While I Was Away...

After Christmas, Britney and Ava went to AZ to spend time with Britney's family. They were there for two weeks while I was in Boston working away. Little did I know that all the girls (including our 5.5 month old Ava) went to go get pedicures!

How am I ever going to be able to provide for her if she is constantly wanting to go get pedicures?!?! How will we ever connect? I've never had a pedicure, nor do I want one!

Ava montage

Multiple family members have pestered me to get more Ava goodness up on the blog - so sorry! We have been out of commission with holidays and visiting family.

Ava has certainly grown in the last couple months! She will be 6 months on the 23rd...holy cow. She got her first ear infection over Christmas and also got TWO TEETH. It's been crazy. But she's sleeping so much better now and is a true joy. She can manipulate things well with her hands and has started scooting backwards a bit. She plays for long stretches of time on her belly and talks.....a LOT. And LOUDLY. Wow. Taking her to church is an adventure :)

So I don't know why but I've never ventured into video editing...until now. Thank you iMovie (I LOVE MY MAC!) Here is a little video montage of the last two months from our little point and shoot.

We got an amazing video camera for Christmas and took some fantastic video, but are still working on the logistics of uploading, editing, etc. Look forward to great movies to come!

True Spirit of Christmas

Daddy and Ava

Cute...this is their nighttime ritual...Ava sure loves her daddy!!

Recent musings from Massachusetts

Nothing much going on here. A house a few doors down just got bulldozed and now we have a mouse problem. Gross. Our resident troublemaker, Ava, is still having a hard time sleeping at night. I am regularly getting 1 3 hr stretch and a few 2 hr or less each night. Startin to wear me down for SURE. Last night however, Ava slept for 4.5 hrs straight and it was blissful. I felt like a new woman. Then she slept in until 9am. HOLY COW. Today was a good day. Hence the post :)

Ava really is a joy (minus the night-times) and is so happy. She loves toys and now regularly entertains herself with wrappers and paper. Crazy. She has started to be up for longer periods during the day so we really get to have some fun. She has also started "humming" (for lack of a better word) while eating. Hilarious, but does not make the process as easy to hide in public anymore! She smiles a lot and LOVES her night-time ritual with daddy. He can always get her to smile and talk with him, even after starting to fuss because she's tired. We love our Ava girl!

Cute church outfit (can you see the drool covering the top of her dress? she's teething)

addictive smiles

pucker lips

i've been having fun making hair accessories :)

(anyone else having a hard time uploading videos to blogger?)

What a crack up

Here are a few more Ava videos...I know, you've been waiting... :)

Grammie came to visit last weekend and Ava seriously scored with some cute new clothes. One of her favorite items was her new shoes - the first one's she's worn!


She loves them - can't you tell?!


Unfortunately she inherited a few things from her momma - like sneezing in the sun and scrunching her nose when she laughs...but here is evidence of her BLUE BLUE eyes that obviously came from her daddy...whom she loves VERY much :)

Ava LOVES this toy elephant she has...like seriously LOVES it. She gets this goofy smile every time we give it to her and it is a sure way to get her to talk...so funny.

(the video isn't uploading at the moment - I'll add it later)

In other news, Ava has learned to squirm out of her car seat...what?! She is not supposed to be mobile yet! Oh yeah, and we are pretty sure she is teething. EVERYTHING goes in her mouth and she bites pretty hard! Pray for me and my anatomy :)

Happy Halloween!

It has been really fun to see Ava's development recently. We feel like every other day, there is something new. A week or two ago we pulled out some toys to see if she would be interested in them. Fortunately, we had a couple that she has really enjoyed. One in particular is a blue elephant that has legs that dangle down with big feet. When we first pulled them out she enjoyed looking at it and hitting it, but this week she has started to actually grab the feet with both and even one hand! She sometimes is even able to pull the feet all the way to her mouth. It has been exciting to see her motor skills develop and to see her get less shaky.

On Monday and Tuesday she had rolled over a couple times be they were mostly unintentional. Then on Wednesday morning, she rolled like 5 times in a row, and even rolled both directions. It was very evident that she did it on purpose. Luckily, I was working at home Wednesday morning, so I was home to witness the excitement. It was SO fun!

For Halloween, the three of us plus Grammie decided to go to Beacon Hill to join in the festivities there. Last year Britney and I went there and had a great time, so we were excited to go this year with baby Ava. Like last year, John Kerry was out (he lives in Beacon Hill), but this year he seemed a lot more tired or less excited about being there. We had amazing weather, upper 60's but windy, and had a fun time walking the narrow streets. Ava got into the action (thanks to some handy work by Brit) and dressed up as a Lady Bug. We even saw some people with some INCREDIBLE costumes of Where the Wild Things Are, and it turns out that we knew them!

The latest excitement was that just this afternoon, Ava gave us a few real laughs! These are her first real laughs EVER and we got a few on video! We really lucked out with having a camera in the right place at the right time. Take a look!