Happy New Year everyone! I know, a little late. :) Eric & I got to enjoy a night out with our friends on New Years Eve, which was very refreshing for both of us! My mom watched Ava for us and she was such a good girl! I was, of course, worried about her all evening, but she was in good hands. :) Hope everyone had a great New Year!!





** CHEERS! **

At Ava's doctor appointment last week she was 12 lbs 7 oz and 24 inches long! 90th percentile for both. She's a long little girl! Lately, she's really been getting into sucking her fingers and hands and grasping things and putting them in her mouth. Her little fingers are starting to get chapped and irritated with all the finger sucking she's been doing! She's discovering that she has feet too! hehe. She'll sit in her bouncer and stare at her kicking feet and then try to swat at the toys that hang in front of her with her feet! And she loves staring at the TV. I'll lay her down on the floor in her activity gym and despite all she has to look above her in the play gym she somehow always manages to find the TV and stare at it! Eric says, "well that's because she likes football." HA! Well, that's all for now ... enjoy the pics!


**Sucking those fingers.**


** Oooo, new toy! **





**Yummy!**


**Everything's starting to go in her mouth.**





**Look how excited she is wearing her Juicy Couture! hehe**



**Look how un-excited she is to be frosty for a day! hehe.**

Christmas Fun!

It feels good to be home and back into the swing of things! We spent most of this past week traveling around Ohio to celebrate Christmas with those we love! We are always excited to see our families since we don't get to see them that often. Ava always gets pretty stressed out, but did better than I thought she would this time. We started out at my mom's last Saturday where Ava went pretty much all day without napping... she only took a few brief catnaps here and there ... by 7:00pm we were all well-aware of how tired this little girl was!! After she finally settled down she fell asleep at 7:30 and didn't wake up until 4:30am! She slept through the ride home and a diaper changing!! Poor girl.

Our little family of three celebrated our Christmas on Christmas Eve. Of course Ava was not too interested in anything but taking a nap so we let her sleep while we opened gifts. It was fun to celebrate Christmas as a little family. :) It will be even more fun when Ava is old enough to get excited! :) Then we went to Belpre to celebrate with Eric's side of the family on Christmas day and spent the night there. Last but not least, Ava & I made the trip to Sugarcreek to celebrate Christmas with the Kandel's. It was cute seeing all the 2008 babies together. They are a fun bunch of babies :)




** My favorite gift from Eric **




** Daddy got us a baby carrier! **



Christmas at Mom's -- We wrapped a giftcard for Drew in this huge box and taped it under one of the flaps on the bottom ... hehe. Tricky Aunt Liz :)



**He said "Ok, it's an empty box! There's nothing in here!"



** Finally found it! He got a kick outta that :)




**Christmas with Eric's family ** There's 4 generations in this picture.




The babies ... Ava was glad she didn't have to sit next to Jude :) He sure picked on Allie!! hehe.



**No matter how many times I fixed Ava's head it still went crooked! The couch was too puffy for her! Hehe. This picture was taken around 7 pm and these kids were all getting pretty tired at this point. Little troopers :)



**And this is the picture I took of her last night ... she slept right there and didn't move a muscle for 2 hours! Talk about a worn-out baby :) **

Happy 2 months Ava!

Boy, this milestone crept up on me! She's 2 months old already! Seems like just yesterday I was trying everything in the book to get this little one to come out of my belly! :) I was telling her last night during our "quiet time" after her bath that she's getting so big and becoming such an animated and playful little sweetheart. :) That's our most special time of the day, especially for me. She has a nightly routine where she gets a bath (which she looooves) then I bundle her up in a towel and take her to her crib and give her a binky (one of the few times she actually likes her binky) while I massage her head and dry her hair (she almost falls asleep during that part:). Then I massage her chubby little legs & arms with lavender sleepy time lotion (another thing she looooves) & put her jammies on her. :) By this time, she has spit the binky out and likes to talk to me about her day ;) and gives me the biggest smiles ever! No matter how tired and cranky she is she always coos and smiles at me during our bedtime routine. Her little eyes just shine as she studies my face and the motion of my mouth as I talk to her. Then daddy comes up with her nighttime bottles and tells her how sweet & baby-fresh she smells and gives kisses & hugs to her before I feed her and lay her down to sleep. We are so in love with her. :) I just thought I'd share one of my favorite moments of the day with you!

She doesn't go back to the doctor until next Monday so I don't have and weight and length updates, but I will share a few other milestones of hers ...

• She has been sleeping 8-9 hours straight at night now. She usually gets up between 5:30-6:30am. We may move her bedtime back a little though, she starts to get really tired and fussy around 8-8:30pm (I don't usually let her nap anytime beyond 6:30pm). I normally start her bath at 9 and she's in bed by 9:30. So we'll see how that goes!
• Her hands have discovered her mouth and vice versa! :) She sucks on those things like crazy! Not fingers though, she sticks her whole balled up fist in her mouth! hehe.
• She eats about 4-5 ounces every 3 hours.
  
