Under Cover

On an episode of Sex and the City, Miranda is describing how her baby son Brady won't stop crying for no apparent reason. She says, "If he were a 35 year old man, now is the time we would break up." Well, if Ava were a 27 year old girl, now is the time that we might not be friends anymore. She has been really cranky the past couple of days. Also, she is incredibly squirmy, which makes getting her dressed, changing her diaper, and feeding her incredibly frustrating. I need an extra set of hands to hold her down. In her crib we have one of those sleep positioners that are supposed to keep her from rolling over onto her stomach. Well it really is no match for her. Actually, she just ends up getting stuck on her side, and then starts crying. This morning when I went in to get her, she was rolled over onto her stomach and the sleep positioner was at the other end of the crib. Don't know how that happened.

Well, I started this post 2 days ago and am just now getting around to finishing it. I am lacking the motivation to do much of anything these days. For Memorial Day, Brent took Ava over to his parent's house for a cook out, but I was just too out of it to go. All I wanted to do was lay down and watch TV or sleep. I felt like I needed some time all by myself. It was kinda nice but they were gone for 4 hours and I missed Ava.

Tomorrow I start Summer camp at the Y. Let's hope that it's better than after school care.





It's all about the toes lately.

Where does the time go...

It seems like I just posted but it's been days and days. This post will probably be less about Ava and more about me, since nothing is really new in Ava land. Right now I am sick and I HATE being sick! Last Monday I started doing after school care for the YMCA, and I had a feeling I would probably catch something from the kids. Kids are always sick, which is a big reason why I don't want Ava in daycare yet. I know that it is inevitable that she will get sick someday; I also know that by catching a cold it will boost her immune system; however, her getting sick for the first time is my biggest fear. She still seems too little and fragile to get sick. Plus I dread using the "nose-hose." I have been doing everything I can to minimize the risk of catching something, but it seems like I always catch whatever is out there. Brent has been sick a total of 2 times in the five years we've been together. I have been sick more times than I can count. I don't know why that is, considering he doesn't do anything particularly healthy. Perhaps this is evidence for the breast feeding vs. bottle feeding debate - Brent was breast fed, I was not.

Anyway, my point is that I am sick, and it sucks, and I don't want my little bear to catch it, so I am refraining from kissing her squishy puffy cheeks. That sucks too, since they are irresistible. I bought some Airborne and drank that nasty stuff. Let's hope it works.

About my job at the Y - there really are no words to describe it, except maybe sheer chaos. The ratio is about 110 kids to 6 counselors; we are outnumbered. Plus, the kids know that we can't really do anything to them (it is against DCFS rules to even make them write sentences) so they basically ignore us for the most part. I spend my 4 hours there yelling my head off and making sure the kids don't hurt themselves or someone else. Let me just say that when I was in elementary school I NEVER acted the way some of these kids do. I don't know of many kids in my school that did. One of my co-workers said that it is a combination of the school and the parents, but these kids are terrible! Total lack of respect for authority and inability to follow directions or rules. So frustrating. I watch the parents come and pick the kids up at 5 or 6pm, and they look worn out from working all day, and I truly think that the parents are just too worn out to deal with the kids. This just further fuels my belief that one parent should spend less time at work in order to be with the kids. Raising kids is a job in itself; I think if you are trying to do both, work all the time and raise kids, one of those things is going to suffer. Unfortunately, I think for many of these kids, it's the parenting that suffers.

Ah well, I am done with my ranting for the day. Time to guzzle down some more Airborne and go to bed. I hope that when I wake up I will magically feel better. Good night.

The Nudist

My daughter loves being naked. You never see her happier than when she is without clothes and a diaper on. I lay her on the floor to do a diaper change, and as sometimes I will take her clothes off too if they are messy. As soon as that last piece of clothing comes off you can see her face light up, and then she starts to kick her legs as though she is running somewhere really fast. Then, sometimes, she will try to roll over, as she will only do this when her diaper is off. Of course, this can lead to trouble as well. We have had a peeing-on-the-floor incident, and one very close call with poop. Still, it is worth it to see the happiness that being naked brings her, even if we do have to whip out the carpet scrubber.

The Beach

It's late so I'm just going to post some pictures. Well, 10:30pm is pretty late for me now. The other day we took Ava to the beach for the first time. The only time I really enjoy the beach is at sunset. She seemed to like it, at least for a little while.
One bit of good news -I found out today that I got a job at the YMCA doing after school care and summer camp, so I am really excited about that. The hours are good, from 2pm - 6pm and it will be good experience for me. The pay sucks, but I get a free Y membership so I plan on working my fat butt off. Literally. I need to lose like 15 more pounds, at least.





A smile! Some people might have thought it was an urban legend, but she really does it all the time. Finally, proof!

No, she is not underwater in this picture. As you can see above, her shirt is white and the blanket is pink. I guess the lighting was just right.

They saw me coming

That would be the Walmart portrait studio. They saw me walking in the door and probably started doing a happy dance that a new, clueless mother was coming in. They thought,"Hey, we can sell her a ridiculous amount of pictures!" And they did. I spent way too much money, and now have a RIDICULOUS amount of pictures of Ava. Don't get me wrong, I love having pictures of her, but now we have tons, and you can only put so many around the house. We would need a much bigger house for all these pictures. And the kicker is that I don't even like half the poses. They took 6 or 7 different shots and I only really like 3. I think Ava is the cutest thing in the world, but she only really has like 1 facial expression in pictures, as you can probably tell from the pictures on the blog. So it is basically all the same picture, just with different backgrounds. Oh well, I'll be giving away pictures to everyone I see.

Ava has been going through some changes lately, and I can't say that I like them all. The good changes are that she is holding her head up so well now, and she has been rolling over from her stomach to her back. She is really trying hard to roll from back to stomach but has yet to do it. She is having little baby conversations with us too. She'll put her eyebrows down and look very serious when she talks to you, and there will be lots of spit bubbles. The bad changes are in the sleep department. She is at war with herself and us over sleep. She does not like to nap during the day. Pretty much the only way we can get her to take a decent nap is by laying down with her on the couch, and then we have about a 50/50 chance of her sleeping longer than 30 minutes. Sometimes she'll sleep for 3 hours, other times it seems like mere minutes. She takes micro-naps. Then there's bedtime. She was the BEST baby when it came to bed time. We would put her in her crib around 10:30pm while she was still awake but half asleep, and she would fall asleep in her crib without a peep. Now, we put her down in her crib and she fusses. We'll go in, put her binky back in and leave, and a few minutes later she's fussing again. This will go on for about a half hour. Sometimes we pull her out of the crib and she's happy as can be. We however, are not. So her bedtime is getting later and later. We are trying to keep her up more during the late afternoon/evening. Last night she was tired around 9pm so we put her to bed early, and she woke us up at 5:30am this morning. Still not too bad, at least she's not waking up during the night for food.

She is sleeping on the couch right now, and it's like a time bomb getting ready to go off. I scramble around the house trying to get as much done as I possibly can, while being very quiet and waiting to hear her wake up. Today we are going to my parent's house to see my Aunt & Uncle from California.


An absolutely horrible picture of me. So it's only fair that I post a horrible picture of Brent too...

He is going to kill me for this.


Her shirt says "Shhhh...Baby sleeping." If only!