New words and new paint!

It has been a long time since I last wrote anything, but things have just kinda been status quo around here.  In just the last week or two though, Ava has started talking like crazy.  I swear Jason or I say, "I didn't know you knew that word," like 5 times a day.  It is crazy!!

She has started saying "please" and "thank you" WITHOUT BEING PROMPTED!!!  Her "thank you" is so cute because she gets so excited everytime she says it!!  We are loving it!!!

She knows several of her letter sounds, although not consistently, and recognizes letters wherever she sees them even if she doesn't know WHICH letter it is.   When we sing the alphabet song she has often said "Apple" instead of LMNOP in the middle of the song.  She really only says "A" and "YZ" clearly, but she tries so hard the rest of the song.  She will watch my lips and trying to say what I am saying, it really is soooo cute.

She is super into coloring and stickers, which is why I have pen on my wall and stickers all over the floor ;)  She is showing a definite preference for her left hand when coloring, J and I don't know what to do with that.  She still uses her right enough that we aren't sure yet if she is going to be a lefty, but she might!

She points to my belly often and says, "baby!"  She will also try to say Alana if you ask her although she is not very good at it.  When she is settling down for the night she will often lay her hand on my belly and Alana will kick her, I love it.  I really don't think Ava understands, but it is sweet none the less.

I am 27 weeks pregnant with Alana and starting to get antsy about what isn't done.  I know I have plenty of time and everything will be fine, but I am apprehensive none the less.  Alana's room is painted, but so far that is it.

It is a pretty blue color and hopefully the hot pink curtains will be up soon.  The crib is going to be in our room for the first couple months while I am nursing still at night so it will remain a guest room for now.  She has started moving so much you can watch my belly move sometimes, mostly at night.  She definitely has her routine awake and asleep times.  I am excited to meet this new little one and she what she looks like and if she shares her sisters's strong, stubborn, inquisitive, and adventurous spirit. 

Well I guess that is all for now.  Hopefully I will have more to write about soon.

18 Month Snapshot

I meant to do this a couple days ago and just never got around to it:

Favorite Food: Mini corn dogs
Favorite Fruit: Bananas and Apples (not sure which she likes better)
Favorite Drink: Fake Lemonade
Favorite Vegetable: Peas
Favorite Toy: Car

She hates wearing shoes, well to be fair she dislikes wearing clothes in general.  She would be nudie all the time if I let her.
She would rather be outside playing with other kids than anywhere else.
She hates sleeping, but is getting better at doing it anyway.
She loves bath time.
She can say a TON of words and even makes 2 or 3 word sentences
She is obsessed with babies (dolls and real ones :))
and shoes (she just wants to have me put them on so she can take them off over and over).

That is my peanut in a nut shell ;)

18 Months and new little girl on the way...

It has been a long time since the last time I blogged.  I am really bad at keeping up with this, but as it is something for me to look back at down the road and remember what my children were doing, so I guess how often isn't really that important.

Ava will be 18 Months old this week and that just blows me away.  Has it been 18 Months already since I held her for the first time, 18 Months since I went into labor?  What a crazy 18 Months it has been, full of things I didn't expect (still not sleeping through the night at 18 months ;)), nursing her past age 1, no idea what I am doing and scared to death to be responsible for making Ava into a productive member of society and teaching her about Christ.  The day to day stuff I can handle, but making sure she learns her ABC's, 123's and knowing who God is...  I have NO IDEA what I am doing.  I really thought I would know what I was doing, that it would just come to me or something...I feel like everyday I am like ok, what can I do today to help her learn.  I have no plan :)  I am sure it will be fine and she will figure everything out in time, it just blows my mind the weight of this responsibility.  I had no idea I would feel it so keenly.

