10 month Newsletter

Dear Avonlea,

You are 10 months old. At your last visit, you were 26.75 inches long and 17.9 pounds. The doctor was impressed with your attentiveness, verbal skills, and mobility. You are solidly in your 9 month clothing, but we have broken out some of the 9-12 month clothing and 12 month clothes to break up the monotony of your drawers. Your auntie says you have gotten chubby, and I have to agree. You also have amazingly delicious ham hocks for thighs and I love how you giggle when I munch on you. :)

You crawl with a fever now, scooting around everywhere. You also stand and cruise around, and in the beginning of the month starting letting go of the furniture and crashing down on your bottom and giggling. I giggle when you get back up just to crash back down and laugh. :)

Towards the end of this month, on a few separate occasions, you took a step. And then two. And then you crash into me or daddy, or the floor, and giggle like a maniac. I can SEE how badly you want to walk, and I know it's coming so fast! Soon you will be buzzing around this house and we will be regretting that we ever encouraged you to walk to begin with!

One morning while getting us ready to leave the house, I put you down in the kitchen and not even a minute later heard you whimpering. I made a few passes through the living room and dining room and when I couldn't find you, I stopped in the hallway. I heard you whimper again...and then I saw you... three stairs from the top of the staircase, and turning around to look at me! My heart stopped! You were whimpering because you didn't know how to get down. So, you also learned how to climb the stairs this month! And we also learned to put up a baby gate!

Your taste in food has gotten much better, you basically eat what we eat now. And if we even try to give you something different, you just whine until we give you some of what we are eating. Which is fine with us, because it's one less meal to make. You even eat salmon- I can't believe MY daughter eats salmon! Insane!

You had been doing well with sleeping through the night, but this month have made a mockery of us, taking over an hour to go to sleep and then waking 4-5 times per night. None of us are getting any sleep, and we are all cranky and overtired. By the time this blog posts, we will have already started some "sleep training" from The Sleep Lady, called The Sleep Lady Shuffle. We hope that soon we will all be able to sleep a little easier.

You also had your first sleepover this month with Grandma and Grandpa, leaving us alone in our house for the first time since you were born! It was glorious, and we got to go out to a play, and dinner, and not have to worry about rushing home to you. You had a great time and we are excited to keep this trend going! :)

Your verbal skills have remained the same, and while you haven't learned any new words, you make sounds that sound like our words constantly, leaving us to say "did she just say ___? or did it just SOUND like it??"

Soon, we need to start planning your first birthday party- I can't believe it's almost been a year....WHERE DID THIS YEAR GO??? That statement has a whole new meaning once you have a child.

We have lots of pictures to post in addition to this newsletter. Stay tuned!!

We love you monkey girl!

Christmas- in photos

Christmas PJs are the best!

She was SO excited about this chair! she knew it was for her!


Christmas Morning with my loves. :)

9 month newsletter- abbreviated

Avonlea,

You are 9 months old. At the end of this month, we will visit our pediatrician for our 9 month appointment, and we are excited to see how big you've gotten.

Your cheeks have filled out, and you have a buddha belly now. Although you seem huge to us, we know that to strangers, you still seem so small and they often tell us so.

You still have not cut a single tooth, but your food choices are fairly endless now. Your favorites include cheese, ham, cheese, peas, beef stew, green beans, cheese, crackers, avocado and cheese. (just like mommy!) and refuse to be fed most of the time, only eating things you can pick up yourself. Which is fine with us...you are stubborn and it is just NOT worth fighting over the spoon with you! You also enjoy driving us crazy by taking your filthy foody hands and pulling your hair after every meal - resulting in nearly daily baths now. :)

Just as predicted, you started crawling 3 days after my last posting, and now you follow us around, pulling on our pant legs. In an attempt to regain our living room back, we turned our office into a playroom and our guest bedroom into our office, and in minutes, we were all much happier. It is great that you have your own space, and we have our space back from all of your toys!

You really are a joy to be around. You are always smiling, hardly ever difficult, and it is just so easy to love you. I remember being pregnant and being worried that I might come to resent you being attached to my hip (literally and figuratively)...but the truth is....I WANT to be around you. You are pure wonderment, and I love watching you and seeing you discover your environment. I love the way you peek around corners to see what's on the other side. I love all of this mommy-madness, even in the most sleep-deprived of times.

We love you baby girl!

where did this month go?

first came thanksgiving, then came christmas. then came new years, and then came my birthday.

and here we are.

let's start where we left off, shall we?

Christmas was wonderful. We spent Christmas Eve with my family, relaxing and opening gifts, watching Avonlea help us rip the paper and bounce around on her new chair (which you will see soon in her newsletter, I promise) Christmas morning brought us to Justin's parent's house, where a delicious brunch and even more presents made us all smile, with round, full bellies. And Christmas night brought us back to my parent's house, where we feasted on roast beast with family and friends. It was a good holiday, and as a friend has said of her own family on christmas, "although we were missing what was missing, we enjoyed what was new. "

New years was quiet, we stayed in with delicious chinese food and appetizer spread, and watched movies and drank wine with friends and family. perfection.

