10 Month Photo Shoot

He Is Risen!

We had a GREAT Easter! On Friday morning Ava woke up and I brought her into our bed. I was explaining Good Friday to her, telling her that it's a sad day because its the day Jesus died, but a good day because His sacrifice means we could be saved. When I told her He rose again on Easter she clapped! My girl knows good news when she hears it.

That afternoon we went to her first Easter egg hunt at a park with our playgroup. It was a potluck and there were about 15 moms and babies there. So fun! Ava has two best girlfriends in the group, Olivia and Lilia. They were all born just days apart and met when they were about a month old. Their moms and I took walks by the beach twice a week with our babies. We'd compare labor stories, offer nursing advice, talk sleep training, and wonder aloud whether or not we really had to give our babies Vitamin D drops... It's hard to believe we're now talking plans for first birthday parties.

Look what I found Mama...

Eggs!

Little friends & first Easter baskets

That evening our good friend Becky came over for a Seder (Passover) Dinner for Christians. We had Noodle Koogle, latkes and lamb. We listened to Exodus 12-14 on Becky's iPhone app while Ava tried to figure out where the voice was coming from. It was a great night.

On Saturday we drove up to Ventura and on Sunday morning we went to Reality Church's Easter Service at the Santa Barbara Community College campus. Oh. My. Gosh. Mark and I both agree it was the best Easter service we've ever been to. Incredible sermon. Rocking music. Stunning view.

Easter Perfection.

Hanging with Uncle John & Grandma

Clap your hands yo, HE IS RISEN!

Ava & Peter Cottontail (mine from when I was a little girl)

My girl and I

We hope and pray you had a great Easter too!

Daisy's New Song

I was just wrapping up giving Ava a bleach bath, putting a layer of hydrocortisone cream on her red, inflamed skin, followed by copious amounts of moisturizer. Then feeding her expressed milk from a bottle instead of nursing her because I took a day off and ate all of her allergens (wheat, dairy, eggs, peanuts, who knows what else...) and she's been paying for it ever since. I was just watching her wiggle in her crib, trying to scratch all the hard to reach places, feeling really sorry for myself, for my baby, and asking God why this has to be so hard. That's when I logged onto my Google Reader and found this...

Daisy's New Song 

It's a song sweet Daisy Love, our Ventura pastor's daughter, wrote and is singing on her way to get a PET scan to see just how bad the cancer that is back a THIRD time really is. It wasn't good news. Surgery is scheduled for next week. Perspective. If a seven year old with cancer can have this kind of attitude. and faith. and patience. and JOY. Then what the heck am I doing wallowing in some skin issues?

Singing, praying and faith[ing] along with you Daisy Love...

Happy 10 Months Ava Shay!

Ava is 10 months old! I know I say it every month but this is the most fun stage so far. She's on the move and getting verbal. The other night around bedtime she crawled up to me quickly, used my leg to stand up and started tapping on my thigh saying, "Nigh, nigh. Nigh, nigh." She wanted to go to "Night, night." She impresses me every day with what she knows and learns. Here is what our little joy is up to lately.

Ava, at 10 months you...

• Imitate my work out moves. It's hilarious. I'm on day 21 of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. It's a work out video that you watch me do it every morning from your pen. You now do head rolls & leg extensions. It's a game to you. You look at us and cock your head slowly to one side and then to the other, all the while maintaining this cute little grin on your face. You play this game with strangers too; the waitress at Bouboufee Mediterranean Grille and the businessman in the waiting room at the Kaiser pharmacy. They don't understand the game, but you bring smiles wherever you go. Here you are doing [your version of] a head roll.

Work it baby. I'll explain the carrot later.

• Had some fun play dates at the house

• Learned how to clap! I know I already posted a clapping video but here's another. Because we can't seem to get enough of clapping in this household lately. 

• Love trying out your four little teeth on raw carrots.

Nom nom nom nom nom.

• Celebrated being Irish on both the Russell & Power side of the family on St. Patrick's Day.

