My, Oh MY, Do We Have Some Pictures to Catch Up!

Bean at 4 months

Sissys...snuggling to some Dinosaur Train. :)

Christmas cuties!

Love her smiles.

Baby girl at 5 months!

baby sneeze...so cute!

Oh my... just perfect :)

Stella and her favorite bedtime bear! Appropriately named "Beary" - thank you Ava :)

Well, what happened here? Anyway - milk and cookies for Santa...and Ava didn't want to forget her letter to Santa...that never...got sent...ooops! ;)

Ava got a fishtank for Christmas...and a lovely new blue fish named "Glowey" :) She can name 'em!

Oooh, lets try some cereal Stella!

Pretty serious about that lil guy...

Glowey - up close and personal. :) After we put Ava to bed the other night, she came out of her room 20 or so minutes later and said, "Glowey did not yisten to me, daddy" Eric and I looked at each other and said, "what do you mean glowey didn't listen to you, Ave? What did you tell Glowey?" At this point, Eric went up to investigate...hoping to not find a fish in her bed. ;-) Well, what had happened was Glowey got stuck in that tube in the middle with the bubbles. Ava was telling Glowey to get out of that tube, and he wasn't listening to her. Silly Glowey.

Smiley Face!!

Stella lives most everyday with Ava in her face. Of course the pink headband kept her occupied this time, usually its Ava's hair that she's going after.

The Pink Bandit Sisters

Stinkerbelle trying to figure out the sitting up thing.

Stella's grandma face. Cracks us up! I need to get a better picture, because when she makes this face she looks exactly like an old toothless granny!!

I couldn't leave out the best part of Glowey's habitat...it GLOWS!! Imagine that! :-)

Shutterfly

Click here to view these pictures larger

A Stella-bean Update...

This blog is our life book...our family journal...my only written memories of my babies (baby books are hit and miss around here...and they don't capture the feeling of the moment anyways). So it looks like I need to post an update of my baby Stella bean!

Stella will be 7 months old next week! So big...yet so little. :) She really is so little. My petite lil princess. At her 6 month well visit, she weighed in at 15 lbs 4 oz...putting her in the whopping 25th percentile and her length was 27 & 1/4, putting her between the 50-75th percentile. Long little string bean!

Rewinding a little, she began rolling over (controlled & consistently) at 5 months and she popped 2 bottom teeth at her 6 month mark. I'm wondering what 7 months will bring - sitting up alone perhaps? She is eating like a champ nowadays. Still nurses about 5 times a day, eats a breakfast of oatmeal + bananas or peaches and for dinner she has had any combination of avocado, sweet potatoes, peas, and pears. It took a little while for her to get the hang of food. We started out with cereal, and have s-l-o-w-l-y made our way to real food. She has just in the last week or so, really decided to take off with eating.

Our baby has been sleeping straight through the night for a week or so now. Happy or sad? I can't decide. Happy to be getting solid sleep again, but sad to miss out on the once a night feeding. She sometimes wakes up and stirs a bit around 3 or 4am, and if I reeeaaallly wanted to I could probably go to her, but she's back to sleep in 5 minutes...just long enough for me to think about getting out of bed. ;) The video monitor is so neat...I love looking at her cute baby bum high up in the air and her legs tucked under her body.

Her naps are sporadic and inconsistent, but whatever, she's happy to be awake playing with her sissy. ;) love these kids...

Now, let's see if I can post some pics from my iPad on here. Blogger is not iPad friendly, so this may not work. A blogger app would be nice!

Back From my Hiatus!!

It feels like just yesterday when I made my last post ...clearly I've missed a couple months of our lives, but I'm making a comeback!

Since the new year began, I've taken on the daunting task of reorganizing our life a bit. Nothing major, but I felt like things were getting away from me...my house keeping, Ava's preschool, my fitness (listen, skinny does not mean healthy...cardiovascular fitness and tone muscle equals healthy...both of which I've been lacking for a long time), my other job, meals, this poor BLOG!...I just kept jumping from task to task and nothing was getting finished. Not to mention my kids are growing and I strive to drown in their giggles and get lost in their hugs and kisses everyday of our lives. Hard to do when other things are lingering over your head. Needless to say, I think I'm almost there...so close to the land of balance and it feels so good! The first thing I had to realize is that, brace yourselves here, I AM NOT SUPERWOMAN! ;) So some things I just can't add to my plate...like P90X...good lord I was working out 6 days per week for 45-90 minutes! Gimme a break!! It's a nice plan for those who don't have 800 other things to do on top of working out. Now, 30 minutes 4 days per week is so much better - and needed! Anyway, it's good to have my priorities reorganized to include all those things important to me - like this blog! My hope is to post once a month. At the very top of my list is spending quality time with my kids and baby daddy. ;) Everything else falls from there. If I'm faced with housework and requests from my daughter to "pway wif me mama!" then you better believe I am stopping everything to "pway"!! And I'll be taking full advantage of any opportunity Stella gives me to nap-nurse with her or rock her to sleep, nestled up on my chest. Bad habits or not, those moments give motherhood meaning!! Lord knows I will miss these days when they're gone, but I will never miss those chores. I encourage all you overwhelmed moms to remember this everyday:

"Good moms have sticky floors, dirty ovens, laundry piles, and HAPPY kids."

