Ava & Mila

Our little Ava is now 62 weeks old.

And if you can’t figure out how many months that is… look in the upper right hand corner of her blog. You will find her exact age in that spot.

This week we got to celebrate Easter, one of my favorite holidays.

Hopefully next year she will be old enough for a real Easter egg hunt… but in the meantime Ava had a blast dumping plastic eggs out of her basket and placing them back in again…

Here she is in her ‘princess’ dress.

The tulle fabric of the dress was a little scratchy at first so her arms were over her head for the first twenty minutes or so…

Some of us were easily entertained by her dress drama… hehe. Welcome to the world of being uncomfortable for the sake of looking cute. It’s tough being a girl.

After Easter dinner, Ava had a wardrobe change and it was off to chase bubbles…

…and scream BABO!

It was entertainment for the entire family.

More please.

Ava got a chance to hang out with Nathan, who thought it was a good idea to eat her dress.

She also spent some time with her great grandmas. Ava actually added ‘Nona’ to her vocabulary this weekend, along with ‘Dida’… and ‘oko’, which is eye in Croatian.

Look who enjoys sweating to the oldies.

I hope she gets to meet Richard Simmons some day.

Before Ava was born, I was a wildlife rehabber, focused on hummingbirds and few other songbirds. I took a year and a half off from my volunteering but this week I am officially out of retirement. Here is my first baby hummingbird of the season. Some one found the nest on the ground and did not see the mom around for hours, so he thankfully called his local wildlife center and drove the baby over to us. This little guy is probably about two weeks old and will need another month of care before he can be released back into the wild. Here is Ava with ‘Pumpkin’ the hummingbird. She wasn’t too sure of him at first… maybe because he is so tiny and doesn’t move around like the big birds yet.

Wondering how Dan is doing with Ava during his baby sitting hour while I am at work? Well, here you go.

Dada is so fun… and Mama has a lot of clean up to do.

Ava has been so hungry this week. We can not feed her enough. I think she may be in a growth spurt. There will not be enough gnocchi in the world for everyone else if this trend continues… sorry world.

Here she enjoying an afternoon snack at school during one of her teacher’s going away party. We could not get her to stop eating so we decided to join her.

Ava gets a tiny bit envious when she sees the neighbor kids’ toy car in their yard.

But she doesn’t have to be anymore. She now has her own and it plays music too.

Take that neighbor kids!

I couldn’t resist not adding these two pictures. Ava with sunglasses…

…and Ava with her Yacht Rock hat.

Oh boy, I had a great week…

…but I must say that it was a bit exhausting too.

So, I am off to work on my tan. Where in the world am I? Hmmm, those mountains in the background should be a great clue for you… and how about those fish tacos in my belly.

Ring ring ring. Hello?

It’s for you Nathan.

He’s busy at the moment. Can I please to take a message?

Let me write this down. Uh hah. Uh hah. Got it.

OMG. It was the Easter bunny. He wanted you to have this egg.

See ya.

Hello there. Our little Ava is now 61 weeks old.

Over the weekend, Ava got invited to Briar’s 5th Birthday Party. Here are all the kids sitting on the floor, watching a movie. This only lasted a few minutes before they were running around the house like maniacs again. Ava was too busy staring at the older kids to realize that Diego was so close to her.

Here are all the kids posing with the birthday boy. Ava wasn’t too happy about wearing a Transformers hat.

But she was pretty excited about playing with Play-Doh for the first time.

So excited that she put some in her mouth and swallowed it before I had a chance to sweep it out of her mouth. And, to answer the question you are secretly asking yourself at this very moment…. No, I did not find any Play-Doh in her diaper the next day.

Back at home, we were in a new routine due a change in my office hours. It has been a rough week for all of us but we are slowly adapting. It sorta felt worse than my first week back to work. Not being able to put Ava down and up from her afternoon nap was painful… and not having Dan working a stone’s throw from my desk with his encouraging words to get me through the day sucked too. If anyone wants to pay my mortgage so I can tickle Ava all day, I will give you a million high fives in return. I promise.

Someone thought it would be nice to help her Mama clean up around the house.

Thanks Ava.

Do you hear that? It’s the theme music from ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’. You know what that means. Gun fight!!!

Boom boom boom, silly cat!

Now run!!!!

This week, Ava started climbing on top of safe to get a peek at what’s on the nightstand and see what is going on at the bird feeder outside.

During our daily walks, she started plucking petals. It was cute at first but now she is destroying the gardens of our neighborhoods.

And when she is not vandalizing other’s properties, she picks up tiny objects from one driveway and deposits it on another.