• Loves car rides ... hates stoplights, stopsigns, traffic jams, drive-thrus, basically anything that causes the car to stop moving, hehe.
• She also loves Little Einstein's music! :) I play her cd's in the car and if she's fussy (and not just hungry, nothing but milk soothes her when she's hungry!!) the music quiets her down and she falls asleep.
• She's not a big nap-taker. She sleeps for about 1 hr at a time ... max. I used to get a good hour and a half to 2 hours out of her, but not anymore.
• She has gotten into a pretty predictable eat, play, sleep routine. It's funny because almost exactly 1 hour after she eats is when her eyes get sleepy and she gets a little cranky. Everytime:)
• She's not a binky lover ... she will take it if she's really tired or during a nap, but otherwise wants nothing to do with it ... I'm sure she'll find her thumb one of these days :)
• She loves her face covered or snuggled with her "snugli" as we call it :) It calms her right down and she falls asleep. If I uncover her face she gets mad and will try to bury her face back into her snugli. hehe, silly girl.
  
• She loves to "talk" to us and she just spontaneously smiles at various things we do nowadays, like when I do the motorboat sound with my lips ... works everytime :) hehe.
  
• She wears size 3 months clothes. Most 0-3 month clothes are too short, especially sleepers ... her little toesies are smashed if I put a 0-3 month sleeper on her :)
• She's in size 1 diapers ... could probably wear size 2 diapers ... she won't be in size 1's much longer, maybe only a couple weeks.

So, that's where our munchkin is these days! We sure do have a lot of fun with her! It's a busy life we are living nowadays ... lots of adjusting and trial & error, but Eric & I (& Ava) are continuing to learn how to balance everything and hold onto our sanity. ;) I think we are adjusting well ;) We are so thankful that Ava is a very healthy and very happy baby!

**Our pediatrician recommended taking a picture of Ava in the same position wearing the same thing every month & we'll be amazed at how she changes month to month ... so that's what we've done! **


Ava at 2 months :)


2 months old



1 month old



1 week old



1 day old

Daddy's girl ...

And she is just that ... daddy's little cupcake :)








* Notice her socks :) * I love chubby baby legs ... so sweet.

Yes, I'm video happy today :)

Here's another cute one of Ava playing on her activity mat. She has been getting quite the personality lately! It's so fun to watch her grow and learn about everything around her! She was really getting into these fish ... so cute! Such an active girl she is :) It's bizarre that she's not even two months old yet and already she's soaking up her surroundings like a little sponge!

P.S. Don't mind my baby-talk ;) hehe.

The reason these things have seat belts! :)

Eric & I were watching TV the other evening in the living room and Ava seemed pretty happy to be in her bouncy seat! It was about 9pm so it seemed funny that she had so much energy this late in the evening, but we let her get good and tired! She played for about 1/2 hr! You know babies don't have much of an attention span so that was pretty good! :) It was cracking us up how excited she was getting about the lights & toys on her bouncy seat so I had to take a little video of it! :) And this is why these things have seat belts! hehe. At times it looks like she's just going to sling-shot herself outta that thing! :)

Just something cute ;) Enjoy!

Silly Girl ...

These are just some random shots I've taken of Ava lately. She's so much fun to photograph! I get some crazy poses outta her sometimes!:) Enjoy!


The first dress she's ever worn :) I love the tights!



Here she is sitting on her glider ... big girl:) I got a lot of pictures of her on this day!



She looks super chubby in this picture! hehe, so cute!



She loves her glider! When she's not staring at mommy's face while we're rocking she's staring at her pink ceiling fan :) Too cute!



This face is well-known around our house ... hehe. We know we're about to have a dirty diaper on our hands when we see her make this face! :)

Caught one!

She's been smiling like crazy lately! But it's so hard to catch one of her smiles on camera ... I snuck right in there for this one! :) hehe. She never saw it coming! :)

Playtime with Ava!

Tummy Time!!

Just starting out ... good and strong!!



Getting a little weaker ... blanket is starting to taste good :)



Whew! Time for a break ... holding that little head up is tough work! :) Next time we'll work on rolling over ... she's almost there!

Christmas Fun with Ava :)

Over the weekend we found a cute little christmas tree farm in Delaware & took Ava to "pick out" her first christmas tree! :) Really, she slept in the truck with daddy while I went out tree hunting. :) She was much cozier there! It was a nice tree farm that had a little petting "zoo" area with goats and sheep and they sold cookies and hot cocoa. :) We got our tree up and Ava loooves to look at the lights! We took out one of the tree light bulbs and put one in that makes the lights blink and she just sits in her swing and stares at them!




I had to have a little photo shoot of Ava in her santa hat. :) She really didn't mind being in nothing but her diaper and santa hat...hehe. I did a little editing of the photos and had some fun so I'll post those on here as well! Too fun...

Before ...

The finished product :)

"Who is this guy?"