• Got a new toy chest. We were going to wait to give it to you for your first birthday but we couldn't help ourselves. It's too cute! I love the hot pink script personalization. Here you are on top of it. Clapping of course.

• Climb up the stairs. At warp speed. With no concept of gravity on the way down. We need to get a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs but for now one of us just follows you closely behind. Oftentimes you stop at each step and clap to celebrate your accomplishment. So cute. I don't know why this video came out sideways and don't know how to fix it but I'm posting it anyways.

• Think its hilarious when I wear a hat. I wear a visor on runs and you think it's hysterical. You just look at me and loose it every time I put it on. It's as if I wear it for your own personal entertainment. And sometimes I do.

•  Speaking of laughing... you think playing catch with an oatmeal lid is pretty funny too. I'll leave you all with this gem...

The Sickies Part 2

Ava is just finishing up her third illness (other than the common cold which she's had plenty of as well). This chick goes big when she gets sick. First she had Croup, then RSV, and now she's recovering from Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease AND a bacterial skin infection. Yes, both at the same time. That's why is was so hard (and stressful) to figure out what the heck she had. Whew. It feels like just when she recovers from one illness, the symptoms for the next one start coming on; with eczema just a given during and in between...

For being breast-fed and not in day care, we've sure gone through it with the illnesses. It hasn't been easy. Everyone knows that babies and kids get sick a lot but I don't think anyone could have prepared me for this part of parenting. It's exhausting caring for a sick child. Physically sure, with the increased laundry and wardrobe changes, a baby who won't let you go .02 seconds without holding her (even when she's sleeping), and don't forget the battle of medicine administration multiple times a day and into the night; but mentally and emotionally as well. You have to be on day and night. It's stressful trying to figure out what is wrong and it's a huge responsibility knowing that I'm supposed to be her advocate, the one who's supposed to be able to make it all okay, only I'm just as lost as her ER doctor dad, all his cohorts and her pediatrician. Add the fact that she can't communicate to tell us what's wrong; what hurts and where and the whole experience is downright frustrating.

The worst part for me is when she can't nurse. Usually it's due to congestion but in this case it was ulcers all over her little mouth, gums and throat. It's heart-breaking holding her lethargic little body and touching her hot, feverish face and telling her it's going to be okay, all while I pray it will be. Praying. I've been doing a lot of that lately. I've said it before, but I've never prayed as much as I have in the last 10 months of being a mom. She's dependent on Mark and I and we're dependent on God. Simple as that.

Here are some photos of Ava looking (and feeling) hard up this week:

Needless to say, we'll wait a bit to take her ten month photo shoot...

On a brighter note. Mark and I got to go on a date last night! We have a great babysitter who Ava loves and who can handle a recovering baby so we got to use the movie tickets we had purchased before she got sick and went on a much-needed date. We went to Islands for Happy Hour; sliders, fries, a lava flow for me, and a Kona Longboard in a frosty mug for him. Then Hunger Games at the IMAX. I was SO excited. I loved the books and have been waiting to see the movie, it lived up to all the anticipation. It was the first movie we've seen in the theater in 11 months. So there's that too. It was so nice to work out, shower, get dressed up just a bit and go on a date with my husband. So refreshing. I woke up feeling like a new woman, a new wife and a new mom. The great news is that we woke up to a new baby too! She was looking and feeling great. Back to her active, fun, funny, great little self. And guess what? She learned how to clap this week! She's a trooper, this one. Check it out:

9 Month Update

Dear Ava,
We thought that six months old was where it was at, then seven months old was a blast, and now 9 months is definitely our favorite ago so far. You are so fun. And happy. And cute. And smart.

Baby Girl, at 9 months old you...