Ava can now point to eye, nose, mouth, ear, hair and feet pretty consistently. We are still working on tummy and belly button.

And of course, she is still a book worm. We got to observe Ava at daycare the other day while Jeremy was visiting. She had no idea three smiling faces were watching her while she grabbed a book from the shelf, sat on the floor and started turning pages.

I asked her teacher for a status update because I was worried she was a little shyer than the other kids. The teacher said that she wasn’t shy but did have a thing for stealing the other kids’ food. Lol. I guess she is more like her Dada than her Mama.

A few days later, the same teacher mentioned that Ava didn’t talk much at school still so maybe she is a little shy. At home, she is a chatterbox though. She still tries to make animal sounds, especially meow. And her two favorite words are duuuuude (for balloon) and babo (for bubble). Babo is very popular in the tub and she giggles every time she says it, even though real bubbles are not one of her favorite things. And she says duuuuuude every time she see a picture of balloons on the wall of Dan’s 30th birthday party… or when ever we pass any car dealerships. It’s hilarious to be in the car and then out of no where Ava starts yelling dude and we start looking for dude’s out of our windows. Oh, there’s a dude.

Ok. I am fed up with these blurry pictures. I need a new camera with no grease on the lens, in order to continue documenting every day of Ava’s life. Yes, she does have a picture for every single day since the minute she was born.

Ava turned 14 months old this week. At exactly 1:34pm, she was having a fit at Chipotle, thanks to teething and a slight run in with picky eater syndrome.

Later in the week, Ava’s 11th and 12th tooth finally sprouted. It ends up that her previous ‘canines’ were actually her molars and these teeth are her canines. I am an embarrassment to the dental community. Sorry Mom.

Ava didn’t hit any new milestones this week, but her Dada did. His work contract ended so we celebrated with drinks at Rookies’ for Happy Hour.

Someone doesn’t seem to be too disappointed by this milestone.

The very next morning, Ava was sick. I guess she had too many drinks at Happy Hour. We heard Ava stirring at her normal wake up time of 6:30am and found dried puke all over her. If you have ever been through this, you feel our pain. When I opened the door to her room, I almost fell over from the smell alone. Ava puked in her sleep. By morning, it looked like she stuck her finger in an electrical socket and the puke fairy sprinkled food chunks in her hair. I found myself holding Ava, wishing she was covered in poop instead. Yes, you read that correctly. I wished for poop.

Her stomach flu wasn’t like the last version she got where she did not want to eat or drink. Ava was in the kitchen, pointing and grunting at the snack area and fruit bowl. I eventually gave in, placed her in the high chair and gave her a plain pancake. After consuming a third of it, pancake puree poured out of her mouth. Breakfast time was over. A couple hours later, she really wanted a banana. I gave her the banana and she gave me puree. Lunchtime was over. By dinner time she was able to hold down chicken soup. Thank goodness.

Ava wasn’t the only one puking left and right at the house. Yoda was sick also and needed to get fluids injected under her skin for her dehydration. Ava loves the vet. She loves pointing and grunting at all the real and fake animals there. Oh my goodness!! I almost forgot. Ava does have a NEW milestone this week. She is starting to meow, woof, who, and chirp when she sees pictures of animals. And she said bubble last night in the bath tub while I was reading her “What floats?” bath book. She must of repeated it 15 times. It sounded like babo. hehe. Ok, back to this picture. She was obsessed with the doggie scale at the vet so I took the opportunity to weigh her and it read 24.5 pounds.

We finally took Ava to the playground again. It’s been a few months. Not sure why. Maybe because it got dark early or maybe because it was ‘cold’ or maybe because the last time we went to the park Rudy was still with us. I’m sure it was a combination of all of those. Ava did better on the swing this time. She lasted a minute or so before she had enough. Probably a good idea that we didn’t push it since she was still recovering from her vomit-fest.

Here she is enjoying the slide a lot more.

But the good times stopped when her feet hit the sand.

I could not convince her that standing on sand was fun, but playing with Grace’s shovel and bucket sure did the trick.

Ava has a fascination with things on her head this week. It all started with her bath time bowl and it has now progressed to buckets.

Taking advantage of the situation, I bought her a new hat. Our one year old fits in a size 2T-4T. hehe. Here is Ava snuggling with stuffed animals from the Winnie the Pooh display… and eyeing a few more.

Last week at daycare, we found wood chips all over Ava’s bed. And, when we brought her home, pieces of wood were falling out of her clothes. It was like a magic trick. But this week, we finally found out why…. twig art!

If we are reading books in her room, Ava must be sitting on Olie. No excuses. It’s Olie or the highway.

