11 Months Old today...

Where does the time go?!?!? I can't believe Ava is 11 months old. CANNOT BELIEVE IT. One month and she'll be 1 year old. Whew. Time flies.

Ava is doing wonderfully and is still as sweet as ever. Those top teeth are really showing now but Ava has not acted like they bother her at all. They are cute, let me tell ya. Looks like they are big 'ens and they will have a good space between them...oh, just too cute. I was thinking today that now I understand why SOME parents keep the baby teeth when they fall out...they are just too precious. I'll probably be one of those parents. Sounds gross I know. I never thought I'd be the one to do that but....

Ava has taken a couple of steps here and there. Her balance is not great yet, but she keeps tryin'. Crawling gets the job done so what's the rush?! Everytime I let her crawl around freely she heads straight for the kitchen. She loves to open the cabinet doors now and peek inside. She especially loves the cabinet with the snacks in it---Just like her mama! And she still loves the dog dishes. One afternoon I put up the usual blockade to the kitchen and I stepped into the garage for a moment to look for something. I heard a peculiar sound and I peeked in only to see that she had crawled over the baracade and made her way to the dog dishes and had splashed all the water out!! She was sitting in a pool of water. Soaked. But it was so cute I had to grab the camera and snap a few. And don't worry, she didn't actually drink out of the bowl--I grabbed it before she had the chance. That would have been quite disgusting!




One thing I always am telling Brian: "she is tenacious!" She wants to get to something and she makes a way. I've got to get some gates up. That's probably the only way to keep her out of the kitchen unless she is in the playpen. Thankfully she doesn't mind the playpen.
She has been the biggest joy of our lives and we realize just how blessed we are to have her with us. A day hasn't gone by that she hasn't made us smile and laugh.

More pics from September:
This is how I found her watching Sesame Street:






She likes for the hardware on this particular piece of furniture to be "up" so she takes the time to flip them!









Those amazing cheeks


Her favorite room in the house--the kitchen!

I'm Back!

I guess you could say I've been on a blogging sabatical. I've missed blogging and everyday I'd think, "I need to go blog!" But I never got around to it. So many exciting and fun things have happened since the last update.

First and foremost we had Ava's stateside adoption at the courthouse. It's very short and simple but meaningful. We could have invited folks but I knew there wouldn't be a whole lot to it. When we went into the judge's office Ava got very quiet, it was cute, like she knew that it was appropriate behavior for the occasion. As we raised our right hand and accepted the responsibility of raising this little girl, I think Brian and I both were a little emotional. No tears were shed but we came close! We went downstairs to do some paperwork in the clerk's office and the girls down there knew Brian and that we were adopting so they were so excited to meet Ava. She was carried around the whole office to meet everyone! It was a fun morning. So now she can get her birth certificate and her social security number and start paying taxes. Woohoo! After the precedings Brian's office gave us a small reception and that was nice. Nothing like cake at 10am!!

Ava has started pulling up on everything and she can even stand on her own for 5 seconds or so. She's even figured out how to go up the stairs at my sister's house. Lucky for them. She is very coordinated and has great balance, most of the time anyway. We've had a few bumps to the head lately. She has become quite vocal and loves to hear herself yell and shriek....it's such a lovely sound :). She is saying "da da" and something that sounds like "night night" without the "t" on the end. She has said "ma ma" but not in reference to me. We're working on that! She has just started cutting her top teeth this week. Thankfully it doesn't seem to be bothering her. She had her 9 month appointment last week even though she is a little over 10 months now--that's how backed up the dr.'s office is. She weighs 17.8 pounds and is 28 inches long. She had 3 shots which were just terrible for her, so sad. But she was quickly over it. We got in the car and she fell asleep right away. Very traumatic afternoon you know.

We visited mom and dad's this past weekend. Everyone came over on Saturday and Sunday. There were kids everywhere! Which is wonderful and fun but LOUD. We had a fun time except that Ava decided she was going to give us a run for our money come bedtime. That girl would not sleep by herself in her crib even if we were in the room with her. Nope, she wanted to be held--all night. So, that meant that one of us was awake with her at some point in the night. We tried to take shifts. So we were pretty exhausted Saturday and then that night was pretty much more of the same. But we got home, put her in her crib, and guess what...nothin'. She cried maybe 20 seconds and drifted off and slept all night. I can't figure out what the issue is at mom and dad's. We're going to try to put her in a room upstairs next visit. We'll just experiment with different things and see what works. But she really didn't sleep great in New York either, or in the hotels we've visited. SO maybe it's just that she can tell she's not in her own bed and she doesn't like it. If that's it then there's not much we can do until she grows out of this phase. One good thing about the nighttime problem, she is awfully cuddly. That's not enough to make me want to wake up at 3am every night to hold her though!!

She crawled everywhere at mom and dad's. She is a girl on the go. I don't think it will be long before she's walking. But she's surprised me before and she could again.

This is the cutest thing: Brian was holding her one day and she noticed her picture on the fridge and got very excited. I got some great shots of her pointing to her referral photo. The funny thing is that in one of the pictures she is sticking out her tongue JUST LIKE she is in the referral picture! I hope you can all see it because it is the CUTEST thing!!!