• Wear 6-9, 9, and some 12 month clothing.
• Weigh 19 pounds and 2 ounces.
• Are 28 inches long.
• Wear size 3 diapers.
• Say "Mama" and "Dada." Or more like "mamamamamama" and "dadadadadadada." All. Day. Long.
• Have gone from giving tentative, delayed waves to hysterical, two handed ones. You wave at everyone, even if they aren't looking at you, nor are particularly interested in saying "hi" back. But if they are looking at or you or giving you even the least bit of attention, it's on. You turn into a total spaz, bouncing up & down and practically catapulting yourself out of our arms to get to him or her.
• Love people. Especially fellow babies or kids. We took you to the Long Beach Aquarium and you got a much bigger kick out of all the school-aged kids who were there on a field trip than any of the colorful fish or other sea creatures.
• Have been to Denver, where it all started! Daddy and I met in Denver and your grandparents and many of our good friends still live in this awesome city. We had a great trip in February. There had been a big storm only days before we arrived so there was a lot of snow on the ground. It was so fun to introduce you to snow for the first time. Sadly, we don't have many photos because we left our (very expensive) camera on the plane on the flight there. Doh! These cell phone pics will have to do...

At REI

Ava & Grandma Russell

Abigail and Ava at Emily & Brian's Fun House

• Have 4 teeth! Your two front, bottom teeth are completely in and your two top teeth are peeking through. We thought we'd miss your gummy smile, but this one is pretty darn cute too.

If you look really close you can see the bottom two

• Are a great eater. Your favorite foods are homemade baked sweet potato fries, puréed sweet potatoes, avocados, rice of all kinds (brown rice, chicken fried rice, Spanish rice, white rice...) and Clif bars; in that order. Your least favorite food is banana. It just sits on your high chair tray untouched and you look around like, "what else you got?" Here you are eating your beloved sweet potatoes fries.

• Have a new favorite game. It's called "Clear the coffee table." You "crab crawl" around the perimeter of the coffee table, picking up each item on it; books, magazines, remote controls, etc. and throwing them on the ground one by one. When it's all cleared you bang on the table for us to put the items back on it so you can do it all over again. It's a really fun game. For you.

 

• Can stand on your own for a couple of seconds!
• Can sleep through the night... you just don't want to. I went away for a weekend and my goal was to have you sleeping through the night so that daddy and Grandma & Grandpa Power would get to sleep as well. After a very short bout of letting you "cry it out" when you woke up instead of feeding you every time you woke up, you started sleeping through the night. You just needed that little push. We were both much happier in the mornings, all well-rested. Then everything went to heck while I was gone. Daddy has some night shifts coming up we'll start all over again soon here.
• Are obsessed with clapping. You don't do it yourself yet, but you love when other people do it. You know we clap when you do something impressive so whenever you hear clapping, whether it's at church or when daddy is watching a golf tournament on TV, you perk up and look around like, "What'd I do?"
• Are (pretty much) clear of eczema! Hallelujah! This is a HUGE answer to prayer. We were at our wit's end with this horrible stuff but we feel like we've finally experienced a break through. The allergy tests came back to be not all that helpful. On a scale of 1-6, 6 being the most severe. Your results were: 

Fish 0

Wheat 0

Beastmilk 0

Soy 0

Walnut 0

Milk 1

Egg white 2

Peanut 2

 No 3-6's which are the ones that would actually cause a reaction enough to pay attention to. I was shocked that you weren't allergic to wheat. You or I consuming wheat and your skin freaking out really seemed to correlate. I'm going with my "mommy intuition" on this one and continuing to use very sparingly in both of our diets. We're continuing to try to figure it all out but in the meantime we went to a dermatologist as well and have a good skin routine going that is working really well so far. Yay! God knows we needed to make some headway on this. It's so sad to see you ichy and swollen and in pain. I've never prayed and begged for direction and answers from God so much as I have in the last three months. God's always been there for us and He came through again. Here are the before and after pics:

At the Dr. Pobresita : (

Beauty face!

We love you so, so much Baby Girl. We can't believe how quickly you're growing up and that we're already starting to plan your first birthday party! When did this happen?! Here's to many more months and years of enjoying YOU!

Love You, 

Mamamamamama & Dadadadadadada

9 Month Photo Shoot

...and that's a wrap!