30 & 31 weeks- 7 months!

Now that I have less time to blog I've been losing track of how many weeks old Ava is. I actually had to break out the calendar today. I thought she was just now 30 weeks but turns out she's 32 weeks!

Steve now works 9/80's so he gets every other Friday off to spend at home with the doodle. He also gets off work a little earlier during the day so he gets a good 1.5-2 hours each day at home with her before I get home. Last Friday he had his first day with her (I get off at noon on Friday's so it wasn't too bad for him) and when I got home he said "man this is easy I could do this every day." He has really been enjoying his time with her.


Ava is growing so fast it's scary. In a matter of two weeks she learned to sit up on her own, scoot and then crawl! Then as soon as she was crawling she was sitting up on her knees in her crib, and a couple of days later she realized she could stand. I went in there to get her and saw two little eyes peering at me over the top of the crib. Thank goodness we dropped her mattress over a month ago! She is really getting around these days and so we have to keep a very close eye on her, she moves quick! We had another squash episode this week where I fed her a different kind of squash and she gagged and threw up. I don't understand how she can eat spinach but not squash? Oh well..I give up on squash for a while.





Ava had her first baby play date with her very first friend Kate. Kate was born 3 weeks after Ava and I posted a picture of the two of them back in August or September. Ava explores everything by slapping it with her hand and so when Rhonda set Kate down on the floor, Ava crawled over to her and started slapping her in the face and head. Kate tolerated it for a few minutes and then started whaling. Poor Kate didn't want anything to do with Ava for a little while after that! Eventually she was happy again and they played to their little hearts content. Ava was excited to play with all of the new toys that Kate brought over.





Last weekend Gigi came in town to visit Ava. She was amazed at how happy Ava was and loved how she lit up anytime she saw one of us come into the room. Ava warmed up to Gigi right away which was really nice. I have been showing her pictures of Gigi and Papi for a while now and we try to talk to them on skype when we can. Oh and for those of you who were skyping with, our laptop crashed which is why we haven't been online in a while. We'll need to add it to this computer to be able to chat again.
In other news...Steve was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma last week. Naturally we freaked out a little bit because of course the doctors gave us NO information. We are so fortunate in that my cousin's wife Kristi (Ethan's mommy) works for the MD Anderson clinic we were referred to. She had me send her the pathology report so that she could explain exactly what was going on. She was also able to get Steve right in and set him up to have the surgery in clinic under local anesthetic instead of having to go to the OR. So we went in on Friday and the doctor said that we caught it early and that it was a very thin melanoma. She was 99% sure that the surgery would be all Steve needed. If it had been any further along they would have taken a couple of lymph nodes. So they did the surgery right there and now Steve goes back twice a year for check ups. Now that he's had a melanoma he has a higher chance of getting another one so we'll need to watch him closely.


We took Ava with us to the appointment and she was an angel all day. She played, she cooed, smiled and then conked out for a nap later in the afternoon. She really liked riding on the little golf cart thing that totes you from building to building and charming the front desk clerks.

Last week we took her to the dog park and she LOVED it! She loves animals and would get so excited when another doggy would run by her. Afterwards we took her next door the kiddy park and put her in the toddler swing. It's a little big for her now but we let her sit in it and swing a little bit. Of course that made her very happy.




On the mommy front...I think I can now officially be a hippy mom. I ordered a sample package of cloth diapers and I'm pretty sure that I really like them! When I told Irene that I was going to switch to cloth she had the image of the old school cloth diapers with diaper pins. She joked "I quit!" LOL! If you had to change this little wiggle worms diaper every day you'd say the same thing! It takes everything short of a song and dance to keep her still long enough to get her diaper on! I've learned that I have to give her something to play with and it can't be a baby toy. It's got to be something new each time like a shoe, baby lotion, butt paste, etc. This will hold her attention just long enough to get the diaper back on her little bottom. The cloth diapers are a little bulkier but they are really cute, come in fun colors and I don't have to worry about running out of them! For those of you who are thinking of the old school diapers, here is what cloth diapers look like now:
Not so bad huh?