Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Ladies who lunch

Here for a picture of Ava and her little friend Lilah enjoying mexican food at Oaxaca in Clayton (perhaps the ONLY restaurant open on a Sunday!).

Going to the d-o-g-s

This was overheard at our house this morning:

Dale: I kinda want to take the b-a-b-y on a w-a-l-k around the l-a-k-e but I'm afraid that if I do, the d-o-g will p-o-o-p on my bed.

Joe: I'd be afraid to take the b-a-b-y given the look on the d-o-g-s face right now.

In the end, Joe stayed home with the b-a-b-y and I took the d-o-g on a w-a-l-k.

Sheesh. Ava isn't even speaking yet and already we're spelling things out loud!

On a side Ava note, "words" we've heard to date:

- dadadada
- nananana
- ba ba ba (each sound said one at a time instead of in a string)

and finally...

- mamamama

Of course, we realize that she doesn't know what she's saying, but it's nice anyway!

Saturday, August 23, 2008

From the past two weeks

Going for a walk on her 8 month birthday (or perhaps it was the day after)

All she needs now is a tin cup and she'll be a perfect little jail bird.

After a week of having a cold, she's finally (mostly) back to her normal happy self.

My little spitter. She covered her face (and the camera lens) with spit (a sure sign that she's feeling better)! This is also her first real game, first played with her Grandma. First she spits, then you spit, then she spits... soon you're in a spitting contest!

Friday, August 22, 2008

How to nap a baby?

So, you've heard the phrase "how to skin a cat?"

Well, I worked on my own version today.

Q: How to nap a baby?

A: Nap with the baby.

That's what worked for us today. After several attempts to lay Ava in her crib after she had fallen asleep on me, I gave up and called in the big guns: a blanket and the 'mama swaddle.' During all attempts to extend her 40 minute nap, Ava fell asleep, leaving me to rightfully assume that the little one was sleepy. So I swaddled her to me, leaving her little room to fidget and poof*! out like a light! I sat with her for probably half an hour before I finally made the seamless transfer from chair to crib. still sleeping. She definitely needed to nap.

And why? Perhaps because she was working hard on her new trick: sitting up on her own from the laying down position!

During one of the attempts to calm her down, I opened her bedroom door to see her sitting up, knowing full well that I know did not leave her in that position when I left the room two minutes earlier!

More mad skills. And more work for us. I guess the bed needs to be lowered and the bumper removed (although that may stay in until she can stand as I came in a few weeks ago during a bumper-free day to find a little leg poking through the crib slats and a little unhappy baby).

Friday, August 15, 2008

Monday, August 11, 2008

New favorites

Two favorites of late, one baby-related, another for your tummy!

Kind bars: These are the yummiest granola (?) bars I've ever had. Found them at Whole Foods but I'm sure you can find them other places. All natural, chewy and sweet.




Just peachy baby: I love my new shopping cart cover. Found it through a google ad - don't always dismiss those little ads at the top of your inbox - sometimes they offer the best sites! We'd bought one at Target and was not impressed with it. I found this one online and ordered it and just love it! Ava was able to sit in it while shopping the other day and eat out in the baby high chair at a restaurant - both without much leaning and no falling over.

Day of mourning

The beloved iMac is now officially dead. No word yet on when I'll inherit Joe's laptop, so for now emails and updates might be sporadic (I have to steal moments on Joe's pc - yuk! - when he's able to break away from his computer for a moment).

8 months old

And we enter month nine finally sleeping normally again, eating like a champ and just being a little squirmy monkey.

Ava has discovered all kinds of new talents and skills in the past week or so. Here are the highlights:

* 3 full ounces in the sippy cup - all by herself!

* she is learning the pincer-grasp - mostly she passes the food puffs from hand-to-hand and tries to get it in her mouth; often she succeeds, other times Indi gets a treat!

* she is mostly sitting up on her own (and only wobbles over about once a day)

* she is army crawling all over the place when she is not roly-polying all over the place

* she has separation anxiety pretty badly when it comes to me; she wants me, then she wants to squirm away from me, then I hand her off or lay her on the floor . . . and she wants me. Vicious cycle.

* she has discovered the joys of clapping (and I have discovered the need to be fast and quick and stealthy while trying to feed spinach to a clapping baby - in and through the hands before the hands send spinach flying)

* she doesn't like her feet to touch grass. I put her feet on grass and they act like two negative ions - the feet touch the grass and immediately repel up into the butt. Quite funny to watch, as it's almost done in slow motion, much like those sensitivity plants that curl up when you touch them.

* she'll play with her books (much like reading) for a little while before eating them (before she skipped all play in favor of just eating!)

* she likes lentils and spinach, two of our purchases from our less-than-pleasurable trip to Whole Foods this weekend

* she continues to be sweet and cute and funny and silly and smart and all of the things that mommies say their babies are best at!

Me and Grandma


Just chilling with Mom and Grandma


I love playing with paper - it crinkles.


Reading with Daddy. He makes me laugh.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

The favorite toy

Must.Get.Every.Last.Drop.

(practicing her big girl cup skills)


Sporting the goofy hair (this is the newest style: "slept in Mama's bed"-head (and three attempts to tame it were unsuccessful!). I'm not convinced her hair is not slowly thinning out and crazy hair will be gone forever. I still can't figure out what kind of hair she'll have; curly like mine (as is evident where new hair has grown in on the back) or straight like Joe's (as the rest of her hair shows). Jury is still out.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

One of the lost pictures

This one was from the group lost to the fatal crash of my iMac. LUCKILY, however I posted it to blogger made it possible for me to retain a large file! I loved this picture and was very sad to think it was lost. Now it's not - and I managed to sneak a few moments to touch it up (something I had not been able to do lately as Photoshop had died a week or so ago - the first sign of imminent doom, perhaps?).

Save the iMac, save the world!

Joe is on his way to Best Buy to find a cable that he needs to (hopefully) fix my computer. We will keep you posted (really, no pun intended!).

And the title? We've run out of "Weeds" on Netflix and so have moved on to "Heroes" - save the cheerleader, save the world! We love it!

Update: So far it's not looking good. Joe gives me about a 50% chance of getting all my data - including photos and other documents. Luckily we backed things up a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure yet how many pictures we may have already lost.

Final update: The iMac as we knew it is no longer. Joe is now wiping the hard drive clean. He said, "The hard drive is toast." That can't be good. All is not lost, however, literally and figuratively. We backed things up mid-July so the only photos lost are on this page from yesterday down to the blueberry picture, and many of these were formatted in such a way so that I can work some magic in Photoshop and have print-worthy quality! Not sure I'm so enamored with Apple anymore. Sucks when your computer crashes.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

The littlest chef

A stainless steel mixing bowl and a bamboo spoon provide hours (er...large chunks of minutes) of baby entertainment. (Note careful product placement in the section picture; perhaps I'll get free stuff!?)





*More pictures to follow one day - my Mac is dying a slow, painful death. First Photoshop bit the dust, then Illustrator. Next on the chopping block was iTunes (no rocking out to Amadeus by Falco that I had just purchased - I was having a flashback moment, ok?). And today, while choosing which pictures to save from today's photo session, iPhoto decided it wanted to join its friends somewhere in Mac-limbo.

Joe has tried valiantly to save it this evening but as of now, the fate of my computer is in the hands of Apple Care. Mmmm.. This may require a trip to Crabtree Valley Mall to the Apple store. PF Changs anyone? Yum!

Wait. I'm still forlorn. My computer . . . *sniffle*