Valentine's Day 2014

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day.

The Sunday before, I had Ava wear a little heart dress to church that my mom used to dress me in. 

I am just loving dressing her up- whether it's my old clothes or shopping for new ones- 

She was pretty happy.....

...until I wouldn't let her play with my camera.

Life's hard for a baby.

*Ava Rees* 9 Months

Alright- better late than never right? 

This last month has been long one- but not necessarily in a bad way. I feel like Ava has grown and accomplished a lot this month. She's such a happy little girl and I'm glad that hasn't changed. 

When she wakes up in the morning, I'm almost never ready to get up- so I'm thankful she likes to cuddle. I can grab her and throw her under the covers in my bed and she'll snuggle up next to me and kick and grab at the comforter. Sometimes she'll fall back asleep- and that's the best. 

I love waking up like this. On the day she turned 9 months I grabbed my camera and snapped some pics of what waking up with Ava is like. 

It involves her monkey and the cutest baby in the world.

This morning she fell asleep for another hour with me. Perfection. 

Ava's become more vocal. Throughout all of these pictures she's squealing and clicking her tongue. She loves to click her tongue. Ava still loves to clap. And she'll clap now when she sees anyone really happy or excited. I was watching Ellen the other day, and when she does that thing where she goes into the audience to dance- Ava looked up at the screen right then and back at me and started clapping and squealing along while bopping her head to the beat of the song. It was pretty cute. 

She likes to feed herself. This is frustrating because she doesn't really eat, but plays with her food instead. But then she gets angry when I try to feed her so...that's been fun.

Ava loves standing. She'll just stand in the middle of the room, not holding on to anything except some toy in her hands. The moment she tries to take a step however, she just topples over. Ava's still pretty tough. She falls over a lot and rarely cries. She really is one happy babe.

Ava loves giving high fives. It's pretty funny. She'll be across the room from me, but when I put out my hand and tell her to come give me a high five, she races over and slaps my hand several times- and she has the biggest grins while doing this. Ava also gives kisses- big, slobbery kisses- all over your face. It's gross and cute at the same time. Last Sunday she wouldn't stop kissing my face in Sunday school. It was awesome.

Ava loves to crash into her block towers. She's much more interested in destroying the towers than in building them. I keep trying to get her to build the towers, but she just excitedly waits until I finish building and then shrieks with joy as she swings her hands through my towers. She looooooooves this. She loves to destroy most anything- I wonder where she gets this from? :)-   ((me))

And right about here when she notices the window and wants to play with the blinds is when we really get up and out of bed. I'm still not ready to wake up- probably because Ava's started waking up several times a night again.....but it's ok. She's happy and healthy and for that I'm thankful.

Love you Ava

bffs

This last month has been busy. Jeff started clinic and coaching two club volleyball teams. This leaves me and Ava with a lot of quality time together. It's nice when Ava can see her dad for at least a few minutes before she has to go to bed, but that doesn't always happen. 

So what do Ava and I do alllll day errr day?

We read, cuddle, do kisses, take baths, eat, go on walks, don't nap, go to church, go to lunch, and apparently, take a lot of pictures.

love my lil bff.

gosh, i love her

Go Tigers

Julie and Jordan sent this adorable Princeton shirt for Ava for Christmas. She looked so cute in it and was so smiley the other morning that I had to take a few pics.

She kept peeking through her excersaucer and smiling so big every time she saw me looking back.

 Go Tigers!

and thanks Jordan and Julie!

Growing Up

So, my baby is growing up. 

*tear*

In the couple of weeks that we've been back in Texas, Ava has turned into a different baby. She is everywhere, into everything, all the time. I really do love it though! She has become even more fun. She's crawling, pulling herself up, standing, cruising- she thinks she can stand up in the middle of the room, but then she just face plants onto the carpet. 

Ava rarely holds still anymore

I turned around and my baby had opened the dresser drawer all by herself! What?! 

One of her new favorite activities is pulling everything out of this drawer. I actually love this activity too- it entertains her for a solid 30-40 minutes. She pulls things out, I put them back in and that's basically the cycle. And the greatest thing ever, if you ask her. 

 Had to get out her 18 month clothes to find pants that were long enough.

She was so good at Taylor's basketball game

She also loves the swings. 

Especially when her dad's the one pushing her.

Baby girl looooooves the dog park. And grabbing on to that fence. 

We have to pry her little fingers off when we want to leave. 

ahhhh and the achievement she's most proud of: being able to pull herself up in her crib.

 This makes nap time and every other time she's supposed to be sleeping.......difficult. 

She pulls herself up, laughs, bangs on the crib, the walls, cruises around the crib- she has a party.

Love this growing baby of mine!

Happy Monday!

Hope you all had as good of a Monday as she did!

It was nice and sunny out on our walk today so we ditched the pants and Avie zonked out.

Hopefully the rest of the week can be just as good :)

*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.