Height: 34.25" (off the growth chart)
Weight: 26 lbs. 1/2 oz. (90th percentile)
Head Circumference: I have no idea but it's in the 90th percentile.
She is right on target for development, the doctor said crying out at night is normal (she could just be crying out in her sleep, or trying various cries to see what will get us to come running), her tubes look great, and she's a happy and healthy little girl...we couldn't ask for more! :o)
Something that's both good and bad about Ava is her ability to warm up to perfect strangers. In February when she got her tubes put in, we handed her off to the doctors and she let them carry her back to surgery without even a fuss. Sometimes she'll hide her face initially when meeting someone new; but now, more often than not she waves and says "hi" or "bye" (the two are interchangeable in Ava-land) to everyone we see. A few days ago we met up with a friend at Starbucks, and sat out front. Ava waved goodbye whenever a car pulled away, and waved hello to anyone who passed by. I have to say, it was pretty charming. Until we got up to leave and she ran up to some random man and tried to climb onto his lap. Oh, and did I mention she whacked him in the crotch in the process? I almost DIED....not to mention, it's a little scary that strangers don't worry her. Maybe a lot of little kids are like that, I don't know. I'm pretty sure I remember my little brother Billy talking to anyone and everyone. I'll just have to be very careful to talk to her about it constantly until she understands that sadly, you should not trust strangers. On the cute side of it...today we were at the doctor's office so I could get a routine physical (my first since college...and I am happy to announce I didn't flinch or get the slightest bit dizzy when they drew blood!). In the waiting room there was a very old man....he seriously had to be about 90 years old. Ava waved to him so he waved back and said hello, and then she ran right over and gave him a hug. It was SO SWEET. The man looked so happy and started telling me about his little great-grandson, who is just a little older than Ava. I know....I have to teach her about strangers and I will, and I watch over her like a crazed momma lion, but it really was adorable. :)
We still don't have a charger cord for the camera, so I have attempted to take pictures on my camera but they never turn out very well. :-\ However I will post a few since it's been FOREVER since I've put any up.BubbleShare: Share photos - Find great Clip Art Images.
Ava is doing well these days...we rescheduled her ear checkup and everything looks great! Next week is her 15 month checkup so I'll have new stats, but I'll tell you right now she's still huge. ;o) This week she's had a lot of fun identifying my belly button, and occasionally her own. Twice I even heard her say, "But-ton!" She also pokes me in the eye and says, "Eye!" We play "peek" with her (like peekaboo without the "-aboo") and now she'll cover her face, uncover it, and yell, "GEEK!" Either she means "peek" or she's expressing an opinion about her parents. ;o)
Anyhow, we're still really up in the air about whether or not Ava will ever get a sibling...if so, it won't be for awhile yet. I mention this because I've been thinking lately of things I would do different the second time around. I think these are the biggest ones I've come up with thus far:
1.) I will take an SNS kit to the hospital so that the poor baby doesn't dehydrate while my milk takes its sweet time to come in. :-\ And I will not meet with any lactation consultants in the hospital because last time, every single one gave me different information...I really wish they'd all been on the same page. I think I know enough from my first experience to figure out what to do and I'll just call someone if I have a problem.
2.) I'm sending the next kid to the nursery so I can sleep when I'm in the hospital, since I know I won't get any at home. Someone gave me that advice last time but unfortunately I only listened the second night. The nurses still bring the baby in for the feedings every three hours so why not?
3.) Two words: VIDEO MONITOR. I thought that was stupid the first time around, and a waste of money....how lazy to not just get up and check on the baby! Oh, if only I had known how much I'd regret that.... ;o) It would be SO nice to be able to peek in without disturbing the baby so that I can see if (s)he needs something or is just fussing.
4.) Breastfeeding/pumping after going back to work: been there, done that, over it. It was great while on maternity leave and I'll still feed the kid at night for a couple of months if my milk sticks around once we cut down to once a day but everything else will have to be formula. I know some people think it's child abuse to not breastfeed but frankly, I don't really care...they can stage one of those protests outside my door if they want. ;o) When Ava nursed it was like she was sitting down for a seven course meal, it usually took about 30-40 minutes (and she didn't mess around, she was EATING) and if I have a second child, I'm not going to be able to do that. (Besides, we both got spoiled once she started downing full bottles in 5-10 minutes...Ava was just as much over it as me!) Don't even get me started on pumping...I had to stick to doing it during planning periods and if I had a meeting or parent conference, it's not exactly like I could whip out the pump and take care of business in front of everyone.
5.) I'd really like to stick with baby-sitters instead of day care. What still bothers me about day care was the lack of a separate room for naps....probably other day cares have them though and it was just the one we were at.
6.) I'm starting Mylicon immediately if the kid shows even a hint of being gassy. Forget that! She was in pain and I was losing my mind from the screaming.
