Happy 1st Halloween Avery!

Happy Halloween!

This morning I got up and went to the gym. We were going to go to the public market after, but the weather was pretty miserable so we decided against it. Avery has another cold so we didn't want to take her out in the cold and rain for it. So we stayed in! I haven't worn our baby bjorn in awhile and thought I'd put her in it to see if she'd like it now that she is able to face forward in it.

She did ok in it for a little bit-then wanted out!
My Mom came out today as well-she arrived around 3 or so and we had Avery decked out in Halloween gear my Mom bought her. I love the look on her face here:

Here she is in her Halloween attire:

Gabe and I carved pumpkins last night-for years now I've been doing them with stencils instead of doing just a face. I did a gravestone for mine and Gabe picked out a witch. This is them lit up, but you can't see them that well:

Here's one I took with the flash so they don't look lit up:

In the evening we got Avery dressed in her costume to take her around to the neighbors. She was a good sport even though she barely napped all day and wasn't feeling well.
Mommy and Avery:

Full body shot of the costume:

Close up:

Family photo:

When we went to Buffalo last weekend, I took some pics of Avery and Noah in their costumes. Now that it's Halloween, I can share them!
Here's Noah in his monkey costume (too darn cute!):

Avery and Noah:



Overall we had a nice Halloween-a pretty decent amount of trick-or-treaters for our neighborhood. I wish Avery had felt better and napped so she wasn't as cranky as she was, but we made the best of it! Happy Halloween!!

Exersaucer

When Gabe's coworkers threw us our baby shower, one of the gifts they got us was an exersaucer. It says for ages 4 months and up so we decided to bring it out the other day. Gabe spent some time assembling it and today we gave it a try. We had to surround Avery in blankets to support her since she can't sit up yet. She wasn't overly thrilled with it-in fact one of the toys was a little loud and she started crying from it! She spun herself around a little bit, but I think it was a little overwhelming to her at the same time. She stayed in it maybe 5 minutes or so and she had enough. We'll keep trying it and I'm sure it'll grow on her. We did have a chance to get a few pics though:

Shot Day x 2

Today was shot day.

My turn was first...when I went to the doctors last week, they wouldn't give me the flu shot since I was sick. So today I went back and got my flu shot. I swear it was the first shot I didn't feel-it was so fast and didn't hurt at all!

Then it was Avery's turn. Today was her 4 month well visit at the doctors. She weighed in at 13 pounds, 0.5 ounces and falls into the 40th percentile for weight. She is currently 25" long which is in the 75th percentile. The doctor was happy with her progress! She looks nice and healthy and is hitting her milestones as she should be. She had to get 3 vaccines today-1 oral one and 2 in the leg. She was a pro! The nurse gave her the tylenol and oral one first which is a piece of cake. She did the 2 in the leg and Avery let out 2 small cries and then was all happy and smiley! She acted like nothing happened! Gabe and I were so proud of her! When she had her shots last time, all she did was cry and sleep so I'm hoping today goes better. She fell asleep after her appointment (it was waaaay past nap time) and is still sleeping now, 2hours later. So we'll see what kind of mood she is in when she wakes up.

Four Months Old!

My baby girl is four months old today! Where is the time going?! I went to the gym tonight so Gabe did the honors of the monthly photos-and they turned out so cute! I could just bite that little face!

Sleepless Nights....

(Yawn!)

I'm tired....very, very tired.

You see, we got spoiled...very spoiled.

When Avery was 2 months old, she slept through the night. She did this for about a month straight.

A few days before I returned to work, she started waking up once a night to eat again. Let's just say that that hasn't stopped since then. In fact, it's gotten worse!

Now she's up 1-2 times a night to eat. Occasionally even more than that. But that hasn't been the worst part.

The worst part has been that it has been taking us sometimes up to 2 hours to get her to sleep at night. We do our usual routine starting at 8pm. By 9 she should be in bed sound asleep. Some nights we luck out and pray she stays that way. Other nights we're not so lucky. Those are the nights that as soon as she hits the crib, she screams...and screams....and screams.

We have tried everything-crib toy, pacifier, rocking her, ssshing her, singing, you name it. Eventually the only thing that settles her is for me to nurse her again. And it starts all over and you hope she falls asleep when she hits the crib. So our 9pm bedtime turns into 11pm. Not fun when you have to be up at 6am and up to feed her 1-2 times on top of it!