And her friendship with our neighbor’s cat is blooming. I think she waits for Ava at 5pm everyday. I hope Yoda is no jealous of this cat’s friendship with Ava or of her slim tummy.

Ava’s hair is also getting a bit longer. Here she is with pigtails.

Ava is getting taller by the day. She can grab things off of the tables and desks in the house now. Here she is trying to reach for some gnocchi.

Man, she can not get enough of them. Here she is complaining that there is only chicken left on her plate. More gnocchi!

Ava used to wear one outfit a day. But not anymore thanks to her barbaric eating technique. Her belly is back to its old glory days. You know, some women get outies when they reach the latter stages of pregnancy. Ummm, Ava is pretty damn close to having one, especially if her belly expands outward more…. if that is humanly possible.

I can’t believe she just said that? MOM!!!!

Ha choo!!! Stop reading this blog and get me a tissue!

Peek-a-boo, Ava is now 59 weeks old!

Ava had a great weekend. She learned how to sniff a lemon, fresh off of a tree. Here is her sniff action shot.

And decided it was a good idea to take a tiny nibble of it. Gross!

Wondering what else we did this weekend to make Ava’s eyes almost pop out of her head?

…and make her scream and point?

Ducks! Here are four generations of ladies feeding ducks at Averill Park.

Here she is with Nona Dinka, who was scared that Ava was going to fall in the pond the entire time.

We forgot to bring food for the ducks so we dove into Ava’s emergency supply of Cheerios we stash in the car. Every time I asked her to throw the Cheerios to the ducks, she quickly stuffed them into her mouth.

Ava loves her cinnamon apple organic Cheerios.

And there were other animals there who wanted our Cheerios too…

Squirrels! They were a much braver than the ducks and Ava made sure to thank them by doing her special stomping dance.

Ava also got to see her cousin Nathan over the weekend. She was much more receptive of him this time… maybe because she was playing with all his cool toys… or maybe because he had giraffes on his pajamas to which she could point and grunt. All of my pictures have this heavenly haze to them because a drop of oil landed perfectly on my camera lens during dinner. I still think most of my pictures this week look hazy. I sure hope I don’t have to get a new camera

Ava also spent a lot of time asking to be picked up to check out Little Buddy the bird…

…and spent a lot of time grunting at her Dida to pay attention to her when he was making BBQ.

Come back inside Dida!

What? My weekend is over and now it is time to go back to school? I guess that is ok.

Here is Ava at pick-up time… just up from her nap. Check out all the twigs she has in her bed!?! I wonder what caused these twigs to jump into her pants during outside play time today? Well, I probably don’t have to guess to hard. Can you say stomp dancing?

And Ava got her first boo-boo in the toddler room this week. I guess she was eating lunch and fell out of her chair. She has a nice bruise and cut on her left cheek.

You think that bruise is bad? Check out her cute dress after a few hours at daycare. Sucks to be the Mama who has to constantly do laundry and iron these cute dresses… all in the name of fashion.

I can’t completely blame daycare for Ava’s food disasters. Check her out enjoying more oranges fresh off of Dida Slavo’s tree.

And check out her polenta with meat sauce aftermath. I guess we will be practicing our spoon skills this weekend.

Ava learned how to throw a toy mouse at Yoda this week. Yoda was so excited to see her purple mouse and really wanted to play but was scared of getting smacked or kicked by her uncoordinated toddler buddy.

Since Yoda ran off to hide under the dining room table, Ava decided she would try to shove herself into Yoda’s carrier. She first tried to go in bottom first.

Then, Ava decided it looked more like a play tunnel and wiggled her way through it… with a little help from Dada.

Here she is sitting in her block box. Weirdo.

I haven’t blogged about bath time in awhile. Ava loves it. She even loves throwing toys into the tub all day long. I guess that is better than the toilet. Here she is with her favorite bowl. We used to pose it on her head when she was little to take silly pictures… but now she does it to herself and wears it as a hat for a good portion of bath time.

Ava recently discovered that she has boobs. She loves pointing and laughing at them.

But bath time isn’t so fun when we have to rinse the shampoo from her hair… which is more and more these days with all the polenta and oranges she puts in there during mealtime.

Alright, it’s time to practice our fish impressions. Bye!

Hi Yoda. I’m glad we’re friends.

Oh look. I see your friend outside.

Do you see her? Do you? If you were a pancake, then I could push you under the door. Too bad.

There she is. I told you your friend was here!

You’re very welcome.

I love you too Yoda.

Last week Ava went on a walk with her mama around the neighborhood. She came across a dog trying to peek at her under the fence and Ava decided to show the doggy her new dance moves.