactions and faces she makes are priceless.  she charms everyone she meets and is so good natured.  she is IN LOVE with her daddy, and looks more like him everyday.  she also loves her teacher ms. kristy at school, harley, strawberry yogurt puffs, baths, swinging, and being outside.  she even laughs at the sweedish snot sucker!  she gets fussy when she's hungry or overtired, and thats really about it.

thank you sweet ava mae for making me a momma. i am glad you chose me!  happy mothers day everyone!

ava mae: 8 months

our little boo is 8 months! (well, almost 8 and a half now...but who's counting.) 

she is seriously such an easy, fun baby.  we just had her first easter camping trip, and she did great!  she loves being outside and loves the water.  she also had her first ever boat ride on her bop-bops boat and she did so well with that too.  she enjoyed all the attention from friends and family.  

ava is 19.5 lbs and i don't know how many inches. she's wearing size 3 diapers, and she is in 9M clothes still.  i could probably move her to 12M clothes, but i am not quite ready to give up all her cute 9M stuff!  old navy 6-12M size fits her well right now.  

she's eating solids now, 3x a day.  we are doing a fruit at breakfast, a veggie at lunch, and a fruit and a veggie at dinner, all purees.  i started with making my own baby food, but that got hard to keep up with after awhile with working full time and our busy social commitments, so i have been buying organic purees for her.  she's also gotten some baby puffs and yogurt melts for practice using her hands to feed herself, and she does pretty well! 

she's still breastfed and taking about 16-20 oz of pumped bottles and nursing at home. i literally have no freezer stash at all anymore...so i just take it a day at a time and hope for the best.  i am trying to not let it stress me out.  only a few more months and i can ease some of the burden with whole milk, although i think we will continue to nurse at night for as long as she wants. 

sleep is....all over the place as usual.  i feel like right when we get into a rhythm of good sleep, something happens to mess it up.  she was doing GREAT for awhile there, only waking up once a night if at all, and then she got another dreaded ear infection.  we are on day 5 of antibiotics for this one, and it seems to be helping, but bad sleep habits have already been reestablished while she was sick.  the past few nights she's been waking up 3+ times a night and wants to nurse to get back to sleep each time.  needless to say, i am exhausted pretty much all the time.  i am hoping once this ear infection passes her sleep will regulate out again.  

speaking of ear infections, this one makes 4 in 4 months. the doctors are now trying to discuss tubes with us.  we have managed to put them off to this point, but if she gets another one, we will have to go see an ENT.  poor baby.  i feel so bad for her when she has them, but i also don't love the idea of pumping her full of antibiotics all the time. my friend actually got an ear infection this past weekend and said the pain was INTENSE.  so i feel awful that my little baby is going through that same pain and can't express it.  

she is rolling all over the place and starting to scoot to get to things she wants on the floor.  you can't leave her alone anywhere unattended without her getting into something she's not supposed to.  she's just starting to push to all fours once she's on her belly, so i am sure crawling will be soon, but i am so not ready for that.  

ava babbles sounds (mama, baba) and can repeat after me when i say mama. i still don't think she knows that mama means me, so i am not counting that as her first word.  she also can mimic pretty well--she likes to fake cough, laugh, and now she does this thing where she growls at you like a monster.  

she is still doing great at daycare and we love her teachers.  she likes to hang out and take it all in while she's there, and she definitely likes to watch other babies.  she got to play with baby henry a ton in the past few weeks, and those two can keep each other entertained for a long time!  she also likes to watch/laugh at harley and LOVES to see her daddy walk in a room. her whole face lights up for him.  she loves baths, sweet peas, and getting out and about.  she is still not a fan of anyone cleaning her face or nose, me setting her down and walking away, and she doesn't really seem to like carrots too much (although she will still eat them).  

this girl is so sweet and such a great baby.  we love our ava mae!

ava mae: 7 months

miss mae is 7 months old! i feel like there aren't as many huge changes this time, maybe because february was such a short month.

anyway, her stats are:  somewhere around 18 lbs 6 oz, not sure on how long she is, and she's wearing size 9M clothes.  we are still in size 3 diapers but i am thinking that will change soon and we will have to start looking at size 4s.

she is still breast fed, both with pumped bottles and nursing, and i feel like 7 months of breastfeeding is something to be proud of.  each month, i am happy to make it yet another month, but when she was born i honestly never thought i would make it this long.  i am really happy that we have made it and (fingers crossed) it looks like a year is going to be possible for us!  we haven't re-introduced formula at all since she puked it up that last time.  i have pretty much wiped out my freezer stash of breast milk, but somehow we make it work each day and theres enough.

she is also now getting solids once a day!  we tried to introduce them at 6 months, and she just wasn't into the whole spoon eating thing. the only way she would eat any solids was if i put them into her mesh feeder.  then, about a week ago, i tried the spoon feeding again, and something just clicked!  she was totally into it and seemed to just "get it".  i have made all of her baby food so far, just sweet potatoes and carrots, but today at the store i did buy some organic/no preservaties food to add to the mix. so far she has had: sweet potatoes, carrots, banana, avocado, and tonight for the first time we tried green beans.  she makes funny faces to it all, but really eats anything we give her.  she does seem to prefer the mesh feeder though. she ate half of an avocado in it the other day!

