oh the fun that can be had just walking and talking in downtown lee's summit with a good friend and our kiddos. me & rowan's mom had a blast just chit-chattin away while the misters were away at play. here are some cute moments in time of aves & rowan hanging out:

why yes I will share my cheerios with you...

and rowan shared her teething snacks with ava. (christina warned me that they could be messy.) I severely underestimated the warning...

stunning photo of a little boy...

rowan and his mommy:

me and my sweet, my lovely:

the day has finally come, and I caught her in action, feeding herself. We were at work, I made her the bottle, I had stuff that I just HAD to get done so I put the bottle in front of her so she could reach it. I figured she' d play with it for a minute and then get sick of me not feeding it TO her that she'd bring it to me, or at least crawl to me and look sadly in the direction of her beloved bottle.
nope.
Not even 5 minutes had gone by and I turn around to find an empty bottle lying on the ground, a baby girl playing with her little farm toys, and quite possibly the best milk mustache I've ever laid eyes on.

gosh I love this girl.

fun times with the girl cousins were had today, Aves here with Jules & Carebear

and Ava here spending some quality t-i-m-e with Sam's brother, her uncle Nathan

along with raising children, job-sorting, and a vast variety of other things I hope to do with my husband in this lifetime, looking back to what we've done is also fun. we started dating in october of 2005. we went to hawaii with some family friends in december of '05 (see below). were engaged in april '06. married in august '06. that's only 10 months. I never thought about that until just now. wow.

when I say it like that, I can hardly believe that it all happened so fast. at the time it felt like everything took F-O-R-E-V-E-R because I couldn't wait for our wedding. at the same time, we had a little more history than just 'started dating in october'. we went back further, being classmates, to friends, to sweethearts, to enemies, to friends, to sweethearts again, and finally to soulmates. and that's our story in a nut-shell... and I love it.

ferber

I think it's safe to say that we have a little sleeper on our hands! Last night Ava slept all night in her room, waking up once around 2am (to which Sam went in, put her paci back in & she went right back to sleep). It's 8:30 and she's down for the evening. She might wake up once in the night, to which we will go in and comfort her, but really I don't mind that at all. We even bought ourselves an additional 2 hours this morning when she woke up around her usual time of 6:30am and I did the normal routine to see if she'd go for it and it worked!

this is so cool. knock on wood that it stays this way...
thanks ferber. you do actually know what you're talking about. way to go!

I sit here, an every day saturday evening, and I am so thankful. thankful for my life. for my healthy family. for my happy daughter. for our safe home. thankful for the hope and security of what awaits us after this life (ie: Jesus). for food in our bellies. for all the things we could ever want and need that are already here in our house. other than keeping food in the pantry, there's not much more we could want for. and yet we still waste money on such trivial things. I'm thankful for our jobs. 6 months ago our lives looked a lot different on the job front. sam wasn't happy where he was, and I wasn't sure if my current job was even an option due to the economy sucking and work being so slow. like many americans, that was (and very much is for some) a normal fear in this day and age. today it's a completely different picture for our family. sam enjoys what he does, and I, well I get to take my daughter with me to a job that I already loved. I couldn't ask for more. to get to see my child grow, learn, laugh, sleep, and the list goes on.

I was going thru some blogs that I've found inspiring in the past and I know God is at work in their lives, and they're not looking for sympathy, but my heart goes out to them. me and my nieve self with the 'ignorance is bliss' mentality. these families have so much on their plate, I can't imagine being in their shoes. yet these women do it with such grace and honor. my heart goes out to them.

nienie
carol decker

I'd give you a run down on their lives (from what I know from watching their blogs), but I don't want to make either of them seem so trivial. so I won't. but it is worth your time.

we went to the farmer's market today...grandma, mom, and baby girl:

and here's her first words...uh-oh (I don't know if by standards that counts, but in our house it does)

I know what you're thinking, and I COMPLETELY agree. she's brilliant.

(apparently her mother is NOT because I can't figure out to always turn my darn camera so you don't have to turn your head sideways to watch a simple video...)

ferber

night 3? SUCCESS! bedtime was around 8:30pm. She actually fell asleep on the car ride home from grandma & grandpa's house, so it wasn't IDEAL according to ferber since you want them to be awake when you lay them down. she still woke up around 10pm and needed a few consoling visits. Then thru the night she did wake up a couple/few times, we went in, laid her back down, and to sweet-dreaming-abyss she went. I'm so proud of her. she's doing so well.

and this is from yesterday's play time in the nursery with buds hayden & alec.

she was a worker girl today with her hard hat on and the shirt plenty drewl-filled

ferber...

ok ferber MIGHT be on to something, but not wanting to jinx myself, the jury is still out. I will say this though:

night 1 took about 45 minutes of ava crying, us checking on her, laying her down, telling her we love her, kissing her, and leaving the room over, and over, and over again.
night 2 took about 15 minutes of ava crying, us checking on her maybe at most 4 times, doing our routine, and she was asleep. AND, when she awoke at 3:30am this morning it took only 1 time for us to go in, lay her down, and she went right back to sleep.
nap time is (knock on wood) a breeze so far. I still usually have to check on her once and lay her back down, but then she goes to sleep seemingly happy.