But like I said, it's still up in the air...sometimes I just don't know if I can go through another year of killing myself, between nine months of pregnancy followed by three months of newborn baby! We shall see. My feelings are towards a new kid are most positive when we've had a full night of sleep!
That title is completely sarcastic. Two days ago--on Tuesday, March 24--Ava had a follow-up appointment for her tube surgery. Which I remembered last night at 9pm. I nearly had a heart attack...I even cried (yes, it was probably an overreaction and I'm way too emotional and I don't think my hormones have regulated yet)...you don't understand, I'm the person who shows up obnoxiously early to appointments, I'm never even late so missing one altogether is completely off the chart for me. I feel horrible for wasting the doctor's time, for missing out on something that's important to Ava's health, and am not thrilled about the no-show fee, either. I know, I know...it's not the end of the world and we managed to reschedule for next Monday but STILL. This is going to haunt me for a long time (if you know me, that should not surprise you). I swear, it's like I go on break and I can't keep it together...if I'd been at work, I'd have been checking my calendars daily and would not have missed it.
Anyhow, we still don't have a camera so there still are no pictures, but in Ava news there's not too much to report, except that she frequently quacks now. Yes, quacks. I figured out it's because of her Duckie blankie, ever since she started using Duckie about a year ago, we'd always say things like, "Ava, look, it's Duckie! Quack, quack, quack!" and now she'll quack when she picks him up, or if you say the word "Duckie." It's actually pretty adorable. In not-so-cute news, she launched a brutal attack on my knee last night. I have no idea why....I was sitting on the couch and she ran over and bit my kneecap. HARD. Like, hard enough that I was in tears and it hurt for about 20 minutes. And if that's not bad enough, she kept coming at me and biting my knees! I tried pushing her away, reprimanding her, I even resorted to a pop on the backside and NOTHING. She just laughed and kept attacking. It was really, really weird. Please someone tell me that their kid has done something at least remotely as bizarre as that....
I apologize for the bad blogging the past few months: I've been trying to hang on until spring break and it's finally here!! Ava's ear tubes seem to be working as she hasn't had an infection in quite awhile (the last one was the one that required treatment with Rocephin) but she's had what seems to be a nasty cold the past couple of weeks, resulting in yet another case of not sleeping. Last night she finally slept again and I hope that's the last illness for awhile but knowing her, something that will cause us to lose sleep is lurking around the corner....maybe more teeth, etc. ;o) Anyhow we're mostly doing well! Ava is running everywhere and is trying so hard to talk: so far we have Dada, bye-bye, kitty kitty (sounds like, "key key!"), uh-oh, and when the mood strikes her, she actually says Mama! She looked right at me, smiled, and said it the other day and hasn't done it since. I am telling you she is doing it on purpose to make me crazy.
In other news, we're making steady progress on the new house: they just put up the drywall and I FINALLY settled on some paint colors, the siding is up, and closing will be early to mid May. We also finally locked in an interest rate, which was my biggest concern and can only be done 60 days out from closing. It worked out extremely well: it's about 1.5% LESS than what we'd planned for originally so our mortgage (including all insurance and taxes) will be a few hundred under budget....woohoo! It'll be nice having that cushion.
Finally, I'm sorry to say there will be no pictures at least for awhile....we lost the charge cord for the camera and can't take any or upload any until it is replaced--Craig ordered one but when it arrived it didn't work so no luck. :-\ I have a few on my phone that I'll put up in another day or two but they're not that great--a few of the house and of Ava doing her latest trick which is to climb INTO her doll carriage with the dolls. You can thank Craig for encouraging this, he thinks it's hilarious..... ;o)
Bad news first: I'm at home right now with some kind of stomach bug and by the end of this week will have used up all of my sick days for the YEAR. Lovely!!! I used to have days left over at the end of each year...in addition to being out a couple of days for Ava, I seem to have no tolerance whatsoever for stomach bugs anymore. She must've knocked something out of whack on her way out because I've had something like three bugs and one case of food poisoning since her birth. I have no idea why, but it SUCKS. I'd rather have headaches, fevers, ANYTHING.
Good news: the bug seems to have done a hit-and-run on me and already seems to be on its way out, and the reason I'm using the rest of the sick days this week is because my last one will be spent with Ava on Wednesday when she FINALLY gets tubes in her ears! Thank goodness! Naturally I'm a little nervous but I know the end result will be a happier, pain-free kid and that's worth it.
