36 weeks

I went in to check on Ava the other night because I couldn't see her in the monitor and this is what I found. I was surprised because she almost always sleeps on her tummy with her hiney up in the air. It was so cute I had to take a picture.

This week we went to go see the Easter Bunny at the Galleria. We made it a family affair and even dressed Ava in her little easter bunny outfit from GiGi. Of course when I put the hat on her she got really aggravated and ripped it right off. Then WE got really aggravated at the galleria when we waited for 2 hours for the darn Easter Bunny to get back from his break. Ava started to get grumpy and had had enough of her stroller so we finally decided it was time to go and left. I was so bummed that doodle wasn't able to get her very first Easter Bunny pictures :(

Doodle is really starting to show her personality and some of that is her little temper. She absolutely hates when mommy puts things on her head. She immediately rips it off and screams. She also thinks it's really funny to smack me in the face or grab my face really hard <--totally got that from my side of the family. Speaking of my side..We've noticed a couple of other traits she most likely picked up from my side. She stands on her tip toes all of the time (just like her mommy did and still does from time to time) AND she pre-dominantly uses her left hand (like Auntie Court, Nana, Grandaddy Mungovan, and Great Grandaddy Mungovan). We are pretty positive she may be a lefty. Other than those two things she is still a little Steve. In fact last week we were out at a restaurant with friends and Steve was holding Ava. A lady walked up to him and said "that baby is definitely not adopted!" haha!

Baby Ethan Update

Little Ethan had his surgery last Tuesday. The surgery went well and the first night he didn't sleep very well because he was very aggravated with the breathing tube. The next day when they took out the tube he actually got a little sleep. Kristi and Michael said that he was still aggravated though because he was strapped to so many wires and couldn't roll over on his belly to sleep. Of course the pain of his recovery didn't help. The good news is that he did so well they sent him home earlier than expected on Saturday! Mom and dad said he is doing great, but that he is still in a lot of pain so they are having to keep him on pain killers. So he is 2/3 of the way there! Only one more surgery when he is 3 years old and then he should be done. What a little trooper. We all can't wait until he is feeling better and come play with his little cousins!

35 Weeks

Ava has figured out peek a boo and absolutely loves to play. We usually play peek a boo after her breakfast or lunch when I take her bib off. She pulls it up over her face and then drops it back down to hear me say peek a boo and then she giggles and repeats the process. The funniest is when she pulls the bib so high that I can still see her face through the neck opening. She still wants me to say peek a boo though even though I can still see her. She gets so excited when we play that.

On weekend mornings she is just so precious. When she wakes up around 6am I usually bring her to bed with us and she'll go back to sleep for another hour or so. As soon as she wakes up she rolls over with a big grin on her face and starts patting Steve on the back and talking to him. If he doesn't respond she crawls on top of his back and starts pulling his ears and hair until he rolls over and pays attention to her. Then when he rolls over she grins really big and squeals. What a sweet sight to wake up to in the morning!

The pets are doing so much better with Ava. Magnum is like her little buddy. She lays on him and he always lays near her while she plays. When she starts tugging on him and annoying him, he's learned to just turn around and lick her and she'll stop. Biscuit just runs from her and hides (unless she has food) and Casper lets her do whatever she wants to as long as she stays around his head. Today Steve found her with Casper pinned to the ground. She had one hand on the back of his neck supporting her weight while smashing his face into the floor and tugging his ear with the other hand. Steve got to her and she had tufts of cat fur in both hands. Casper just got up and walked away..never made a sound, what as sport.

In other news...Baby Ethan is having his 2nd heart surgery Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. The procedure is called the Glenn Procedure and they are expecting him to be out of the hospital in a week or so. Please keep him in your prayers this week.

Our camera ran out of batteries this week so I'll just post a short clip of Ava enjoying her new swing outside.
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8 months- Weeks 33 & 34

Now that the sun is still out when we get home from work and the weather has been nice, we have been taking Ava and the dogs on daily walks. Right across from our house there are always clusters of blue bonnets so we attempted to take a few pictures. It was at the end of our walk so we didn't get any really good shots, but doodle had fun playing in them. She wanted to taste all of them too.
Last week grandmother went on vacation so Steve and I split the week up with vacation days to be home with the doodle. This was Steve's first time keeping doodle all day and he's such a pro! He was very proud of himself and even commented on how easy it was to take care of her. He got her down for her naps, fed her (yep he actually remembered to feed her), and took her on daddy errands with him. He took her to the honda dealership to get his 4 wheeler fixed and he said he had her up on his shoulders walking around and that he felt like mister dad. At one point he was talking to the guy at the desk and looked down to find that Ava had ingested half of the guys business card. oops! I had her the 2nd half of the week and loved being back home with her. We slept in each day and on Friday we went out to my cousin Christine's to see her new house. Ava had fun playing with Brenna and Brenna's toys. Speaking of toys her favorite ones are my blackberry, the remote control and Steve's Astros hat.

