9 weeks/2 months old

Ava is 2 months old! Can you believe it? I can't!

I started work last week. Its still hard to leave her everyday. I know that she is well cared for by my parents and by Phil but its still hard to be away from her for so long. I have tons of pictures all over my office which helps but its still hard. I do feel very lucky to be able to have my parents and Phil look after Ava. I know they love her and that she is well cared for. I couldn't ask for better people to be around our daughter.

This week Ava had her two month check up. She is 9lbs 2oz and 21.5 inches long. She is in the 20th percentile for height and she is in the eight percentile for weight and head. The doctor said she is doing well. I guess she does have some colic which explains why she screams part of the day. I'm going to look into changing my diet so maybe that will eliminate some of her gas issues.

She is doing amazing! She can hold her head up pretty well. She attempts to sit up or at least pull herself up by grabbing my fingers. She is a very strong little girl. She has pretty much mastered her arm movement. She has found her fingers and sucks on them a lot. She has now taken an interest in her legs as a whole. She loves her toes but she is amazed when her entire leg moves. She kicks a lot. And she loves to blow spit bubbles. She is totally amazing. We love her so much.

8 weeks and back to work

Ava is now 8 weeks old! I can't believe how quickly the time goes. I can see that she is growing. This week Ava weighed in at 9lbs (after feeding). She's getting to be such a big girl. This week she has made some major changes.

She loves to sit up, with assistance of course.

She can't stand to lay down.

She can hold her head up pretty well.

She looks around at things.

She loves her feet. She looks at them like she wants to eat them!

She can roll from side to side and she loves to sleep on her side.

Her hands have more control. She doesn't smack herself in her face quite as much as before.

She found her fingers. Amazingly she will use her fingers to tell us if she's hungry.

She cries if she pee's and has a wet diaper.

She will now cry if one of her socks comes off, like it did on my mom's walk this morning and she was able to find it on the ground not too far away from where she was.

Ava loves her big girl stroller.

She loves being bounced around. Bumps while in the stroller are her best friend.

She hates to sleep but needs it.

She smiles and her eyes light up and her entire face just shines. Its so amazing. Looking at her face when she smiles she expresses pure joy.

Last weekend we had our first trip to Virginia City. We also took some family pictures on Sunday. Monday we started our adventure of leaving Ava at Grandma's house. I did ok. I think I have more of a problem with it than Ava does. She loves everyone. I will miss her a lot when I'm away at work. Tuesday Ava and I went to our lactation class. Then at night we had our friends over for dinner. Today (Wednesday) I dropped Ava off at Grandma's house and I was gone from 8:30 until 3:30. That was the longest I've ever been away from Ava. It was hard but I was so busy it sort of made it easy. If I had been sitting around I would have had more time to think and I would have been really upset.

Tomorrow is my first day back at work. I'm really nervous about it. I know that Ava will be loved and cared for. I just wish I could be there every day with her. She is such a special girl. She is so smart. I'll write over the weekend.

7 weeks

Its amazing at how fast the time goes! It seems like just yesterday I was 9 months pregnant begging Ava to come out and now I'm 7 days away from returning to work.

Ava is getting so big! Every week we go to a lactation class. I get to weigh baby Ava and hang out with other mom's who breastfeed. Its really fun. This week Billie and Juno got to go with us! Ava is 7 weeks and Juno was 6 days old. It was so much fun to hang out and go to class together.

Ava was a whopping 8lbs 8.1oz. She only gained 3oz from last week, which made me a little nervous but this week I could see a change in Ava. Her face is full, she is so much longer than she was. She has outgrown almost all of her newborn clothes only because she is too long. She is still very narrow and thin, but she is so long now, its amazing that she's grown so much. comparing her to Juno Ava must be around 22 or 23 inches long now.

After class Billie, Juno, Ava and I hung out. It was so much fun to hang out with Billie and Juno. I'm so excited we have a niece and that the cousins will be so close in age and living close together! We had lunch then we went to see my parents who wanted to see and meet Juno then we went to my house and Steve and Luka stopped by to see Phil. We all hung out for a while then we went to Pizza Hut. It was interesting, it was fun until Ava decided she had enough. Phil was awesome and walked around the entire restaurant with Ava to try and calm her down. She was hungry so that didn't work so well. I tried to feed her but I was so uptight that it was hard to feed her. Lucky for us she did wait until we got through most of our meal before she pulled her stunt.

