Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Evolution of Avery (in monthly pics)

A few people have asked if I ever looked at Avery's monthly photos side by side to compare them, and I really haven't...it's kind of hard to do! So I decided to do a post like that to see how much the little munchkin changed this past year.

I'll say that I didn't pick the best photo from each month or my favorite from each month. I chose a picture from each shoot that I could see the sticker and the giraffe was in the photo as well.

So...here's the evolution of Miss Avery:

(seriously Gabe and I were laughing so hard we were in tears over this photo-it looks NOTHING like Avery! Looks more like something from Lord of the Rings!)























Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Twelve Months Old!

So you all know by now that Avery is 12months old!

She is doing really well eating! New foods for the past month include watermelon, raviolis, toast with jelly, pineapple, cucumber, cherries, and roast beef. I have to say that she loves her fruits and veggies! We've tried giving her some more of her birthday cake and she'll take 1-2 bites and then could care less. But bring out a bowl of peaches or pears or peas and the girl is in hog heaven! It's so funny!

She is still nursing twice a day as of now-first thing in the morning and at bedtime. She did very well dropping her sessions at her naptimes and is now drinking breastmilk from her sippy cup at lunch and dinner. I'm sure we'll get the OK to start whole milk at her doctor's appt next week, but we still have quite a stash of frozen breastmilk that we'll use up first and through the transition.

She's sleeping great at night-anywhere from 10-12 hours without waking up. She might wake up and fuss a minute but goes right back to sleep which is great! She's still napping twice a day, but that's been not so great lately. I have a feeling she's getting ready to drop a nap. Sometimes she does 2 naps fine. Some days she does 1 good nap and 1 very short nap (or no nap at all!). I've tried putting her down for only 1 nap a few times, but she doesn't seem to sleep very long. I must not be timing it right or something. We'll see what happens with that!

She's up to 6 teeth now-4 on top and 2 on the bottom! She's trying to imitate us a lot now-she tries saying "b" sounds (bird, balloon, ball), she says "ni ni" for "nite nite", she knows "ma ma" and "da da" now! She's still standing a lot but hasn't really tried walking yet. We got her a push toy for her birthday and she'll walk behind it, but that's about it.

Alright, on to the official pics! She was very uncooperative this time so I didn't get many good ones.

Gotta love the first one-trying to climb off the chair! Hangin' out:
Again ready to dive off the chair:
Showing off her block, balloon and giraffe:
Finding the sticker:



And my faves of the shoot:






So this is the end of our fun monthly stickers-boo!! I think I'll keep taking pictures of her every month though for now at least!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Happy 1st Birthday Avery!

Happy Birthday to my little sweetheart! I can't believe a year has gone by already.

Today has been a little bitter-sweet. It was a happy day as any birthday is, but I had my moments of getting choked up and teary eyed that my little baby is now a year old. I spent a lot of time reminiscing about her birth and the days leading up to it. It seems like so long ago, yet it also feels like it was just yesterday that I welcomed my baby into this world. It's hard to imagine life without her now!

We didn't do too much today. We took out some of Avery's new toys from her party and let her play and explore those. At lunch, she ate a banana like a big girl: And is drinking her milk (breastmilk still) like a champ at meals now! Yay!
My little birthday girl:
We had another 1st birthday party to go to today and we got there really late because Avery took forever to fall asleep for her nap in the afternoon. By the time we got to the party, they had already eaten and done cake so all we saw was the gift opening. And after that, everyone left so we were only there maybe an hour or so. Since we missed out on the food, we headed to DiBella's for subs since it's close and quick. We had a fun moment dancing to the music in there-all 3 of us were bouncing to the music-it was fun and we were laughing and that's what life is all about! By the time we got home, it was bath time and bedtime for Avery! And now her special day is coming to a close. I'm sure it'll be a blink of an eye and we'll be celebrating her next birthday...(I don't even want to think about it!)

Happy Birthday Avery! I love you pumpkin!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

1st Birthday Bash

First off, I'm going to apologize in advance that the next few posts are all about Avery! I have a few in mind that I want to do and it's all about my baby girl having her first birthday. So, I'm sorry if I bore you the next few days!

So today was the party of the year-Miss Avery's birthday bash! We have been excited about this and planning this for a long time! Let's just say that we had to book the party hall way back in like Jan/Feb...yeah...insane! And I found out about that from attending another birthday party. I decided back then to look into places for Avery's birthday weekend and to my shock, every place was booked except for this one....yes, 5 months ago! It's like planning a wedding people! The bad thing? This party hall is in a town that we don't live in and to book that far ahead, you have to be a resident there. The good news? Gabe's coworker lives in that town and offered to book it for us! Disaster averted!

So....here's the party hall (it holds 100 people and is at a local park): Off of the back of the hall is a deck which faces a huge pond. It's really very pretty!

A few of our party guests were out looking at the ducks in the pond. Unfortunately the weather wasn't that great so not many people were outside for a long time. In a way it was good because the place had no air conditioning so we would have been really toasty if it had been hot and sunny out.
We sort of did an ocean theme for the party. Her invitations were on ocean paper, the paper products were all caribbean blue and pink, we had fish decorations and the kids' favors were ocean themed as well. The younger kids got sand buckets filled with bubbles, a water filled glittery bouncy ball, a cereal bar, and goldfish crackers. The older kids got a bag filled with glow necklaces, slinkies, mind teaser games, goldfish crackers, and swedish fish. Then of course was the cake table all decked out in a fish theme:
This was Avery's personal smash cake of a seahorse:

And this is her aquarium cake which was modeled after a Fisher Price toy that she has and loves. I loved the way it turned out!

I tried getting a good picture of her in her "Birthday Girl" bib, but didn't get a great shot:


Here she was trying to give her cousin Owen a kiss:

Family photo (and the only one I got of her in her dress-I'm a little upset about that!)
Thanks to my Mom, Aunt and Gabe's parents, we had a wonderful meal! We had roast beef on weck, pulled pork, green salad, tons of fruit, texas caviar, and baked pasta. It was all so yummy! After dinner, it was cake time! When we sang, I think Avery totally knew it was for her-she got this big grin on her face and ate it all up!



We had to get a shot with the hat on too!
At the end when we all clapped, she clapped right along with us! Too cute!
I brought out her little cake and the first thing she did was try to grab it. She didn't like the way the frosting felt, so she held her hand out to Gabe. He put some frosting in her mouth:

and as soon as she got a taste, she went to town:




like the smear on her chest?
She was having a hard time getting the actual cake, so Gabe started spoon feeding her some:



At the end, he held the cake up to her and she took a big bite of the frosting:
I'm mad this came out blurry...when she finished, he offered her milk and while drinking she did "soooooo big"....it was so funny!

And the aftermath of the cake...the chair was a mess (sorry it's sideways!)


Then it was time for gifts:

PJs:

She started getting really silly during gifts-flopping all over the place and acting funny. I think she was way overtired by that point and was just goofy!

She got a lot of nice gifts from everyone-clothes, books, toys, etc. I think she really enjoyed herself and I know we had a good time. We had a lot of people drive in from Buffalo to celebrate with us which was so nice! I just wish I could have had more time to talk to everyone-I felt like I was all over the place the whole time. It was a really nice party though! I'm sad that it's over already!