Money Pit

Well, this was going to be a happy post but unfortunatly, I am in a not so happy mood. I'll get into that after I talk about Ava's doctor's appointment. She went in today for her 6 month check-up, and we went as a family. She was a little cranky to begin with since we had been running around all morning, and she just didn't want to be at the doctor's. I don't blame her, who likes to be naked in the doctor's office? They checked her vision too, which was really strange. They hook electrodes to the different parts of her head, and have her look at a screen with crazy black and white images on it. Then they cover each of her eyes with a patch, like a pirate, and have her look at stuff. That's how they can tell if a baby has a lazy eye. She was fine, her vision is fine, no lazy eye. She is now 17.6 lbs (75th percentile) and 27.5" (95th percentile). Everything looked good, no problems at all. Her shots were bad though, she had her worst reaction yet. She didn't so much scream as roar. I of course cried. I am hoping that she doesn't feel too bad tomorrow since she has to be with me in the baby sitting room.
After the doctor's we met up with my sister at my parent's house. It was good to see her, it's been a longtime. Luckily Ava's mood had improved, so her and Ava played for a while.
On to why I am not happy, we came home to a busted pipe. It is leaking in the wall behind our kitchen cabinets. We've had a pipe bust under the floor before, and we had to call Sleuth to locate the leak, they had to pull up the tile and sledge-hammer a hole in the foundation and put a temporary patch on the leak. Then we had to have a plumber come out and repair the pipe, then fill in the hole and re-lay the tile. This all cost a lot of money. So now we have to have Sleuth come out again to find the leak, and they will have to bust through our cabinet and through some drywall. In the meantime, we have to keep our water turned off so as not to further any water damage. That means when I have to take a shower, etc., I have to walk outside and turn the water on, and then go back out after and turn the water off. I am hoping that Sleuth can come out tomorrow to at least temporarily fix it so that we can keep the water on until the plumber comes out. We just don't have the money for this right now, but this is life for us. We take one step forward and then something happens that puts us three steps back. Anyway, it's depressing me, so on to the pictures. P.S. I might not be posting as often because I think we might cancel our cable internet connection. We might try to hook up DSL or something, but we might be without internet for a while. Please keep checking the blog, I will keep posting as much as I can.

Happy Birthdays!!

Happy birthday to Brent's mom Linda (I won't give away the age!) and Happy birthday to Ava who is 6 months old today. On Friday night we had a surprise dinner for Linda at the Olive Garden. She knew she was going to dinner but she didn't know that her whole family was waiting for her inside. That is, until I opened my mouth and accidentally gave it away in front of the restaraunt. Oh well, it almost worked. Anyway, it was very nice to get out of the house and see everyone, I hadn't seen most of them in quite a while. We had Ava with us and she was very good, only got fussy when she was hungry and then when she was tired, but nothing major. All in all, a good time. It really made me miss going out with people like we used to. Brent and I have to start trying to make more time to have a night off and do something either by ourselves or with family and friends. I think we might try to arrange a "date night" this Friday to go to a movie, if we can get a babysitter that is (ummmm, Grandma Linda?)

Tomorrow is Monday, and I don't like them. I am doing the babysitting room at the Y again on Wednesday and Friday. That means I work 8:30 - 6pm on those days. Not cool. Normally I only work 1:30 - 6pm. I worked in the babysitting room this past Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and I brought Ava with me. She was pretty good the first day, and not so good the other 2 days. She just gets bored, and then she gets fussy, which makes it hard for me to watch the other kids. There are 2 of us working in there so it isn't that big of a deal, but at some points there were 3 other babies in there besides Ava, so I was trying to take care of them plus take care of Ava. One thing I noticed is that the other babies all had older siblings, and they were very content just hanging out, and could sleep through anything. Since Ava is our only baby and is used to being in her crib in a nice dark, quiet room, it was a challenge getting her to nap. She just needs to get used to napping in different places, and with noise. She did okay, napped for about 40 minutes each day. Most of the time she sat in her infant seat or I had her strapped to me in the harness. I hope she is a little better this week. I took off work on Thursday to take her to the doctor with Brent, she is getting her 6 month vaccinations, and I've heard those are some of the worst. I'll just leave Brent in the room with her when they give her those, I'll be out in the waiting room. I think we are also meeting up with my sister that day too. I'm looking forward to that.
Well it's late and I have to get to bed so on with the pictures. Move your mouse over them to see captions.