Ava's 3!!

(You know I'm grimmacing as I start this post...Ava was 3 years old last month! Darn it!)

Where did my toddler go? My little wobbly-walker? My 4 front-toothed, babbling, drooling, squealing sweet baby girl? Shoot - I blinked and her babyhood is gone! Instead of dwelling on how sad that makes me right now, I'll focus on the now...on the hilarious, witty, sassy, and energetic preschooler that Ava has become!

She is an amazing big sister to Stella, and cares so much for her little stuffed animals. They go everywhere with her. Her favorite thing to play is "doctor" to her animals. Dr. Dad & Dr. Mom, Stella is usually Nurse, and Ava plays the voice of the animals. It's entertaining to say the least! :) Her imagination is taking flight these days! She's always talking about Swiper and how he's being mean to her animals...so usually I have to stop what I'm doing and have a talk with "Swiper" and tell him to be kind to Ava's animals. LOL!

We had a minnie mouse birthday party for her. It was pretty low key with just grandparents and us... and Ava's best friend Eli, of course. :) She loves that boy...and they play so wonderful together.

Enjoy some pictures...

Ava and I made this shirt for her birthday party. She wouldn't hold still enough to put her other handprint on there, but at least I got one. The front just says "Happy Birthday to ME!"

Ahh yes...there's the sassy side of her.

My momma made the cake. Talented woman. :)

Ava's favorite present. She named her pony, "Socks" just like the one she rode at the zoo.

A bike!! She can't quite figure out how to pedal...but maybe by spring.

Tired girl. Fell asleep on the floor that night. 3rd birthday parties are exhausting. :)

On the actual day of her birthday, we took Eli with us to the Dora and Diego exhibit at Cosi. (Notice she's carrying Georgia the pony with her...told you her animals go everywhere with us!)

Cutie Pies.

3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days!

October 29th marked Stella's 3 months 3 weeks and 3 days milestone! For a little background on this family tradition, check out Ava's post. Funny to see the similarities and differences between the three of us baby girls. Such a sweet tradition...that dress feels like an antique.

Mommy (Feb 1985)

Ava (Feb 2009)

Stella (Oct 2011)

3 Months!

Aaaand, Stella was 3 months old on October 5th... it is now October 30th. Finding it harder and harder to squeeze in blog time! Ok so, a lot has happened in Stella's life since she turned 3 months. I started back to work (that's all I'm saying about it...it sucks...I want to be home more...thankfully I'll be part time beginning Nov. 6th!) so she's had to deal with life without her mommy around all day everyday. The nursing/ pumping has been the most interesting part of this transition. She and I are both a little lost sometimes! I forget that I need to pump and she forgets that she needs to eat from a bottle. ;-) At this point though, it's all getting a little easier.Oh, and we have a new babysitter. She comes to our house, which is a total blessing. Not having to wake my kids and drag them out in the freezing cold this winter is going to be beautiful! Stella is handling the new sitter just fine. So happy for that!

Stella is the sweeetest, most docile little thing I've ever met. Not at all the firecracker she used to be! She's like a different baby!! I thank God for her everyday. I can't even put into words how happy she makes us. She has the most heart warming smiles and the cutest giggle. She's so calm and always taking in the world around her. LOVES to watch her sissy. She discovered her hands and has not let go of those puppies since! She has even gotten chapped & red fingers from sucking on them alllll day long. I can't wait til she finds that thumb! Am I the only mother on the planet who encourages thumb sucking? I think its a great soother... this girl still will not take a pacifier... unless its me. :) She loves her legs massaged with lotion...gives us smiles and giggles every night after her bath... kinda like she's a little slap happy after her long day. :) I thought after her 2 month shots that she was going to hate her legs touched forever because those shots were literally traumatizing to her...but she seems to be over that now.

She does lots of sleeping still. Just catnaps during the day...1/2 hour to 40 minute naps all day and goes to bed between 6-7pm. Still sleeping pretty good at night...she occasionally gets up twice a night, but for the most part just once. She likes to be wrapped up in her baby straight jacket still :) also known as the swaddle wrap.

While my Ava was a bit of a chunky monkey as a baby, Stella is a long & thin little string bean! Ava stayed in the 90-95th percentile (and still is at 3 years old) while Stella is right around the 50th. And just for my future reference, she wears mostly 3 month clothes...some 3-6 month clothes and size 2 diapers.