And, it was the dreaded 30th birthday for me yesterday. And despite my lack of enthusiasm for this major milestone, it was the first birthday in probably 5 years that I did not cry...and so, that automatically bumps it up to the "best birthday i've had in a long time". Having worked the night before, I slept in, then woke up and got a pedicure with my sista friend before heading out for delicious mexican. We finished the night with homemade cake and ice cream, and an early bedtime.

so, now that we are caught up on the holiday season, i promise to get a 9 month newsletter in order. It will be in abbreviated form, since this month is halfway over and soon i will have to do a 10 month newsletter! *sigh*

and so, i bid you goodnight, and i promise to get my act together soon.

8 month newsletter

Avonlea,

You are 8 months old. So much has changed since your last newsletter.

You are now appropriately in your 6-9 month clothing, and they seem to fit you alright. Your pants are getting too short, and the shirts are a bit big, but they work for now. Soon we will need to go on another clothing shopping spree, but we can hold out for now. Your hair has grown much thicker, and now it doesn't look too weird when I put a little clip in it. And with that, your hollywood lashes have gotten thicker too...drawing even more attention from strangers! I didn't think it was possible!

In the past month, you started waving at us. At first we thought it was a fluke, and then you became more consistent. You wave at us, at your aunties and grandparents, at your kitties, at strangers, and even at the people on television. You have started crawling...backwards, nonetheless, but crawling. You haven't quite figured out how to go forward yet, but I know that a few days after this posts, you will have figured it out on your own. You started standing with some help, and now you can pull up to stand all by yourself, tucking your little leg beneath your body and pushing yourself up to reach your play table or the coffee table. My newest favorite thing that you do is "dance" when you hear music, wiggling your belly back and forth and giggling like a maniac. I love it!
You haven't changed much in terms of your food choices:

loves:

sweet potatoes

butternut squash

raw grapes

raw apples

puffs

crackers

likes:

bananas

avocado

carrots

biter biscuits

dislikes:

pears

peaches

apples

peas

zucchini

I have had a sippy cup/straw cup out for the past two months. Every day, you tipped it, you chewed on the bottom, you chewed on the straw....but you would never drink out of them. Every day, you would steal my straw out of my Starbucks cups to chew on...but would never suck up any of its chai deliciousness. Finally, I got you a little valveless Santa mug, and one day...while you were watching mommy drink out of her straw cup, I could just see that you got it...and I ran and got your santa mug. Immediately, you leaned over and sipped up a huge gulp of cold water...and that was the end of that. Now you want sips of everything that there is to offer.

Your vocabulary has also grown. you can currently say "hiiiiiiiiii" in a your high pitched baby voice. Grandpa taught you "Hey" and I believe that mommy taught you "yeah". In addition to that, you say "dada", though inconsistently. And every time you see a kitty you stare hard at them and say "keee". One morning, while cuddling in bed, one of the kitties jumped up onto the bed and you waved to it and said "hiiiiiii keee" and mommy almost fell over. You haven't repeated it, but still. I am amazed!

Every day, your personality shows more and more, and more often than not, you are an uber friendly, uber happy baby, who is a total ham in front of my camera, and even when I hold my phone up to take a picture. You certainly know how to work a crowd, flashing your cheesy grin and batting your hollywood lashes at just the opportune time.

I can hardly believe all of the changes that you went through this month, and I just have a feeling that next month is going to show up this month! I can't wait to see where your cute, Conversed tootsies will take us this month! Bring on the holidays!

we love you baby girl!

A Giving of Thanks

I am thankful.

For this home that becomes a little more like home every day.

For this job that keeps me on my toes, and keeps me humble.

For this amazing family network that I have and have married into, who love unconditionally and provide when there is need.

For warm food and cold drinks, like punkin pie and iced chai tea.

For friends who have made me who I am in one way or another.

For my ever-loving, if not sometimes frisky, kitties.

For my sister, who keeps me laughing, keeps me from crying, and keeps me sane, among a trillion other things.

For this past year, which has been hard and amazingly satisfying all rolled up into one package.

But most of all...

I am thankful for this child, who takes my breath away every day, and who makes me become a better person so that I can, someday, make her proud of her mommy.

And I am thankful for this man, this love, which is just beyond all of the words on this page.

I am so so so so thankful.

7 month newsletter: abbreviated

ok. so i haven't gotten around to this month either. here is what's going on with the peanut, in abbreviated form.

awesome at sitting up
started getting on all fours and scootching around but not quite crawling
also does that pre-crawl bouncing that looks hilarious because she's so little
is definetely on a stable schedule, sleeping most of the way through the night, with one feed squeezed in there

started some solids this month
likes:: rice cereal
butternut squash
sweet potato
avocado (of all things???)
tolerates some of those gerber puffs

dislikes:: everything else (haha)
for example...apples
pears
peas
peaches

we will continue to trial the dislikes. she'll get there. the look on her face when you put something in her mouth is priceless though...almost like we are trying to torture her. ha!

6 month shots went fine. i caved and we all got the H1N1 vaccine after i took care of a sick-as-shit little one at work with it. enough to scare the bejesus out of a new mommy.

spending lots of time with grandparents and aunties. loves lunch dates and play dates with amy & the girls.

i think that's it for now. i promise her 8 month newsletter will be a real one!

ah!

lobster #2

my little lobstah

so, i wasn't going to post this yet....but i just can't wait anymore! here she was in her halloween costume....a lovely little lobster. she loved wearing the frock but hated being carried around in a stock pot. ;)

no seriously. we did.

hope this makes your day. :)

corderoy

owl eyes

i think this is one of my favorite photos. e.v.e.r.

apple munchin with grandpa

tutu2

tutu