Weekend

This past weekend was pretty good. We actually got a pizza and a movie on Friday night and we actually watched the whole thing! In one sitting! We saw Walk the Line, and it was really good. On Saturday Brent had to work in the morning and then we went swimming at his parent's house in the afternoon. We had Ava in the pool for a while. She is so funny, it's as though nothing fazes that girl. When I brought her in the pool I thought she might not like it at first because it was a little chilly, but she just took a deep breathe when we were getting in and that was it. She is totally calm and straight-faced.
Sunday I was hoping to meet up with my sister at my parent's house but it didn't end up working out. Our schedules are always so busy that we don't get to see each other much, but hopefully we will in a couple of weeks. We didn't end up doing anything but being lazy.
I had my first real mommy oops the other day. Ava and I were at Walmart doing some grocery shopping and I was letting her play with my shopping list. She was just crumpling up the paper. I had my back turned for a minute while I was looking for something and I heard Ava coughing. When I looked at her she had the shopping list in her mouth and was eating it. Her drool had made the paper rip and little pieces were in her mouth. I had to do the finger sweep thing, and every time I thought I had all the paper out, I would see another little piece. It was pretty gross and I felt really bad. No more paper for her. I should've known better since everything goes in her mouth!
She has started making this funny noise, it kind of sounds like a motor boat or a motorcycle. She put her lips together and blows it makes a buzzing sound and spit flies everywhere, but it's funny. She seems to really like doing it too. The worst is when she does it when I'm trying to feed her, and then rice cereal is everywhere.
Well, it's getting late so on with the pictures. I have to take Ava to work with me this week, I hope it goes well.
Reading her book:

Getting ready to swim

Swimming with Daddy and Grandma

Hanging out with "Crazy Grandpa"

Good morning!

Computer Whiz

Ava was sitting on my lap while I was on the computer the other day and she hit just the right combination of keys to make the fonts HUGE and bold on any website I go to. Now it looks like my computer is being used by a very sight-impaired person. It was almost like she kmew exactly what she was doing, and I cannot figure out how to get it back to normal.

I don't have much to write about so I'm just going to post some pictures. We are still working on the spoon-feeding stuff, we've added bananas, carrots and applesauce.




She loves when I sing the ABC's. I was singing to her in both these pics

**I forgot to mention the waking up in the middle of the night issue - it isn't happening anymore. It only happened that one week, and now she's back to sleeping through the night again. The last time she woke up at 4am, we didn't go to her, we just let her fuss. She wasn't crying hard, just fussing. She did it for about 15 minutes and then fell back asleep. Of course, I had read in my Bible (the American Pediatrics Association Guide to Caring for Your New Baby and Young Child) that this was the proper way to handle the situation, and whaddayaknow, it worked.

4th of July

I hope everyone had a good long weekend, I know we did. Brent and I actually had 2 whole days off together! It was so nice to have a weekend together, it has been a longtime since we've had one. I had to work on Saturday and Sunday, but we had Monday and Tuesday off together. We went to the mall where Brent insisted on buying Ava a bathing suit, so we did. Then we tried to get some stuff around the house done and just hung out. On Tuesday we went over to my parent's house for a small cook out, it was just us and Mom and Dad and Peggy. We managed to wrangle Ava into her swim suit and put her in the pool, and she was really good. The only problem is that she badly needed a nap but there was so much going on that she didn't want to. She only slept for 20 mins and then was awake again. I'm going to try to work on getting her to nap at different places, because she's going to have to do that soon due to my job. We didn't take her to the fireworks since it was too late and it would only scare her anyway.
I am a part-time summer camp counselor at the YMCA right now, but when that ends in the beginning of August, I am going to be working in their babysitting room. My hours will be 4pm-8pm, so on the nights when Brent has school or is working, I can bring Ava with me. Two of the women who work in there now bring their babies, one is 3 months and the other one is 1 day younger than Ava, so it will be nice that she will get to see some other babies. I was talking to the women last night about it. The Y is having me work a few morning shifts in there this month, so Ava will be with me the whole time, from 8:30am - 12pm. She is going to need to nap in there, otherwise it will be a very bad 4 hours. They never seem to have that many kids in there at one time, but I think she will be so distracted by the noise and lights that it will keep her awake. I'm a little concerned about germs too, but I guess we have to deal with that at some point. As much as I would like to, I cannot keep her in a plastic bubble when we go out. Actually, I think she is experiencing her first cold right now, although it's very minor. She isn't cranky or running a fever, but she does have a stuffy nose and she coughs a little. Brent tried to use the "nose hose" on her last night because I won't get near that thing. Gross!
As for her feeding, we have her on a pretty good schedule. She gets cereal at breakfast lunch and dinner along with a bottle, and she gets a bottle for snacks too. She is okay with the rice cereal, but the oatmeal makes her spit up. We just started on baby food too. So far I've only tried bananas, which I usually mix in with her cereal. She likes them. I think tonight I might give her a taste of carrots for dinner. She is a really good eater, I am surprised at how well she took to a spoon.
She is napping right now so I have to do some things before she wakes up. We took some pictures on the 4th but most of them came out bad. We love taking pictures but sometimes we just don't take enough.