sleep.  sleep lately has been....not great.  she got sick in the beginning of february (AGAIN...thank you daycare) and she would wake up in a coughing fit around 4am every day. so, i got in the habit of bringing her to the guest bed to sleep the last couple hours before work. well, me bringing her to the guest bed turned into me bringing her to OUR bed.  and 4am turned into 10PM...so you see where this is going.  she's gotten used to sleeping in our bed each night.  i am really going to try these next couple of nights to break the habit though.  if she stays overnight with someone else, i can't expect them to keep her in their bed, so its really best if she sleeps in her crib all night.  we have had rodeo work days these past few days, so i have been too tired to fight the battle, but tonight i am going to try!

she does sleep well though. still goes to bed around 6-7 (7:45 tonight for daylight savings) and sleeps til about 10 when she wants to come to our bed.  in there, she sleeps through til about 5am and she gets restless.  thats when she wants to nurse.  after that she may sleep another hour or so and then she's up for the day.

baby girl is rolling to get to her destinations, and sitting up with very slight assistance.  she stands with help, and is now getting up onto all fours sometimes too.  i feel like crawling will be soon.

she LOVES her daddy, her sister giving her kisses (on her hands, not on her face) and itsy bitsy spider and the birdie song.  she loves to babble (baba, mama) and fake cough, and is content just to watch everything happening around her.  she does great at daycare because its so busy there and she loves to be in the middle of everything!

she only really cries when she's hungry or tired. she does well with pretty much anyone, as long as they are giving her attention.  she still LOVES baths, and loves water, and i am excited for her first easter camping trip coming up soon.  i am sure she will have lots of swimming time this summer!

we love our big girl...and cannot believe she's only 5 months away from being a ONE YEAR OLD!

ava mae: 6 months

our little diva is half a year old already! these past 6 months have FLOWN by....its hard to believe 6 months ago, i was pregnant and waiting for her arrival.

she has changed so much in the last month.  where to begin....

for starters, she is still eating breastmilk, both from nursing and from bottles.  i have tried to introduce formula a couple of times now, and it really seems to disagree with her little system. she pukes it all up whenever we try, so for now...strictly breastmilk it is.  i have made it 6 months already, so maybe i can make it the whole year.  fingers crossed!  we also have started her on cereal once a day.  we did this for the first time yesterday, and as you can see, the diva wasn't super impressed.  her doctor recommended starting with cereal then moving onto veggies.  i am excited to see her reactions to different foods!  we are taking our time with it though, and moving slowly to other foods.  breastmilk is still the best thing for her.

our little chunk had her 6 month apt the other day, and she weighs 17 lbs 10 oz (77%), is 27 inches long (89%) and her head circumference is 17 1/4 inches (89%).  it looks like she's going to be tall!  she is wearing size 3 diapers and size 6M, 6-9M, and i just got out her 9M clothes.  the 9M really fits her best for now, but she's kind of in that in between stage where the 6M is a little tight and the 9M is a little big.  she has a TON of cute 9M stuff though, so I am trying to get her in some of it now to stretch out how long she gets to wear it all.

her sleep at the beginning of this month took a nose dive.  she was up every hour and a half for what seemed like WEEKS.  then oliver and i took a week long trip to mexico and my parents kept her, and apparently while she was there, something just clicked.  now she's sleeping from 6:30PM-6:30AM with little or no wake ups.  when she does wake up, you just pop in her pacifier (called a "boppy" in our house) and she goes right back to sleep.  whatever you did mom and dad, it worked!!  naps are still iffy....i have really been trying to put her down in her crib for naps, but its slow going.  she's actually in there right now taking a nap, so i will count that as a small victory!  at night we go through a bedtime routine of bath, swaddle, and nurse, and lay her down awake but sleepy.  she has no problem putting herself to sleep at bedtime.

in physical development, she just recently started rolling more than one roll at a time.  she can be in the middle of the living room and roll roll roll to the other side in no time.  its actually really funny to see her do it, and sometimes she gets stuck in the side of the couch or in her crib slots.  then she gets pissed!  she also loves to bounce in her bouncer.  she is working on sitting up unassisted--we still have a little ways to go on that.  she can stand with help too.

i think we are entering a little of an attachment phase.  these past couple days she hasn't wanted me to put her down and she's screamed when i walk away from her.  the doctor said that around this age they start realizing mom is leaving the room--and she definitely does.  (she just woke up from her nap as i type this and i've had to move her bouncer to where she can see me....shes keeping me within eyesight!)

her hair is coming in, and it looks like its going to be a light blonde.  her eyes are still kind of hard to tell, but sometimes they look dark blue, green, and hazel.  it just depends on the light.  i did read that the eyes change the most drastically between 6-9 months, so it will be interesting to see what happens these next couple months.

she is a serious baby, always checking things out and studying the faces of people around her.  she LIGHTS UP when her daddy is around, and also loves for me to sing songs (itsy bitsy spider and the birdie song are the favorites), loves to look at herself in the mirror, and loves bath time.  she's not a fan of anyone messing with her nose or her neck rolls.  she pretty much only cries when she's hungry or tired.

we love our sweet girl! happy 6 months ava!