Stella Jolie is precious. We love her insanely and are so blessed that she's healthy and happy and a part of our family. God is good. :)

Adventures in Preschool

I wish I was 3 again... lol. Preschool is so fun with Ava! I love watching her learn and retain things from day to day. Just an example of her curious mind... the other morning during our "school board" time, I was telling her about the season fall and how the leaves turn from green to pretty colors like orange, yellow, and red and then they fall off the trees and we can rake them up in piles and jump in the leaves. I told her how the weather gets chilly and we have to start wearing our jackets, etc. Anyways, she really got into listening about this "fall" business and the next morning during school board she said, "mom will you talk about fog again to me?" At first I wondered what she was talking about, and then she shook her body and said, "you know, when it gets chiiiiillllly!" haha. What a punkin... she actually listened to me... just goes to show we should talk to our children about e-v-e-r-ything!

I started searching for a preschool for Ava over the summer, but no place was sticking out to me. I wanted her to start socializing in a group setting and start learning to listen to adults other than Eric & me. Most were either too expensive, during odd hours (for Stella's nap schedule), too far away, and the list goes on. Just nothing that was catching my eye. Plus, I was lacking the ambition to send my girl away for preschool... soon enough she will be in real school and the corruption begins! lol. Unless I homeschool her...which is becoming a strong possibility with all the nonsense in schools nowadays... levy's failing, bullying, guns & knives, music & sports removed...blah blah blah. I still wanted to do something with her, though. Her little mind is taking in so much right now and I wanted to take advantage of that. Anyway, I got online, did some searching, and am now dedicated to homeschooling my preschooler! :) If you want to call it that. It really just feels like playing with my toddler, and that's pretty much exactly what it is! I made a "school board" that we focus a little bit of time on in the morning after breakfast. On it, I post a letter of the week, number of the week, sight word of the week (which really has become the sight word of the month...lol), and some other things. I fill in the rest of our morning with development stuff...arts and crafts, fine motor, gross motor, dramatic play, storytime, science exploration, and math - just any combination of these things. We have fun with it and enjoy every second! :-)

This was taken when we first started preschool. The ocean was the theme this week. Ava liked making the blue dolphin and carries it around everywhere - still! I think its missing a googly eye though now. :) That blank spot under the weather header is now where we stick her memory verse. I couldnt decide how I wanted to put it on here, but now I just print it and sticky-tack it to the board.The dry erase board below the blank spot on the left is now Ava's Sticker Chart. She gets a sticker everyday - either under the happy face column or the sad face column. The stickers are for behavior (no yelling or being disrespectful, no hitting, using manners, listening, etc) and not for school performance. No way would I judge her learning - she gets an A for effort everyday! :-) But when she sprouts the devil horns I remind her that she doesn't want to get a sad face sticker... usually works! I mean, who wants a sad face sticker? :) I was thinking about starting a sticker chart that reinforces positive behavior - when she uses manners or is extraordinarily kind, she can give her chart a sticker. She thrives on stickers... thank God for stickers. :)

A "How many fish in the ocean?" game to go with the ocean theme.

Our alphabet tree! Ava takes pleasure in putting up a new letter at the end of each week.

I loved this activity. She actually picked out the different picture on her own every time. I was proud. :)

Shaving cream time!!

She was a little apprehensive to get messy to begin with... once I demonstrated how fun it was, she dove right in. "Look mommy, we have marshmallow fingers!!" :)

Stringing mini ziti noodles on pipe cleaners to make our bracelets. Telling you... preschool is a blast ;)

Our cool bracelets

Fall sensory bin. Ava really got into this one. She could see and feel those leaves up close and personal :)

Dancing Princess!!

We put Ava into a dance academy last month. Oh. my. goodness. is it cute! Just trying to find activities to keep the little girl busy. Preferably, activities with other children her age to start working on those essential social skills for preschoolers. This particular class had no other little girls in it!! We got there the first night and we'd been talking up this dance class to her and saying, "you get to go dance with other little girls!" so she was so excited to go meet some friends and come to find out, it's just her in the class! She was bummed. She walked in the studio and said, "heeyyyy. where's all my frenz at!?" We do have the option of switching classes, but this particular time really works for our schedule, so we'll see what happens. Last week there was actually another little girl in there with her, so she was happy. :) It's so fun to watch her! She's not the best listener yet, and she kind goes off and does her own thing sometimes... lol... but she gets better at following directions every week. They do a recital in the spring that I can't wait to watch. Its going to be so adorable!

Uh-oh...she spotted me!

Her first day she refused to take off her light up skechers and put the ballet slippers on. lol!!

Being bashful on her first day. :)

First dance class = a success!!

Meeeeeep! My girl in a tutu!! So stinkin cute!!!

Doing her stretches. Did you notice that I can *almost* get her crazy hair back into a ponytail!? I've never cut her hair, by the way... it's just taking forever to grow! It gets thicker and curlier, but not longer. So funny.

Okay, look at this pair. They walked out of last week's class calling each other "best friends". I love it. :)