Messy eater, just like her mama.

Her 4th of July onesie. While part of me wanted to get her all decked out in a cute little red white and blue ensemble, the other part of me is very practical and also very cheap. I will not buy something she will only wear once, unless I LOVE and have to see her in it. I buy her a lot of clothes, but most of them will get lots of use and are also probably on sale.

My parent's pool. We didn't take a picture of the whole thing, but it is awesome. Ava loved the waterfall and that little turtle.

Wake Up Call

Aaaallrighty. So,I've established that we've been busy in my earlier post. We have also been really tired. Ava started sleeping through the night at around 8 or 9 weeks, which has been awesome. We've had no problems at all - until this past week. The first night she woke up at 5:30am. The next night she woke up at 5am. And the night after that it was 4:00 in the morning. See the pattern? This morning it was 5:30am. Who knows what it will be tomorrow morning. We do get her to go back to sleep eventually, but that is after one of us has gotten up 3 or 4 times, and by then we are wide awake.
It seems that once we think we have her figured out and have a nice routine down, she goes and changes things up. Lately she is just so much hungrier than usual, so I figured that was a sign that she was ready to begin eating cereal. I started it on the 27th. She takes it okay sometimes, I was actually suprised that she eats off a spoon so well. I just don't think she likes it very much. I have to give her some bottle first, then hurry up and feed her the cereal, and then give her the rest of the bottle. But now I am just so confused. I'm afraid that I'm over-feeding her, even though I have a sheet that gives guidelines on feeding, it still seems like so much food. And I don't know how or when to start baby food. So I have been asking a couple of people at work who have young kids how they did it. It was just so nice before, just a bottle, 6 oz, every 3 hours. I hoped that the cereal would fill her up more so that she would not wake up so early, but it isn't working. She is on the rice cereal now, I'm going to try out the oatmeal later this week, and then maybe around 6 months I'll start the baby food. She will have another doctor's appointment this month so I will probably ask them about what to do.
I'm kind of bummed that we aren't doing much for the 4th of July. We might go up to my parent's house for a cook out, since we haven't been there in a long time. We won't be going to the fireworks since I think it would scare the bejesus out of Ava. I am just now starting to get over the cold I've had all week. It was not fun feeling so sick and waking up at 4 or 5am and having to function even though all I wanted to do was stay in bed. I guess that's what parenthood is like though, right? And then when Ava smiles at me or laughs, I forget that I don't feel so good for awhile.

Ava and Lula have a staring contest

Everything goes in the mouth - including the changing table.

Look at how excited she is to be eating off a spoon

Her big teddy

Just chillin out, reading "Where's Elmo?"
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Again, everything goes in the mouth.
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No time like the present...

Seriously, I want to update this blog all the time, I love doing it, I just can never seem to find the time (and/or motivation) to do it. It seems like I am running around doing something all the time. If I'm not with Ava then I'm at work, and when I'm home with Ava, Brent is at work or school. I love that friends and family are actually reading this thing, that they care enough about Ava to want to see her pictures and read what is going on with her. And I want to be able to write about her all the time, so I am going to try to find some more time. One problem is that Ava does not like to nap in her crib during they day, she prefers my bed, and since the computer is in our bedroom, I can't do anything in there while she's sleeping. There goes my free time.
So, with that being said, I have to go get ready for a work thing I have to be at until 10pm tonight. I am going to probably post some pics and stuff when I get home. Please keep checking in on us!