Three Months Old

I cannot believe that my sweet baby girl is already three months old.  The time has flown by and it is amazing how much she has changed in such a short period of time.  We have our daily routine down and Ava's favorite time is when she is playing on her play mat.  She loves reaching and batting at the toys that are hanging down from it and she also loves to put them in her mouth.  She is getting better at tummy time and will stay on her stomach for several minutes at a time now.  Ava also has started to roll over from her stomach to her back.
Words cannot describe how blessed we are and I thank God every day for Ava.

Busy Week

Last week Ava Marie was 10 weeks old and I have had one of the most productive weeks since she was born.  I was able to get out with her and run some errands without her throwing a fit about it, I cooked dinner and had it ready when Travis arrived home from work, and I also took a quick road trip by myself with Ava to Birmingham.

Since I will be returning to work in 5 short weeks, Travis and I have really been working on getting her on a schedule to help her transition into daycare and fingers crossed that she will start sleeping regularly through the night by the time I am back at work.  For the last week and a half she has been eating and sleeping at the same time every day but she was still waking anywhere between 3:30 am-4:30am for a late night feed before going back to sleep until 7:00am.  Last night she had her best night of sleep and she slept from 8:00pm until 6:30am with me waking her for 15 minutes at 11:00pm to feed her.  While she had a good night sleep I awoke at 5:15 and stared at the video monitor until 6:30 because I thought something was wrong and that she would be up at any minute.  I think having her on a regular schedule is really paying off and I hope that she continues to sleep as well through the night. 

Although December has been warm in Tennessee, we are really enjoying the Christmas Season.  Last week we went to the tree lighting at David Lipscomb University and Ava met Santa for the first time.  She was a really good little girl and allowed Santa to hold her to have her picture made.  I also took a Holiday Wreath making workshop with Alissa at Cheekwood and I have a beautiful, fresh wreath made of boxwood, pine, and blue spruce hanging on our front door. I am so excited that the Christmas Season is here!

Ava was so excited to meet Santa for the first time

Visiting Brooke in Birmingham

Theresa was my big sis in Kappa Delta.  She had Baby Reiter in May and stopped by to meet Ava and it gave me a chance to meet Reiter for the first time. 

I love that we can still take afternoon walks in December.

Our Christmas Wreaths that Alissa and I made at Cheekwood.

Baby Doll

Last weekend my cousin's child, Danica, who is three years old was given a new baby doll as a gift.  My Aunt Sue asked Danica what she wanted to name the baby doll and Danica told her that she wanted to name her doll Ava Marie.  Then she decided that the name may be too long so that she would just call her Marie.  This made me so happy and melted my heart when I heard this.

Thanksgiving

Ava celebrated her first Thanksgiving and despite all of the yummy food that we prepared, she is still too young to enjoy any of it so she will have to wait until next year to experience her first Thanksgiving meal.  Our Thanksgiving week started off with a visit from my cousin Mary who was able to meet Ava for the first time.  We had a great visit and it is so nice to see family that you do not get to see on a regular basis.
This year I had decided to host our Thanksgiving meal and thankfully my mother came down the day before and prepared most of the food.  Last year we really enjoyed frying our turkey so we had wanted to do this again this year but my mother was not too excited about this idea.  We ended up with two turkeys so my mother was able to roast one and then Travis fried the other one.  Before my mother left on Sunday, she said that she really enjoyed the fried turkey and that it was more juicier and flavorful than her roasted turkey.  We had a nice Thanksgiving Day and was happy to be able to spend time with some of our family members but wish that we could have celebrated it with our entire family.
The rest of the weekend was spent with decorating for Christmas and my mother doing DIY projects around our house.  I cannot believe that it is Christmas time and I am looking forward to spending our first Christmas with Ava.

Newborn Pictures

Since I finally have Ava's birth announcements out, I thought that I would go ahead and post some of the pictures from Ava's newborn photo shot.  These were taken at our home when Ava was twelve days old by our friend, Beth Sims.