GA Trip

Well it has obviously been far too long since my last update, so I have a lot of catching you up to do...

Our trip to GA was great! Ava flew like a champ both ways. It was great to see our families (and many other new things for Lil A). We went to Jordan's basketball game, a couple of Shane's baseball games, the Yellow River Game Ranch, and the park. We saw some horses and played on a playground. It was cool for Ava to finally see so many of the animals we have been reading about and making sounds for. :) She also got to play the piano and drums with Uncle Shane. It was a busy yet relaxing trip. Ava did so awesome despite being out of her usual schedule and surroundings. She played hard, slept great, ate okay (a little struggle with sudden pickiness there for a few days), and overall had a super fun time!

Flying

Ava and I are flying to Georgia in a couple weeks! I am super excited and can't wait for all the family to see how big and smart Ava is getting! (It'll have been six months since our last trip and Ava wasn't even walking yet last time we were there, so she is a whole different little person now.) I'm a little bit nervous about keeping little bug occupied and quiet on the plane for two hours, but I think she'll be okay. My friend Anne-Marie has flown a few times with her son Carter (who is two weeks younger than Ava) and she gave me some flying-with-a-baby tips after coming back from her most recent trip a couple weeks ago. I plan on feeding Ava a whole meal, coloring with her new crayons and coloring book, reading books, and people watching. Hopefully that will fill plenty of time without her throwing a fit wanting to get down off my lap and walk around. Miss Independent doesn't really want to sit on my lap much anymore unless we're reading so we'll see how it goes. :)

Any more advice on flying with a 15 month old would be much appreciated!

Videos Finally

2/27/10 - stomping & pups wrestling

2/27/10 - uh oh, snake, & sitting on Pancake

3/8/10 - animal sounds, body parts, "so big!"

3/8/10 - peekaboo, "so big!" & uh oh

Little Mirror

Ava is really starting to imitate me now. She is really like a little mirror. For example, when either of us have an "uh-oh" moment I often widen my eyes, cover my mouth, and gasp a little... Well she is doing that very same thing now. If she "drops" (aka throws) something off of her highchair she will gasp, cover her mouth with one tiny hand, and look at me with big wide eyes and say "uh-oh!" It's so amazing! And it is showing me quite clearly that she will learn how to react to almost every kind of situation FROM ME... talk about a huge resposibility!

In other news, we have reached another little milestone. For a couple months I have only been giving Ava her paci during naps and bedtime. Well for about the last week, she has been 100% paci-free! She gave it up so much easier than I had anticipated, too! I decided to try it one afternoon for a nap. I needed to take a shower and it was coming up on her usual nap time, so I just put her in her crib with a couple books to see what she'd do. (I pretty much expected her to read her books for a bit and then get fussy when she got tired of them.) Well when I got out of the shower I peeked in on her and she was just lying there (not asleep) kind of talking to herself. So as I got dressed and everything I kept an ear out for her and before I knew it she was asleep! So I tried it for the next nap, and then bedtime, and now here we are - she never even seemed to miss it. I guess she was just"ready" to give it up. And I had been dreading what I thought was going to be a battle to ban the paci!
Well I know I need to get some more videos on here.... I will try to capture some good stuff within the next week or so. :)

Thank You!

So like a day or two after my last post about all the things Ava is saying now, she started saying "thank you" a lot. I have been having her feed herself with her own little fork most of the time now but she can't stab the food yet. So I get the food on the fork and put the fork on her high chair tray. She picks it up, eats the food off the fork, and then hands the fork back to me. I always say thank you when she hands it back to me, and she apparently picked up on that. Now she says thank you when she hands the fork back to me... or when she hands a puzzle piece to me, or anything else, hehe. I will try to get it on video soon, maybe tonight. :)

Videos

1-24-2010

1-30-2010

Boo for Shots; Woohoo for Fun!

Well Ava had her one year appointment today. She is 28 inches long and weighs 18 lbs 14.25 oz. She is in the 10th percentile for height and weight and 75th percentile for head circumference. The doctor said she looks great in every way and is developing perfectly. She got three shots today and, of course, did not like that one bit! Hopefully she won't have any real noticeable side effects over the next couple days.
Ava is doing so many fun things now. She says hi, mama, dada, uh-oh. She waves hello and goodbye. She makes the animal sounds for tiger, dog, monkey, cow, and cat. She knows where her ears are ("Ava, where's your ear?" and she grabs it); currently working on the other parts. She knows what clapping is ("Ava, can you clap?" and she claps). She loves, LoVeS, LOVES reading books (and turning the pages, of course). She plays chase, hide and seek, and peek-a-boo. Oh yeah, she plays fetch too haha... Richard was throwing a tennis ball up the stairs for the pups and Ava got her ball out of the toy box and brought it to him. He threw it for her and she went and got it and brought it back to him... over and over. :) She loves stacking and knocking down blocks and loves looking for toys that we hide in things or under things. She likes to talk; I put her down for a nap about 15 minutes ago and I can still hear her up there talking to herself (and most likely playing with her socks that she has taken off). She loves to eat and is doing better with what she likes. For lunch today she had a piece of ham lunch meat, half a slice of whole wheat bread, some raw broccoli, a slice of apple, and water in her sippy cup.
I will try to put some more videos on here soon. They speak much more clearly about her than I do just writing. :)