I found out that it's not really squash that she hates, just when I make the squash. I guess it's a texture thing. She'll eat it if gerber makes it, but not mommy. I made her some canteloupe and fed her small spoonful, she immediately gagged and vomited. So she's not a canteloupe fan. strange since it's a fruit, but okay.

Standing on my tip toes like mommy

Doodle is baby babbling up a storm. Sometimes it's like she's actually having a conversation with you, only you can't understand what she's saying. We just respond to her and keep her going. It's so cute! Grandmother got the best video of her on Monday, just talking up a storm while eating her puffs. I love it so much that I watch it every night after I put her to bed. tee hee. Maybe I'll post it later, but it's kind of a big file so I may not be able to get it on here.

Gotta represent my daddy the bowhunter

We got our cloth diapers in and have decided to try them for a while and see what we think. I'll be back in a few weeks with a review. My mommy friends swear by them, so I figured why not give em a try. Can't hurt to save a few bucks along the way, plus they are pretty cute in all of their fun colors.

Remembering Memaw

Baby Babble with Ava

32 Weeks

First we have great news! We got the pathology report back from MD Anderson on Friday. Kristi sent it to us as soon as she got it and there was no more tumor detected so Steve is free and clear! We were expecting that news but still a tad worried we might get a surprise. It was so good to hear. You hear about Melanoma all the time but never realized how serious it was until Steve got it and we started doing our research. Then last Thursday on Grey's Anatomy one of the main characters Izzy was diagnosed with a Malignant Melanoma that had already spread to her liver and brain. Just a TV show but that really got us thanking God for catching this so early and thanking Kristi for getting us in so quick at her office!

In doodle news....the bugger is moving and moving. Now that she can crawl she wants to crawl at all times now. She still loves her walker and it's like the indy 500 in here every day, but she loves to crawl and explore. Of course she's really drawn to electrical cords. We unplug everything when she's on the floor and can get to it. I told Steve maybe she's going to be an electrician when she grows up. He said if that's the case then she may also be a pole dancer because she's always pulling up on the floor lamp and then swiveling around it until she's back on her bottom on the floor. NOT FUNNY!

Thursday we went over to Courtney's to visit her and cousin Trent. Ava apparently didn't learn her lesson with Kate and went right up to Trent and smacked him in the face a few times. Then she reached up and grabbed a chunk of his hair. He was a tough boy though and didn't make a peep. Courtney said "well I'm glad Kelley's raising the neighborhood bully!" LOL. Then Nana came over and Courtney and Nana were surprised at how quickly Ava has started crawling and standing. Courtney checked her chart and said that standing usually doesn't happen until around 9 months. When Nana saw Ava's two bottom teeth she said "I can't believe she already has teeth!" and Courtney said "Yeah next time we see Ava she's going to wearing a training bra already geez!" I told Steve and we got a chuckle. She better slow down this growing so fast thing because mommy can't handle it!!

Things Ava loves at 32 weeks:

• electrical cords
• practicing talking
• grabbing a chunk of the dog's skin and squeezing it as hard as she can while pulling
• daddy's baseball caps
• chewing up her crib railing so it now looks like a little beaver sleeps in there
• chewing up her cardboard books like a puppy dog
• Gerber Puffs!!
• pulling up on anything and everything to stand
• running over the dogs with her walker
• chasing casper through the house in her walker while waving her arms in the air and screeching at the top of her lungs
• giving mommy a kiss on the cheek (really an open mouthed suck on the cheek)
• MUSIC....loves any kind of music.
• slapping other babies in the face
• her sippy cup
• the remote control
• her vitamin drops
• peeing on the floor when daddy changes her diaper
• taking the zip lock bags out of the pantry and carrying them around on her walker tray
• pulling all of her books off of the shelf and "displaying" them all over the floor

Things Ava doesn't like at 32 weeks:

• squash
• diaper changes
• getting dressed
• being restrained in her car seat
• when mommy or daddy leaves the room
• when mommy tries to get boogers out of her nose

Giving cousin Trent CPR after I slapped him around pretty good

Ballet Dancer maybe?

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?