The other odd thing she has been doing is she'll go to sleep then wake up a half hour later for no reason. Or last night she fell asleep and woke up every 10mins. Get her to sleep, up 10mins later...repeatedly for over an hour. I don't get it.

Let's just say that a week of this has gotten old....real old real fast. Both Gabe and I have probably gotten 5 hours of sleep each night in the past week. It makes going to work and functioning a real challenge.

She goes to her doctors on Wednesday for a checkup so I'm hoping he has some suggestions or insight for us! Mommy and Daddy need their sleep!

Playing at Grandma's

We went to Buffalo yesterday for a visit. We haven't been in awhile so we were due. Since it was nice out, Avery wore a new pretty dress-with shoes and all (although they didn't stay on very well at all):

Avery had fun playing with the play mat at my Mom's house:


Yesterday we just relaxed all day at her house and she got a lot of visiting time in. My Mom and Aunt made us dinner which was yummy of course! Then my Mom gave Avery a bath. She didn't like it very much so I didn't take any pics, but I got one of her wrapped up in the towel after:

Today we went with my Dad for Sunday brunch at the Red Mill Inn. I had never been there before but it was very good. After that, Megan and Noah stopped by so we could see them. I took some pics, but won't share them until Halloween. We dressed the kids in their costumes and got some pics, but Megan hasn't told some people what Noah is dressing up as yet, so I don't want to ruin the surprise. So I'll post them later-they're too cute not to share!

Avery also blew her first raspberry yesterday! It was so cute! Gabe hasn't heard her do it yet...she did it a few times while I changed her, but hasn't really done many more since then. I hope she does them some more-they're too cute!

Naps & New Noise

Avery is not the best at napping...at least for us at home. When she goes to my in-laws or to daycare, she easily takes naps that are 2-3 hours long. When I'm off? 45 minutes to an hour max. I don't know what it is, but that's what she does. I like to tell myself that she just wants to spend time with us so she won't sleep! So the other night I was feeding her and she passed out cold-I sat her up and she didn't budge:


I tried out some of her wrist rattles with her for the first time. I don't think she really "got" it yet. She liked looking at them, but didn't really understand that if she moved her hand, she was the one making the sound. I took them off after a little bit and just let her play with them-she liked that much more!


She also started making a new screeching noise this week-it's so darn cute! Have a listen!

And the Verdict is...

So Avery and I both woke up with colds 3 weeks ago now. She got over hers pretty quick-maybe 4 days or so. Here I am 3 weeks later still feeling like crap. Last week I felt really good and I thought it was getting better. Over the weekend I started getting worse and yesterday was probably the worst day yet (and I had been up since 430am!). I had sinus pressure, a headache, stuffed up nose, started coughing-just not fun. My one ear feels like I'm underwater-very filled up, etc. I started blowing green out of my nose constantly over the past 4 days (it was on and off before that). When I coughed yesterday it just tasted like infection-sorry that sounds really gross-but it did. So I called my doctor yesterday and made a sick appointment for today.

Got up and dragged Avery there with me bright and early. It ends up that I have a sinus infection and double ear infection. So I'm on amoxicillin and cough medicine-woo hoo! The woman I dealt with was a real b--ch too-I didn't like her one bit. But anyways, I'm drugged up now and hopefully I'll start to feel better. And I'm praying Avery doesn't pick it up!

Not Fair

Today at worked sucked....

We got word a few weeks ago that things were not looking good at work budget-wise. Numbers are down from where they were and they were thinking of some budget cuts. Our manager had a meeting coming up with her higher-ups so it was just a matter of time to see what was happening. Her meeting was 2 weeks ago and right away we found out one of the PT employees was going over to the hospital to work (she already worked there 2 days and then with us 2 days). So that was one employee down. We hadn't heard anything since then, so we assumed that was all.

Boy were we wrong and got a shocker today! Our manager approached each of us around 3pm and alerted us we were having a "pow-wow" after hours meeting today and that everyone was to attend. Our day ends at 430 and around 4, a human resources rep showed up-so that made us all uneasy. Around 415 the new girl at work (she was just hired 3 months ago) was in with the HR rep and came out in tears saying as of today she's done working with us. A few minutes later, another girl was in with the HR rep. While she was in there, our manager rounded us all up and met with us and told us those 2 employees were finished as of today! No previous notice to them...nothing. It sucks.

