FINALLY.

Six month pictures from July :o)

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Seven months!

As you probably noticed from the ticker, Ava is now seven months old!! I can't believe it's going by so quickly--I'm already thinking about her first birthday party. (No, it's NEVER too early to think about these things...) She's babbling away like crazy and is always making us laugh with new noises and faces...she still sleeps well (naps aren't as consistently good but she NEVER fusses at bedtime) with the exception of crying at approx. 4am EVERY SINGLE NIGHT...but I think I have it figured out--she's uncomfortable for one reason or another. Sometimes she gets up on all fours in her sleep and can't figure out how to lay back down again, sometimes the covers are off and she's cold, etc. The good thing is that as soon as I go in and fix whatever is wrong she drops right back to sleep. She's almost crawling--gets up like a pro, can move her knees, but the hands don't seem to know what to do. She still has a cold and I'm considering calling the doctor and telling them to either do something or refer me to somebody who can. Poor kid has had a million checkups concerning her tailbone, kidneys, and hip joint--all of which appear to be fine--but nobody will do anything about what is REALLY wrong with her! It's extremely frustrating.

Anyhow--a quick update of the week. Monday we stayed home from school because Ava had a really rough night the night before, she was up most of the time, screaming with terrible gas pains. I didn't want to drag her to day care after that so we stayed home...good thing because she randomly came down with a fever of 102.2! What the heck? I really don't understand kids and fevers but luckily it wasn't serious and some Tylenol brought it right down. The rest of the week went smoothly except for me having a small meltdown Wednesday evening...I was just feeling really guilty about leaving Ava all day so I could go to work. I still think it's the best thing for our family and she's doing great, but every now and then I miss her more than usual and break down a little bit. Yesterday Aunt Kathy and Uncle Chuck came over for our (3rd) farewell meal, but this time they are REALLY leaving. :o( Going to Arizona in about a week. We're really going to miss having them around! Ava had fun hanging out but it stinks she's too young to remember it. Anyhow, this morning has been my morning on baby duty and it's been wonderful. She woke up at 4am of course, then again at 6:00 to eat--went down afterwards for about an hour and woke up so I brought her in to bed with me and she slept for another 1-1 1/2 hours! It was raining outside and there is nothing better than snuggling in bed and dozing while it rains outside. When she woke up for real, we sat on the porch in our pajamas and watched the rain. Now, she's bouncing in the Einstein jumper and I'm about to get her breakfast ready.

Lastly--if anybody knows of a photo site that sucks considerably less than Bubbleshare, could you clue me in? I'm trying to post photos but it's being a piece of crap and not working. UGH!!!!!

exhausted...

There's been a lot going on around here so updating has been the last thing on my mind! I wanted to wait until I could upload a few recent pictures but that may not happen. The new school year is getting off to a good start, but I am so tired I can't stand it...I've been either alone during the week or doing 90% of the work myself, and it is NOT working out very well. (For me, anyhow!) Anyhow, in Ava news--she's still fighting off yet another cold, and I'm going to choke the next doctor and/or nurse who tells me to elevate her head, use a humidifier, and use the saline/aspirator on her nose. THAT POOR KID HAS BEEN ELEVATED, HUMIDIFIED, AND ASPIRATED HALF TO DEATH FOR ALMOST HER ENTIRE TIME ON EARTH!!!! Clearly, it isn't helping! I'm really not buying that we can do organ transplants and create super-awesome artificial limbs for people but can't do ANYTHING for a baby with a cold. In spite of this she's still pretty happy and enjoying trying out new foods every few days--her menu includes rice cereal, apples, pears, peaches, carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, and green beans. She likes all of them. We had bananas for awhile but she didn't like them as much and they made her really gassy, even when we gave her Mylicon, so forget it. I hate bananas too so maybe it's just proof she's my kid. ;o) Anyhow, she has five bottles a day and two of those bottles have a meal with them--cereal and fruit in the morning, two veggies, cereal, and fruit at night. I think I'm allowed to start adding meat but I don't really want to go there yet....I'll wait until she's at least nine months I think. Same for yogurt.

