11 July 2010

9 Months and Counting

Ava is now 9 months and 2 weeks! Oh how time as flown by. She is the center of our hearts and the more she learns the more it amazes me.



Ava is now talking; saying ‘daddy’, ‘nanny’, ‘dada’, ‘ash’, ‘done’, ‘baba’ and a few things come out sometimes that sound like little phrases. Sometimes it will sound like ‘I got it’ or ‘I did it’ or ‘I done’. Her communications are getting stronger. She now tells us when she is done eating by putting her head down her to chest and basically refusing to finish. I don’t mind this at all, I would rather her tell me she is full than fill her until she explodes. She raises her hands in the air when she wants to be picked up and if she wants to sit on the couch with me, she’ll come over and stand and stare at me until I ask ‘Up?’, then she will get up on her tippy toes and try to come up with me. She absolutely lets us know when she’s not happy with her facial expressions. Her brows tell us a lot. They will go down and you will get the ‘I’m mad right now face’ but I have to say she is quick to get over it. She doesn’t stay upset long and soon will be playing with something else, something that she is allowed to play with. Her little fits usually stem from her playing with either our air purifier or the satellite box, about the only 2 things we say ‘NO’ to and the 2 things she insists to always try to play with. She is responding to what we are telling her more and more. She knows that when I ask her to lay down, that it is time to lay down on my chest or the bed and relax for either her nap or bed time.

She is 15 lbs and 9 oz and 27 inches long.
She is growing right along with what her doctor would like to see.






She is now eating table food. She has shared everything from a poptart to a steak dinner with me in the last few weeks. She loves to eat. On the weekends when we are home, she will eat at her normal times then also snack with me when I am eating. She LOVES her puffs. She sees them and gets all excited. When we are eating something I am not comfortable giving her, I will let her eat puffs instead. That way I get to eat and so does she. She is drinking milk and juice. She loves yogurt, since taking her off a night time before bed bottle I have substituted with yogurt.

She is only drinking 2 bottles a day and soon I hope to get that down to 1 then by September to zero. I took the bottle away from her at night about a week or more before Memorial Day, just to experiment and see how she reacted. She did very well. She didn’t even miss it. I feed her a jar of 3rd foods/or whatever we are eating/or both, then the yogurt about a ½ hour from her bedtime and she is good for the night. On the weekends when she’s with me, there are days that she doesn’t get a bottle at all; I will just give her milk throughout the day with her food. She has been handling those days pretty well.

She is picking things up and throwing them all over my house. She is learning to use her fingers more for small objects. She is free standing on her own now and even takes a few steps at times. She is getting more balanced; walking is not that far away. She moves very fast now that she has crawling down pat. She knows where her toys are and can spend an hour just moving them here and there and playing. She loves her windows. We have huge windows in our living room and she will play at the window sill forever. She takes her toys over and puts them on the ledge of the window sill and will move them all over, they will fall to the floor, she will pick them up, and they fall again. She LOVES to bang things against the windows. The more noise she can make the happier she is.



She usually takes a nap in the morning and one in the afternoon, for the most part. She has days where it is too busy for naps and crashes early that evening. She is usually in bed relaxing by 8 and a sleep by 830.

She is definitely both of our personalities. She can be sweet and gentle and then be rough and carrying on. She can have a quick temper but it disappears quickly. Right now she is a momma’s girl when she is tired or hungry and daddy’s girl when she wants to play.

She has so much fun with Kenny. He will pick her up by her feet and swing her upside down, she just smiles. She definitely aggravates like him, she knows when she is pushing buttons and will laugh at you while she is doing it. She likes to aggravate her daddy; she will keep going back to something he has told her ‘no’ on just because she can. She will go for it and just as he is getting up she will back away and smile at him. She can stare and smile at him all day I believe.

She is growing so fast and learning so much. This is such a fun age. We are just enjoying every moment we have with her and taking it all in.