15 Months and Loving Every Minute of It

I am really enjoying this stage of Ava's life.  She is just so much fun now.  New words are coming out all the time.  She loves giving high fives, kisses, and hugs.  She is so curious about the world around her.  She will stand outside and turn around pointing at everything and talking.  She is so much fun to play with.  She is still pretty whiny so I have started working on that.

She loves putting on and taking off my shoes.  She likes to put them on me, she will bring them to me while I am in the living room and put them on and off and on and off.  Now she like to have them on herself.  Jason was watching her yesterday and she brought him my shoes and had him put them on her feet and she would take one step and they would stay on, so she would just take off and run right out of the shoes.  She would then look back see the shoes on the ground, get frustrated, and bring them back to daddy to start all over again.

She loves her daddy.  She does a little "daddy dance" when he comes home.  She squeals and stops her feet really fast.  She is also his little drummer girl.  She likes to drum on anything that is the correct height.  She will even drum on her own tummy.

She has started putting her arms out behind her sticking her neck out jabbering and then taking off.  It is the funniest thing to watch.  Not sure if she thinks her arms behind her will help her run or fly.  :)

She now consistently will find her belly button if you ask her where her belly button is.  She says and will find "eyes."  Hopefully you don't mind her poking you in the eye :)  She also has said and pointed to her nose, head, and toes.

She also listens if you ask her to go pick something up and then put it in a box or, put it away.  I guess this means we can start cleaning although she will just pull it all back out again :)

She now is in a toddler bed and had no trouble going from the crib to the bed, she likes that she can climb off her bed and meet me at the door after her naps.  She is sleeping much better over all.  She only wakes once a night if she wakes at all.  We are still having a fight about the going to sleep part.  She doesn't ever want to go to sleep, but is better once she is asleep.

I think she may be afraid of the dark.  We turned off the wipe warmer which was acting as the night light in the room, and she refused to walk in the room to go to bed one night.  I thought maybe she just didn't want to go to bed, but then the next night she woke an hour after going to bed and refused to go back to sleep in her room.  So last night I turned on another night light and she slept in her room just fine.

She has now cut two of her molars, and of course had to cut one at Josh's wedding, making for a VERY fussy baby.  Sorry Josh and Anna :)  She looked super cute though :)  It was a wonderful wedding and I am so happy for both of them.  I can't wait to see pictures from their honeymoon in Jamaica!

Unrelated, we are going to have a new addition to our family in February.  We have seen the heartbeat on the ultrasound so that makes it official.  I am wondering if this one is a boy.  My pregnancy has already been SO different than it was with Ava.  With Ava once I started having morning sickness I had it every single day.  With this one I have only had it a few times a week and then the other days I feel fine.  For instance Tuesday morning was the first morning I actually got sick, but then I felt fine until today and then I am nauseous this morning.  I have had more food aversions this time around.  I really didn't have any with Ava.  I will not want food I normally love, or I will look at something and think it looks good, but once I start eating it I don't want it anymore.  Like, I cannot take another bite.  It is really weird.  I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Sorry this post ended up being super long, I had lots to get down about where Ava is now since it has been so long since I last posted.

New words, car washes, and petting zoos :)

Well everyday is surely an adventure.  Ava is changing everyday. 

She says new things (or things she has said before, but more consistently).  Her friend Molly has a dog and it was outside barking and she pointed and said "Dog!" several times over and over.  This is a big deal as usually she calls their dog a "cat."  Just today she pointed at Jason's eyes and her eyes and said "eyes."  Woo hoo, the "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" song is starting to work :)  She already will often (but not always by any means) touch her head and her toes in the song.  Now she will actually say "toes."  She said, "up" for me a couple times when she wants to be picked up.  The only issue with Ava is, if she doesn't want to do something she won't.  So even if you know she knows how to say something, if she doesn't want to do it she won't do it :(  She is very stubborn :) 

She has so much personality it just blows me away.  She is so expressive when she jabbers at you I really wish I could understand what she is saying.  She loves to help with whatever we are doing.  She will pull the clothes out of the dryer one by one and hand them to me so I can hang them up (and gets frustrated if something she is trying to get out is stuck under something else).  She helped daddy wash the car by dunking the sponge in the bucket and scrubbing the car with it.  It really doesn't take her very long to pick up on how to do something.  She loves to use hand sanitizer.  You pump some into her hands and she scrubs her hands around.  So super cute.  In fact, we went to a little petting zoo at UTM and she kept going over to get the hand sanitizer, it was her favorite part.  She loves to play and make you laugh and make herself laugh.  She really is such a joy.

She has been sleeping better (MUCH) lately.  It is like she just decided one day that she wanted to sleep.  She has slept completely through the night once without waking.  Then most other nights she only wakes one or two times (and goes back to sleep really fast).  A couple times I have even been able to go in her room, help her find her paci and lay her down without ever picking her up.  This I can handle :)

She is cutting her molars so if she stops playing she gets pretty fussy.  I feel bad for her, they are very swollen and one has already cut through the gum.  She tries to chew on everything, but sometimes this just causes her to hurt herself.  I always feel bad then, poor thing.

We went to a petting zoo on UTM's campus this week and Ava had a lot of fun, so did I for that matter.  The only thing she was afraid of was the camel.  He was awfully big and liked to lick you, which is incredibly weird.  She tried to free the kangaroo by tugging on the door of his cage.  They had lots of other things Ava enjoyed.  Goats, bunnies, piglets, a donkey, a llama, some sheep, chickens that looked like cotton balls with legs, baby ducks, a hare, a turtle, and of course the camel. 

She plays more by herself more often now (mommy doesn't always have to play with her which allows me to accomplish somethings).  The only problem is that she doesn't stay in one place very long, so I will turn my back for a second and she is gone and I have to go find her.  More often then not she is in our closet or bedroom for whatever reason.

Well, that is about all for now.  Life with our squirrel is never dull.

SLEEP!!!

So, last night Ava slept from the time I put her down until the time I went in her room this morning.  WOOT!!  Ava went to bed late for her at 9pm (she took a late nap after the birthday party, so went down late).  At 6:30AM I went into her room because I was like, "what in the world!"  She was laying in bed awake and started talking to me as soon as I came in.  She was happy!  I brought her into our bed for her morning nursing and then we started our day.  I was sooooo happy.  Now if only she would do this more than once....