Also--she is going to crawl any day now! In just this past week she's gone from kind of being able to tuck her legs up under her to getting up on all fours and staying like that for awhile. She can also sit up well when someone puts her in a sitting position, and really enjoys touching and rubbing things with different textures--I should probably get her some of those touchy-feely books.

That's about it for now! In other news, MJ finally had her baby last weekend, so Ava's future best friend is now outside of the womb. ;o) We were lucky to get to meet baby Sophia in the hospital, and mom, dad and baby are doing well at home. Congrats to them!!!

almost back to work

Last week was teacher week, which is why there was a severe lack of posting. Ava went back to day care full time and I headed back to work full time, although I don't really count it because it was just teacher inservice, which means meetings and lesson planning and setting up the classroom but no students. I usually go into psycho workaholic mode but because Craig was back on the road for the first time following his mono episode, I had to end the day at the regular time and come home to take care of Ava. Not that I mind--in some ways, it's a good thing that I'm forced to put work down and come home because otherwise I go a little crazy. (I told you--workaholic.) Anyhow there are a few loose ends to tie up so as soon as Craig wakes up to watch Ava I can go back and take care of them. Yesterday was my morning to sleep...today is his. Anyhow, I think this year will probably be good...or at least get off to a good start. From what I hear the kids have lower academic skills but are pretty sweet and they do try hard, which is all I can ask of them as a teacher. I'm so easy--if you do your work, try hard, and behave, we get along fine. If you don't, then we will have a problem. I don't understand what's so complicated about that to some kids.

ANYHOW--I got Ava's six month pictures yesterday and in spite of how much she freaked out at the photo shoot they did turn out pretty cute! I'll try to scan and post them but it may not be for awhile, since things are really busy around here with work and such. I think she's fighting a cold (and luckily seems to be winning) because she goes between having fussy sleep and sleeping like a ROCK. Three hour morning nap yesterday!! The rest of the naps were bad but in all fairness, we were dragging her to the store, Cheesecake Factory, etc. Last night she slept nearly 11 hours, much to my relief, and now she's back down after only about 1 1/2 hours of awake time which is unusual. Usually this is what happens:

6:00 or 6:30 am--eat
Go back to sleep until about 8:00
Awake and playing until 10:00
10:00--baby cereal and fruit, and a bottle
10:30--morning nap

We'll see. I would like to go to the mall after I work to take advantage of the Loft gift card Craig gave me for our anniversary + the 20% off coupon from Jen + the huge sale at Loft but who knows what will happen!

without further ado....

Some of the pictures don't seem to have loaded correctly, but I am so not doing this again...

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YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!!!!!!!!!

Don't expect pictures anytime soon. Or, better yet, don't expect them EVER. I just spent the better part of two hours resizing approx. 50 pictures--incorrectly the first time so I did it twice--and then uploading them to Bubbleshare and when I was FINALLY DONE, Bubbleshare chooses THAT moment to pop up a screen informing me that their server is down and they are "sorry for the inconvenience." And they suck about saving things (your album basically can't be saved until you go through the whole upload-review-caption process) so I lost the entire. freaking. thing. If there was something logical to take my anger out on nearby, I would be smashing something into little pieces RIGHT NOW.

If Craig laughs at me one more time, it might be his head.


UGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

procrastinating the photo update

So I'm going to just post this: the best song ever, by the best band ever, performed in the best city ever, last week. And you can probably hear me singing along happily somewhere in the crowd.... ;o)



You'd think I'd be happy just seeing him once on this tour but I'm pretty bummed about missing the Raleigh concert...unfortunately, I don't know that many people here who actually listen to good music (sorry, it's true!) so at this point I'd pretty much have to go alone. Which I'm actually quite tempted to do. It's not like it's dangerous, the audience is just a bunch of older people and happy stoners, really. And the occasional random preppy math teacher/mommy, like me. ;o)