Yesterday was a super busy day. I got up late, showered and dressed then got Ava dressed. We left the house thinking that we were going walking but we didn't. So we went to visit Phil we only stayed a short time. Then we went to my mom's house and I did some dusting for her and she got to hold Ava. Ava was hungry so I fed her. Then I went home and hung out with Phil while he printed shirts. Phil went on a dirt bike ride with his friend Kyle and another guy. I ran some packages to FedEx for Phil then I went to Charter to cancel our cable but since the lady got our bill down quite a bit I decided that we could keep cable, especially having a baby and we stay home a lot more (and I'm up feeding Ava most of the night so it kind of nice watching TV). Then I went to Target. I got lucky, Ava slept almost the entire time. She woke up as we were going to the check out line. For some reason it seems like she doesn't like Target, or maybe she just gets hungry every time we go to target. So we went to my parents house. I was hoping to go and get my tires rotated. My dad was going to follow me down to Costco but Ava ate for almost an hour and it was getting late so I went home. It was a very busy day.

I enjoy spending my time with Ava. She's so amazing. She smiles now. She's really a happy baby. She eats a lot, and she's not very happy when she has a wet diaper but it seems that she doesn't cry unless somethings wrong. If she cries, she's hungry, wet or really tired.

I can't believe I only have 7 more days until I go back to work. I enjoy my time with Ava so much. Its going to be very hard to leave her.

Although I did go and visit at work on Tuesday. It went well. I was so impressed that not too many people touched her. I was so happy about that! Everyone kept telling me that she looks exactly like me. I think they thought she was cute (I don't think I'm that cute so I couldn't tell if that was a compliment or not that Ava looks like me). But it was really good that I went to work. On Saturday Monica and I attempted to go to the Balloon Races. Since we couldn't find parking and we missed the one thing we both really wanted to see, we went to breakfast. We talked for almost 3 hours! It really helped being around Monica because we talked a lot about work. On Saturday night I had a dream about work. I had a dream that I went to visit, and Sally had just come back (Sally is my boss, and she's been in the hospital on and off since I've been on Maternity leave) and I left Ava with Sally and Aleanor (our departments assistant) and I went somewhere on campus because there was a fight or riot or something. And I felt really involved and totally comfortable going back to work and getting involved right away. Having that dream made me feel a little better about returning to work. So I decided to visit on Tuesday and I turned in my doctors note saying I could return to work next Thursday. We didn't see too many people but it was nice. I spent some time visiting with Sally, Aleanor and Sam.

Ava is three days in to her 7th week and we've done so much already. I'm looking forward to what the rest of the week has to offer. And I'm looking forward to spending time with baby Ava!

Pictures!

Here are some more pictures from the past several weeks.

Events

Every year in Reno/Sparks there are lots of events that happen.

This year Ava went to her first Rib Cook Off (my first time too)!

We went twice. It was really fun! Since I am still on maternity leave my parents and I were able to go to the rib cook off the first day just hours after it opened so there weren't too many people there yet. It was awesome! The ribs were great! It was really fun. The second time we went on Saturday night. It was crowded. We couldn't even move some of the time. There were lines for ribs, people standing around eating, or talking. We had to park over 6 blocks away from the event. It was really interesting.

The second event we went to was the Reno Balloon Races. We got up at 5am. Instead of parking and walking about 2 miles to set up camp at the park to watch the balloons I thought it would be a much better idea if we just parked the car on the side of the road and watched from there. It would be hard to push the stroller, carry lawn chairs, blankets and everything for baby and bundling stuff for us as well. The car worked out well. We didn't have to carry anything. I got to feed the baby in the car. We didn't have to walk. And we got an awesome view of the balloons!

I'm looking forward to the other events that Ava gets to attend this year.

6 weeks

Lots of things have happened, I don't know where to begin!

Ava is getting so big now!

She can hold her head up pretty well.

She has outgrown some of her newborn clothes.

She is over 8lbs 5oz.

She is getting longer.

She can sort of hold her self up if she is on her stomach.

She has better control of her movements.

She looks at her hands and feet more often and watches as they pass by her line of vision then has a look of wonder as if she wonders if she will see them again or where they are coming from.

She smiles and coo's and I have even heard her laugh once or twice.

Ava is an amazing little girl. She warms my heart with her smile, her coo's and she breaks my heart when she cries.

This week we welcomed a niece! Her name is Juno Wozniak born to Billie and Steve Wozniak and her big brother Luka.

Ava, as sweet and wonderful as she is, has had a hard time this week. I'm not sure if its lack of sleep but she cries and cries and cries. It makes me sad when she does this and it breaks my heart that I can't figure out whats wrong with her. She had trouble sleeping through the night but for the past several nights she has been back to her sleep schedule of falling asleep then waking up between 12 and 2 and then again at 5:30 and then at 7am.

Ava is amazing! We love her to bits!