Anyhow, that's about it here I guess...we're currently at war with our realtor and the building company because our realtor is selling our house but also selling US the house that we're building so naturally the builders are more important to him and we're left with no real representation. So when we pointed out to the builders that they were in breach of contract since they'll be 2-3 months past the closing date and per THEIR CONTRACT would end up owing us upwards of $6K, we asked if they could build a fairly basic deck off the back of the house instead of paying us the money. I thought this sounded fair, but for some reason, this makes us morally bankrupt criminals....or at least that's what one would think from the scathing, unprofessional, looks-like-it-was-written-by-a-12-year-old-girl-using-textspeak email we got from the realtor. The person who was supposed to be representing our best interests. But instead has tantrums because we're not naive kids like he thought and we actually READ the contract and intend to hold them to it. So, that's an issue...but they're still working on the house so that's good. We're still hoping to negotiate something with the builder, even if they just knock a couple grand off of the price of the house, SOMETHING to show they're willing to admit they're in the wrong (that's actually what a lawyer suggested we do, since a lot of builders are hurting right now and can't cough up the money to pay someone to build a deck. That's fine, we understand.)...the whole reason we're delayed is because it took them forever to get their loan from the bank. In that time, not only did nobody bother to call us (from the builder or the realtor's office) to keep us up to speed, nobody had bothered to return our frequent calls either. Had they done that, and been forthcoming about everything, we'd probably overlook this contract thing. I still have no idea how we're supposedly in the wrong here, but whatever...we got one more pathetically unprofessional tantrum from the realtor (our responses have always been calm and professional) and he is now refusing to speak to us. Lovely! He's just pissed off because he's so arrogant, he said he'd buy our house from us if it didn't sell...he hasn't managed to sell it and now he's going to have to buy it (who cares? He's profiting because we're buying a more expensive house through him, and if he can't turn around and sell ours, he can rent it out until the market improves. He wins either way.)
ANYHOW...that's the drama. Can't wait until it's over and we're in the new place! One of these days I'll post pictures of the progress. :)
I'm going to try to keep this brief because I would really, really like to get some sleep tonight! This past week has been ridiculous with the ear infections: on Jan. 24th we made our second "emergency" trip to the doctor on a Saturday. (I say emergency because there aren't regular office hours on weekends but they run the office somewhat like an urgent care and if you call ahead and have a pressing need--like a raging ear infection--you can get in.) The doctor prescribed an antibiotic called Suprax, supposedly the strongest oral antibiotic you can take (well, at least for babies, not sure about adults) and then he referred us to the ENT even though it was only infection #5 and they wanted us to wait for #6. I think it was a combination of pity (his kid had lots of ear infections) and realizing that at the rate at which Ava was getting infections there was no sense in waiting. Long story short the Suprax did nothing so on Friday--after another rough night that included a screaming baby and a sick mommy (I ate an Arby's salad for dinner because I was home alone and didn't feel like cooking and it did not agree with me apparently) we took her back to the doctor, who told us to continue the Suprax (not sure why) and prescribed an ear drop as well. Saturday night was another horrible night, any time we layed Ava down she would thrash and scream and arch her back and kick her legs...so we got her in again Sunday morning and they went to the last resort: antibiotic injections. It's a series of three so we had our second set today (it was actually two shots, one in each leg, because the dose is so big) and they're going to see if they can get the ENT to fast-track our appointment, originally set for Tuesday, Feb. 10th. These shots are MISERABLE. They're very painful so they mix Lidocaine in with the antibiotic to make it hurt less, but Ava apparently remembered yesterday's shot because when I took her in today she screamed as soon as we layed her down. Poor baby! It does seem to be helping a lot though, so that's good. Last night she only fussed twice, when she managed to somehow contort herself into a rather uncomfortable sleeping position and couldn't figure out how to untangle while half asleep. :o)
Since I feel like I mostly post negative things, I have to say that in spite of the ear infections and subsequent fussiness, she can be so much fun! I love doing ridiculous things to make her laugh. For instance, yesterday I jsut went up to her and said, "meemeemeemeemeemeemee!" She thought this was hilarious wouldn't stop laughing. She also cracks up every time I say, "Porkchop sandwiches!" (It's from a parody of G.I. Joe that's on YouTube--yes, I love nonsensical internet humor--so if you don't get it, just don't ask.... ;o) She also says "Uh-oh!" all the time, and usually in the correct context, like when she drops Duckie or throws a sippy cup at mommy's head. (In her defense, I was on the floor picking up food she'd dropped so my head may not have been the intended target.) She's walking like a pro (okay, more like a drunk) and can toddle all over the place, carrying things. On Saturday, she was carrying around a big, empty plastic bucket that, when full, holds 38 lbs. of kitty litter. It's almost as big as her!
That is about it. Craig's parents are coming this weekend for a visit so it will be great to see them, they were sick a few weeks ago and unable to come to Ava's birthday party and we really missed them! I don't have a whole bunch of pictures to post but I'll put up two: the first one was taken by Christina (Ava's baby-sitter) and I swiped it from her blog because it's too cute! The second one was when she was playing in the kitchen (you can see the litter bucket in the picture) and the happy expression on her face is her sweet personality poking through in spite of all the pain she's been in lately. :o)
