The Poop Story

So along the way we have had many funny/disgusting poop stories involving little, precious Baby Ava and up until now we have kept them to ourselves but this one was too good that I had to share.

Saturday morning I had cleaned the house so that Travis would not have to come home to a messy home after being away for the last couple of days.  I was in the kitchen cooking some sweet potatoes for Ava while she ran back and forth in the kitchen in her walker.  I was barefooted and took a step and also lost my footing after stepping in something.  I looked down to see a rather large pile of poop on my clean kitchen floor.  It took me a couple of seconds to realize that it had to come from Ava since we do not have any pets.  I look up just in time to see Ava on the other side of the kitchen in her walker with a trail of poop behind her and another poo falling out of the side of her walker.  I had just bought her new white leather shoes with  pink bows that she was wearing and I was more afraid of her stepping in it herself than anything.  I ran over to her on my tippy toes since I still had poo on my one foot and picked her up and took her into our bedroom to change her.  Her diaper had managed to shift in her walker and somehow it came out the side of her diaper without touching her clothes or any other part of her body.

It is moments like this that you just have to laugh but I hope not to have to have any more poop stories for a while.

8 Months Old

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!

She still can fit in her swing for naps

This is the best expression!

She figured out how to turn her mobile on and off and as soon as she wakes up in the morning, she will turn it on.

She loves to stick out her tongue and smile

Big girl sitting up

Going after Daddy's wallet

Afternoon at Cheekwood

Landscaping Project

When Travis and I purchased our home in May 2010, the outside needed to be fixed up as much as the inside did.  We mainly renovated the inside with only cutting down some trees, removing ivy from one side of the house, and painting the outside.  Our plan had been landscape the outside in 2011, but with us expecting Ava, we thought that it was best to hold off.

When the warm weather came around this year, we started planning out our new landscaping, but with every bed needing to be redone, we quickly found ourselves overwhelmed with options and spacing.  We decided to hire a landscape company, and three weeks after our first meeting we had all new landscaping in.  We kept some of our bushes in the front and on the side, but everything else was taken out and our beds were reshaped.  We are so pleased with the results and could not have come up with this variety of bushes, trees, and perennials.

A before picture of our home before we did any work on it.

 

 

 

 

Pictures of old landscaping after we completed our renovations.  

 

 Pictures of new landscaping