I'm hoping that this weekend we can seal the deal. here's to hoping. they say that babies can have relapses though so I'm still skeptical, but last night baby was in her crib and we were in our bed, everyone where they should be.

*I forgot to mention the reason we started this. It's not because we are tired of snuggling with her at night time. Quite the opposite actually. I love it when Sam would go get her in the middle of the night, he'd lay her on my chest, she'd slowly snuggle in and slide to the side and there we would lay. however the other night she was awake, I wasn't, and apparently was 1 step away from crawling right off our kind-of tall bed. by the grace of God sam woke up just in time to grab her and bring her back. and it's not just the floor that awaits her, it's our wooden foot-bed thing at the end of our bed that she would've hit on the way down. So we really had NO other choice but to nip this in the bud immediately.

This is long overdue...nonetheless I'm super excited. We changed up Ava's closet, revamped it if you will. We had a cute changing table in there, which was good for at first, though I'm not sure we EVER changed her on it...mostly it held stuff. In speaking with my sister-in-law the other day I was mentioning how I wanted to get some cute cubbie-type-things for Ava's closet to get more organized. her reply? "come with me". and voila! She gave me the cutest cubbie-cabinets ever! her girls were done with them and they were just waiting for a new home.

and going along with yesterday's post about my brother's painting expertise...see below

My pictures don't do it justice because he actually did the tree EXACTLY like the below, high tree branch and all. and this is all we gave him to go off of, along with asking him to flip the tree to the other side, and not add in any characters...we think he did an amazing job. He's out for hire by the way :) want to spice up your kids' room? gives 'accent wall' a whole new meaning!

Lastly, and completely unrelated, here's Ava playing with a picture of my grandma Purdy, her great grandma, who she was never fortunate enough to meet. actually, I bet they were friends in Heaven. either way I know she would've loved her just as much as I did. so her picture is in her room in a little Ava-sized frame and sits on her night stand.

ferber schmerber...
we'll see if this guy knows what he's talking about.

Ava used to be a good sleeper. Ava still is a good sleeper, when in my arms, or next to me sharing my pillow. When she wakes up all alone in her crib is when she is not such a good sleeper. The Ferber guy says that the most common type of sleep problem is: when your baby falls asleep in one environment (ie: your arms, being rocked, etc.) and wakes up in another (ie: her crib) this upsets them and they cry. Once they get used to their environment being the same then it's not so bad. bed time = happy time...once we get to that point. According to Ferber & other websites, it should take between 3 days and 2 weeks...but mostly within the first week they understand that throwing a fit/crying will not get their way. we still go in and tell her we love her, pat her back, and in some instances have to lay her back down because she is standing up in her crib ready to get out.

so, here we go. last night was our first attempt. we made it thru bed time, it took about 45 min to an hour of us going in every 5 minutes and then so on. at some point tho in the night one of us got her and she slept the rest of the night with us. I feel certain that's not in the Ferber rules. So we're trying again tonight.

I'm so proud of my brother - see for yourself why:

http://brsphotography.blogspot.com/

1. He's a great painter.

2. He's a fantastic photographer.

3. HE HAS A BLOG!!

(pictures of his work will be posted in another post)

feats just this week:

1. scaled her first 2 stairs successfully & on her first-ever attempt out of my office.
2. ate & loved cheerios for the 1st time (and certainly not the last).
3. says UH-UH-OH while playing her new favorite game of "throw the paci on the ground and say uh-uh-oh like it was an accident and make unsuspecting parent pick it up". it really was cute, the first, oh 10 times...now it's a little cute & more tiresome.
4. her other favorite game is to crawl away right before I change her diaper, and looks back for me to chase her, all the while giggling non-stop. so naturally, I encourage this behavior because I can't help but chase the cutest giggle on the planet until we are out the door.

AUGUST 12, 2006

AUGUST 12, 2009

YOU'RE STILL MY HERO. I LOVE YOU MY HUSBAND.

If she could talk, and I mean really talk, I wonder what she's day...

She would probably tell us that we are wasting our money on these cute-sie toys when all she really wants is the remote, our cell phones, and the dvd's that she can now get into. everything else is really worthless at this point.

and I bet she'd say how thankful she is to her daddy for feeding her tonight, because he lets her paint her face with her food.

and she would probably be mostly excited about her new blue jeans. a) because of the princess crown. but b) because it doesn't look like she's getting ready for a flood anymore!

I swear she gets busier and busier every day.

• first it was rolling over (which I thought she would NEVER do...)
• then it was the giggling and laughing (which is music to our ears)
• now it's pulling up to stand in her crib, drinking out of a sippy cup, palming her snack ball, clapping her hands like a big ole girl, and crawling EVERYWHERE!

and below? well below she's just doing a little learning, that's all. don't worry about that.

and after all that hard work, she just couldn't make it to the crib to crash. nope. the high chair suits just fine.

a story of 2 friends with pictures

AVA & ROWAN

Happy 8 months baby girl!