Walking!!!

Well it has obviously been quite a while since I updated this and a lot has happened in the life of our little bugga. Ava is 11 months old now! So what's been going on?... Well, we went to Georgia for the first two weeks of November. Saw family and whatnot, which was nice, but it was a tiring trip (ugh, the drive!) and we were glad to get back to our Kansas home. About two weeks ago, Ava had two new teeth emerge. The top left middle one and the one to the left next to it (not the other middle one!). It looks a little funny for now, but I'm sure the other middle one will come in any day. I will walk you through the other happenings using videos...

October 25 - Ava went through about a two week phase where she would sniff at us a lot. (That's the best way I think to describe it; the video shows what I mean.) She doesn't really do it anymore but it was funny while it lasted. :)

November 21 - Well it took a lot longer than I had expected (based on when she started pulling up and cruising along furniture), but Ava started standing on her own and taking a couple little steps as you see in this video. I used Cheerios and a lot of cheering and excitement to keep her interested in standing. :)

November 21 - The rocking dog in this video was mine when I was Ava's age... and she loves it as much Mom says I did. :) "Rock, rock!"

November 22 - Ava likes to play hide and seek with her paci. I put it at the bottom of this bucket and then put all the blocks on top of it. She pulls the blocks out one by one until she finds the paci. Then she holds it up - victory! She falls over at one point in this video and I get really tickled because she has been proficiently sitting up for months now and pretty much never falls over anymore. I guess it's comparable to an adult randomly falling down walking; pretty funny.

November 27 - In this video Ava takes more steps in a row. She usually dives for whoever she's walking to in the last few steps. :) She's gaining confidence in herself.

November 28 - Getting better and going further! She is starting to like the fact that she can do it all by herself.

Today, November 30, she is letting go of furniture on her own and walking without much enticing. She still knows that crawling is her fastest and most reliable way to go, but she's trying the walking a lot more. :)

I cannot believe she is almost a year old. Ava eats pretty much whatever we're eating at meal times. I just make sure it's small enough and soft enough and let her have at it. She has the mashing motion of chewing down pat so despite not having many teeth she can eat just fine. And she's a very good eater; a bottomless pit, really, hehe! We are down to nursing just twice a day now, morning and night. I plan to go down to once a day in a week or so and phase out completely probably by the end of December. We'll see how it goes... I called the hospital today to see about getting her 12 month check-up and shots but we have to wait until January based on the time I got her 6 month shots, so she gets to avoid that a little longer. That pretty much sums up the past month and a half, I think. We are just enjoying being a family of 3 (well, 5 including pups of course) and hope Richard won't have to go anywhere any time soon. :)