It is funny, every time she learns something new I am shocked...like "how did she pick that up?"  She amazes me everyday.  She now repeats words, and after only repeating it one or two time she can come up with it at a later date with no prompting.  That is just amazing to me.  Thanks to this leap frog movie "letter factory" she now recognizes letters.  She will point at letters on the outside of a store and say "A" or "E."  She doesn't always get the right letters, but I am just amazed that she gets that they even are letters.

We started a new sleep plan about 3 weeks ago and it has been coming along.  This is not a quick fix by any means, but we aren't going anywhere until after the baby is born so time is something we currently have.  We do bath and then we read her bible and then turn out the lights.  We say prayers and then sing "Jesus Loves Me."  Then I just stay with her in the bed until she falls asleep.  The first night it took an hour and 20min.  She  tried to crawl away over and over and would throw a fit when I would lay her back down.  Last night it took only 23 min and she only tried to crawl away twice, and never fussed when I would tell her to lay down.  I never had to lay her back down.  We are definitely making progress.  I am not expecting tonight to go as well, I am looking at this as two steps forward and one step back, but we are moving forward :)  The ultimate goal is to be able to read her book, pray, sing and then kiss her and leave the room.  Then she can put herself to sleep.  This could take awhile :)

On another note altogether, we are having another little girl :)  She is due to be born around Feb 12th and we are very excited.  I think Ava is going to be a great big sister, she loves babies and loves playing with her baby dolls.  I am excited for her as well, to be a big sister.  We cannot decide on this little ones name yet, but we have some time.  We have several we are throwing around: Alana, Abigail, Rinoa, Brienne, Rebekah, Madeline, Olivia and even some others although those are currently at the top of the list.

Here are the ultrasound pictures from my 20 week ultrasound, for whatever reason I cannot load them on fb:

Front view of the babies face - kind of like an alien

Leg bones

Little crossed legs - trying to be a lady :)

Arms

Arms crossed in front of her face 

Profile view of the face, with two little hands up there

Heart rate - and a view of the 4 chambers of the heart, albet not a good one

Little girly parts - sorry little one, had to save this one too even if it is embarrassing :)

Well that ended up being much more long winded than I had meant it to, but that is alright.  It was a good one.  Can't believe me little girl is 18 Months old.  18 Months and so much fun!!

Loves to eat apples whole :)

Obsessed with shoes 

Loves her toy car, every time she wants to go outside she says, "car?"

Loves playing with her baby doll, pushes it in the stroller and gives it rides in her car

Big girl on the caboose at the train park

Don't I look pretty with my bow?

My beautiful little girl!  I love her so much!!

New words and Epiphanies!

Ava is getting bigger everyday!  She is learning new words all the time.  She says, "up," "down," "roar," "meow," "done," "shoes," "sigh (for outside)," "kide (for slide)," "Mah-ee (for her friend Molly)," "cup," "wawa (water)," "tickle-tickle-tickle," and these are just a few of the new things she is saying all the time.  She definitely is like her daddy.  She will try to figure something out for awhile before getting frustrated.  She finds lots of different ways to try and complete her objective (i.e. bring my cell phone up the ladder for the slide with her or buckle her own seat belt).    She also figured out how to turn on the washer and dryer.  It is AMAZING to me how much she learns just by watching!  I love my little girl!!

I also realized in the last couple days that I expect more from my daughter than I do from myself.  As you all know, sleep has been the bane of our existence throughout Ava's entire life.  It has been much better in the last several weeks.  She typically wakes once a night sometime between 2 and 4 am.  Last night she woke 3 times and I found myself very frustrated, but I realized something.  I sometimes wake several times in one night, whether with indigestion, having the use the restroom, weird dreams, or just a mind that doesn't want to shut down.  I don't always fall back to sleep immediately either.  Why then do I expect my daughter, who is just learning to sleep through the night, to do better than I do?  It is easy to get frustrated with her and annoyed that she is not doing exactly what I would like, but I need to remember that she is also probably annoyed that she is tired and not sleeping.  Now if I can just keep this in mind at 3 in the morning :)

That is all for now.  We are finally home after being gone visiting family for 3 weeks.  Thankfully it was pretty pain free to get back into our routine.  Lots of fun things coming up with the Soybean festival :)

Been a long time...

