*Ava Rees* 8 Months

 This last month has been my favorite with Ava- hands down. She seems so old this month compared to last. She is a very fast crawler - which has really opened up her world. She goes from one thing to the next, often laughing and jabbering the whole time.

She also pulls herself up to anything she can get a grip on. She sometimes gets distracted by me or Jeff when we walk by and she'll let go and just stand there looking at us....and then fall down in slow motion when she realizes she has nothing to hold on to.
Ava also just got her first tooth! It's a cute little thing on the bottom. Not too much stressing on her part though. Just popped up over a few days.

Ava has been the best little traveler this past month. Getting stuck in airports for 8+ hours is never fun, but she was a champ about it. Ava makes friends everywhere we go. I often have to tell people no when they ask to hold her. I'm not trying to be mean, but when did it become acceptable for complete strangers to ask if they can hold you baby???? I think this is weird. At the airport I had several people (all strangers who I had never met before) tell me she was just so cute and if they could hold her and walk around with her....uhhh no. No you can not.  

Every chance we get, we still like to go out on walks and to the park to people watch.

This girl LOVES dogs. We were at my friend Elise's house in Boise, and I had to hold Ava back from mauling their dog. She made the biggest squeal and lunged for their black lab. This girl is fearless. One of her favorite games is to lung headfirst off of any surface she is on. I do not encourage this game. Whether she is sitting with us on the couch, or in our big rocking chair, the moment you take a hand off her she lunges head first off the side- we always catch her and put her back- and she just laughs her head off and tries again. Crazy girl. 

Jeff loves playing this "game" with her. I don't love it so much.

 Ava still doesn't love to sleep or nap. Just hates it. She's sleeping much better at night, but refuses to nap- and she really is very happy during the day- it just baffles me that she never gets tired or cranky. Sometimes I call her a robot baby because she just keeps bopping around, happy as a clam- the only time she gets angry is when I dress her. Girl hates to wear clothes. Once I get them on she's fine, it's the getting dressed part she hates. I have to pin her down to get her diapers on- she tries so very hard to escape and sometimes I have to chase her naked bum as it's speed crawling away.

We spend most of our days playing with her toys and reading books. She seems to like Brown Bear and Goodnight Moon the best. She loves her new blocks and spends a lot of time taking them out of the little cart and then stacking them back in. She loves taking everything out- pulling the books out, pulling her toys out, pulling her clothes out of their drawers. 

It's great fun- for her- for me, not so much. But seeing her so determined and so concentrated makes me smile so I let her destroy and just clean up at the end of the day.

 Ava's still a mama's girl and loves to cuddle throughout the day. 

When I walk into the other room, she makes a growling noise and angrily crawls after me and can use my legs to pull herself up until I pick her up and come back into the same room with her. As long as we're in the same room, she's fine and can play on her own- she just likes to know I'm there watching her. Ava loves to stick out that tongue! It's the cutest. She gets these big adorable smiles with her tongue always hanging out. I love it. I kind of want to freeze this phase with her. It's so fun and I feel like I have a little buddy to hang out with. She has clear preferences with what she wants to do, whether it be read, eat, play, sing songs- she's such her own little person. I love getting to know her feisty personality. So much of her personality reminds me of myself that I don't ever really get frustrated with her, right now whenever she's screaming because I'm making her wear clothes, or if she's screaming because I'm making her sleep in her crib- it just kind of amuses me. Mostly it amuses me because she's acting out all of the stories of what my parents told me I was like when I was baby- apparently I hated sleeping, and had a strong preference to be naked. 

I don't think I'll find it so amusing when she's 13 and acting like I did, but for now I just thinks it's fascinating how alike we are.

Ava baby, I love you!!!!

P.S. Over Christmas break we discovered who she really looks like......my brother Cameron! His 8 month baby pictures looks identical to Ava. It was actually weirding me out a bit. Cameron's the brother that looks the most like me....so it makes sense... but it's still a trip to look at old baby pictures from the 90's and see Ava's face.