The Swearingen Family: May 2012

Ava Marie turned 8 months old yesterday. She has hit so many milestones in the last month and I am so in love with our sweet baby girl.

After two weeks of crying and refusing to enjoy taking a bath, Ava now LOVES bath time. She will stand up next to the tub and watch with excitement as her small bath tub fills with water with her toys in it. She is splashing the water and playing with her toys and smiles every time I take her out and wrap her up in her towel.

She went from barely able to sit up on her own at the beginning of the month to sitting up and now she is mobile. Last month Ava was able to roll from one side of the room to the other, but now she is "crawling"! It is not the conventional way of crawling, but she graduated from army crawling to lunging herself forward until she gets to whatever she has her eyes set on. She finds such simple joy in the anything that she finds and was so fascinated when she discovered the drawer pulls on our television stand. She also has many yoga moves that she has mastered on her own and can do the downward facing dog and the plank.

Our baby girl is starting to recognize who we are and as soon as we enter her room at daycare and she sees us, she starts to cry out for us. The same is for when we are in a room with her, and if we step out without taking her with us, she is not happy. She is starting to question who is holding her if it is a strange person to her, and she will reach out for us to take her.

Ava is 2-0 for daycare illnesses and picked up the latest virus that was going around her classroom. After running a temperature and worried that she may have her first eye infection, we took her to our Pediatrician and learned that she caught the hand, foot, and mouth disease. She lost her appetite and broke out in a rash on her legs and arms. It has now been a week, and she thankful is almost over this.

Travis bought Ava her first set of wheels, and it took Ava no time at all to start moving around the house in her new walker. She loves being mobile and to follow us around the house.

We have not tried too many new foods this month with her not feeling well, we have stuck to what we know she likes and will eat and have only tried carrots, and avocado's. With the loss of appetite from this disease, she has not been a great eater, but she has started sitting in her highchair like a big girl and loves being able to play with her spoon when she is finished eating.

We have been having a lot of spring showers and I took her outside one afternoon on the covered porch for her to watch it rain. She stared in silence as the raindrops fell from the sky and clapped her hands in excitement as she watched this. It is moments like this that makes me love life and thank God for the blessing that he has given us. As Ava grows, I appreciate the gift of life and love being able to discover everything again through Ava's eyes.

Ava is starting to develop such a fun personality and I love all of the funny faces that she makes!