I feel bad for the new girl-she just got hired and went through all this training. She's young and fresh out of college and was so excited and happy to be with us-and she was great! I feel awful about it-she was so upset and in tears-she got fired from her first "real" job basically.

I feel even worse for the other girl. She's been there longer than me-probably 3-4 years. She's a single Mom with 2 kids-what the hell is she supposed to do?! She has a family to support! And now no income....they did say she was getting some sort of severance package, but I'm sure it's not much. It just sucks. She was one of my closest work friends too so I'm really going to miss her-she is such a great person inside and out. She was also my walking buddy during lunch.

So work is not going to be the same now....we're down 2 people (we only had 12 to start) so we'll all be covering each other's jobs like crazy-which probably means a lot more stress and a lot more illness due to stress. Not fun....not fun at all. And now I think we're all on edge-what if we're next? You just never know....

Pumpkin in a Pumpkin Patch

Today we went pumpkin hunting with our neighbors. We started out at Powers Farm Market. I've never been there, but boy was it busy! When you pull up, the first thing you see are these huge teepees:

There are 3 of them I think. We had to go inside of course! When you go inside it's pitch black. When you get to the inside of the largest one, the walls are lined with tons of carved pumpkins. I took this with my flash so you could see it:

Without flash:

It was pretty neat! They also had some animals there and hayrides (with a verrry long line). They had a store there too with all kinds of stuff, but again the lines were super long. We walked around but just ended up with our pumpkins. Here's Avery with the pumpkins:

And a non-zoomed in pic to show how many were really around her:

Family pumpkin patch photo:

After leaving there, we decided to go to Schutt's Cider Mill. We bought lots of apples (we went through all the ones we picked already!), some cider, and some doughnuts. We had our neighbors over for doughnuts and cider after and it was so yummy!! It was a good time and the perfect day for it!

Last night Gabe and I had date night. His parents watched Avery and we went to The Red Osier for dinner. If you like prime rib, this is the place to go for it! They carve it tableside (as well as making soup, caesar salad and some desserts tableside) and it's very good! We had plenty to eat and were stuffed when we left!

Nothing else for the rest of today-might go to Wegman's, get a pizza for dinner, and get ready for the work week to start tomorrow!

Mommy's Little Pumpkin

My Mom had been hunting for something Halloween-ish for Avery to wear. When she came out last week, she brought a few things....including this cute sweatshirt. I always call the baby "my little pumpkin" or "pumpkin pie" so it's perfect! There's a patch on the front that says "Mommy's little pumpkin".
Here she is wearing it for the first time with her new jeans:

With the hood up:

close up:

She's been starting to wear some of her 3-6 month clothes now-some 3 month stuff still fits, but we're starting to bring out the new wardrobe as well. This outfit Gabe's sister Molly gave us-our neice wore it when she was little:

And another new outfit we got at our open house when Avery was born: (love the face!):

Cute As A Button

That's what her outfit says! And of course I have to agree!



Here she is doing her "tummy time"-she's getting pretty good at holding her head up!

It's funny how changing her hair makes her look like a boy:

Gabe took these pics of her tonight while I was at the gym.
This is her latest "thing"...sucking on her lips and making this funny face:

Falling over:

Look at that puss!

Four Day Weekend

I have a four day weekend this week-I was asked to switch my Monday shift for next Friday so a four day weekend for me! Yesterday Avery and I didn't do much-we just took my car to get the oil changed and tires rotated. Then we all went to a local restaurant for dinner. Nothing too exciting.

Today I got up and went to the gym. Gabe and I took Avery for a walk since it was nice and sunny out. We haven't been on a walk in awhile so it was nice to get out and enjoy the weather....especially since we won't have too many of these days left before the "s" word. Not sure what we're doing tonight. Maybe go to the Carter's store and out to eat? We'll see.

Tomorrow we're going to the in-laws' for my Father-in-law's birthday party so that'll be nice. Other than that, not much else planned.


Here are a few pics of Avery from the week:


Wearing some pumpkin gear from Grandma (she struck this pose all by herself!):

Daddy and his two girls: