11 Months!!!

Oh my goodness, it is almost here!  In 15 short days, Ava Marie Swearingen will be 1 years old!  This sweet little girl has been  our ray of sunshine for the last 11 months and I could not imagine my life without her!

Each day I think of things to blog about but then time gets away from me and I am already forgetting special moments that we have each day.  I try to take a lot of videos and pictures because already each day is something new and exciting with Ava.

The most exciting news in Ava's world is the she is officially a walker!  I am not sure how most kids are but for Ava she work up one morning and decided that she was going to walk and that was it.  It started on the Saturday before we left for vacation on August 4th.  She had perfected her standing on her own and was cruising along the couch.  While standing in the middle of the floor I held my arms out and she took one little step towards me unassisted.  After that she was not interested for another two and a half weeks when I got her to take three steps in a row one day and eight steps the following.  She took a day off and then woke up on Saturday the 25th and decided that she was ready to walk. Ava must have taken over one hundred steps in one day and did it was grace and ease.  She is really good at balancing herself and immediately was able to go from walking to crouching and back up to standing and walking by herself.  Although she has had several short falls on her bum, we have not had a major wipe out yet.  This last week we have introduced her to walking in shoes and they do not seem to bother her and she is continuing to walk well with them on.

We have been working on transitioning from the bottle to a sippy cup and on Monday she drank and entire glass of juice (mostly water) with her straw sippy cup.  She was having issues tipping her head back far enough with a regular sippy cup so we found a winner with the straw cup.  Travis and I are excited because we are about to save a small fortune on our grocery bill because Ava is on her last can of formula and will be starting on whole milk after this!  In bad news our once good eater is fast becoming a fussy eater.  Her once favorite foods she will not touch and she no longer likes pureed foods.  I have tried taking her old favorites and steaming, baking, or boiling them instead of pureeing them and she will not even touch them.  Currently all she will eat are grapes, yogurt, toast, cottage cheese, turkey, puffs, and cheese.  While she is eating healthy foods I want her to have more variety and Travis and I are continuing to patiently try to feed her something different each night.

Ava now has two bottom teeth but there is no sign of any other teeth coming in.  Her favorite word that she would save over and over again each day was dadada but she rarely says this anymore.  She has picked up on momma which is  fine by me.  She also can make out ball, katie, and hi.  Ava loves to dance and wave her arms.  She will still clamp if something excites her and she has the sweetest laugh. 

Another big  change in her life is she moved up to the 12 to 16 month classroom at her school.  She also started a new school this week and will go to this school on Tuesday and Thursday's and her old school Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's.  We have been on a waiting list with this new school since April 2011 and when a part time spot came open we changed her schedule with her old school.  We feel like this new school has more to offer as she grows so now that we have our foot in the door, we will be next on the list when a full time position becomes available.  Now that she is in the 12 month classroom, there is more push for all of the kids to be on one schedule so everyone eats, plays, and sleeps at the same time.  She is going to one nap a day on a mat, sitting at a small table for her meals, playing outside, and playing with kids almost 7 months older than her.  The teachers say that she is adjusting well in the classroom but the last two nights she has been tired and extremely cranky.  I know it is because she is playing harder than she did in her Nursery classroom and she will adjust to this new schedule and hopefully start taking longer naps during nap time to help with her evening fussiness. 

Tonight during her small meltdown that she was having I took her out to the front porch to let her watch it rain.  She put her arm out to feel the rain and wanted down.  I let her down and she stepped out into the rain and let the water fall on her.  She looked up and smiled and started clapping.  I only let her do this for about a minute, but I never tire of experiencing life through Ava's eyes.