I haven't posted in awhile, because not too much is going on right now.  We are in North Carolina visiting my parents.  My cousin Erin's wedding was this past Saturday.  Beautiful wedding, beautiful bride.  For the daddy daughter dance they did "Little Miss Honkeytonk" which is their song.  My Uncle Brad comes out dressed in full country attire.  Blue jeans, ball cap, and cut off jean shirt.  IT WAS AWESOME!!!

Ava even did well at the wedding.  Thanks so much to my parents and my sister Tina for watching her all afternoon and through the wedding so I could get ready with the bride and take pictures, etc.  It worked out really well.  I swear my daughter must not like weddings, between her fever and new molars at my brothers wedding, and her fever, trip to the ER, double ear infections, and UTI at my cousin's wedding, it was stressful.  Why she can't just be her wonderful self, I don't know.  She has to keep me guessing I guess.  She looked cute at the wedding though.

My parents have a cat named Boots who meows very loudly and very often.  So Ava has taken to meowing back at him very loudly.  It is absolutely the cutest thing.  I am hoping I can get it on video to share with everyone else.  It makes me laugh every time she does it.  We are enjoying our time with my family, but we miss Jason big much.  Ava will often walk around the house saying "daddy" or walk up to the door and say "daddy?"  Poor thing.  She will be super excited when she sees him on Friday.  Well that is about all for now.

Our little helper

Been a long time since I blogged...I have been lazy.

Ava is currently in the wanting to help phase.  She wants to help mommy and daddy do everything.  She wants to help me with the laundry.  She will pull something out of the dryer and then hand it to me to be hung up.  She puts things in the trash if you ask, and she wants to put her dirty diapers in the pail after we change her.  She also likes that she then gets to put hand sanitizer on her hands, she likes doing that too.  She is such a big helper.  You can also get her to clean up, sort of, she pulls everything back out like two seconds later.

She also has started thinking it is hilarious to put her forehead to yours.  She even does it to the cat :)

She now often at least tries to repeat something if you say it to her.  For instance, if you say "say pink" she may repeat everything but the 'k'.  She is coming out with new words all the time, and using the words she already knows even more appropriately.  It is amazing how fast she is growing and changing right now.  She also is obsessed with babies.  If she sees a baby on tv she will point and start jabbering, and loves to see other peoples babies (she can be a little rough though so we are trying to learn to be gentle).

She still would prefer to be outside, but it has been so hot lately that those times outside have been few and far between.  Hopefully next week will be a little cooler and we can get out more.

Hopefully this gives you a little Ava fix.

15 Months - words I am saying!

Since Ava just turned 15 months old and seems to be saying more words everyday, I thought it would be a good idea to make a list of what words she is saying now, and then again maybe in 3 months.

Words she says:
Mama/Mommy
Dada/Daddy
Cat/Kitty (although usually cat)
No
Yes (although usually it is No)
Dog (although usually even the dogs are cats)
Duck
Ball
Baby
Up
Down
Bye
Hi
Hot
Weee
Wow
Whoa
Moo
uh-huh
uh-oh
Eyes
Ears
Knees
She tells us she is hungry by saying "mmmm" it is really cute!

She has even said "mama down" once.  And, I think she may have called my friends son Ben a couple times and his name is Benjamin, so that is pretty good.

Can't think of anything else at the moment so maybe I will add more later if I think of them.  Problem with Ava is she doesn't perform, she says something when it is appropriate, but if you say "Ava can you say..." she won't do it.  She has started mimicking actions and that is super cute.  She will pretend to brush her teeth with her toothbrush, or her hair with my hairbrush, or she will take my contact case and pretend to open it and put her contact in her eye.

She knows where her belly button is, where her eyes are, ears are, head is, and toes are.

I guess that is it for now.