Trick-or-Treat!

Oops! It's been far too long since I last updated this journal! (Sorry Ava!)
Lets see... what have I missed since September....In October we decided surprise my family with a visit from the three of us, so we booked some last minute tickets and on the 21st we showed up at my parents' front door. No one had any idea that we were coming and it was a lot of fun surprising them :)

We had a great visit, it was really low key this time which was nice. We took Ava trick-or-treating for Halloween and she loved it. She caught on so quickly that by the time we hit the 4th house she was practically running down the street to the next one! She knocked on the doors saying 'knock, knock, knock' and would hold out her bucket for candy. Occasionally she would hand some of her candy back to the person at the door, and then even try to close the door on them saying 'bye bye!' at the same time. She was very curious to meet their dogs too. Every house she went to she would ask for Augie or Daisy and try to go inside :)

She refused to let go of her M&M's

An 18 month old little boy came to our door dressed as a monkey and he and Ava seemed to develope some sort of friendship together. After everyone said 'bye bye' we closed the door and they both continued to stare at eachother through the glass. It was pretty cute :)

Our little puppy all finished trick-or-treating! (That costume was meant for 18 month olds and it's much too small for her!)

We also took her to Woodbine Centre for the afternoon one day. They have a big playland full of rides and fun things to do. I went with my brother and sister when we were really young so I wanted to take Ava someday as well. I took her on the carousel and some hot air balloon ride, Graham and my dad took her on the little train and my mom took her on the ferris wheel. It was really quite in the centre so we didn't have to wait for any of the rides and since there were no crowds we could let Ava wander around a bit more freely.

Taking a Bumper Boat for a spin

Riding the carousel. When looking through photographs later, we discovered that Ava is riding the exact same horse that Robbie was on the day we went in 1985!

Grandpa (Papa) teaching Ava all about trains

Ava & Grandma
Ava & Daddy on the train

Boogie Baby

Ava is a little dancing machine these days. Anytime a song comes on she starts wiggling her little bum and sometimes claps her hands too. It's very cute :)

This morning I was feeding her breakfast and she just kept wiggling her body to the music on tv. Eventually she pushed the spoon away and got out of her chair to go dancing.

One thing I've just noticed this very minute, is that she gets frightened if you turn the volume up on the television when she's watching it. One of the songs she likes came on so I turned up the sound a bit. She suddenly looked scared and then ran away from the tv!

She's walking everywhere now. Her confidence has really improved over the last two or three weeks and she's happy to even walk around outdoors. She's starting to become impatient with her stroller so I think it might be time to think about getting one of those baby harnesses for when we're in public.

Picture Update

Just had a few pictures I've been meaning to put up for a few weeks so here they are.

Ava has begun eating some of her meals with a fork.

Graham surprised us and took us to the West Midlands Safari Park two weeks ago.

Ava didn't seem too interested in the whole thing, but enjoyed when the animals came right up to the car windows.

A friendly giraffe, peeking through our sunroof.

Ava was just a little too small to go on the baby rides.

She didn't seem to mind though :)

The Case of the Missing Hair Clip

On Friday morning, after not having slept much due to the screaming baby monster, I decided to put her in front of the TV while I went back upstairs to get myself prepared for the day.

When I came back down, I had my contact lenses in and was reminded that I had seen a little green hair clip on the floor when I was going to bed the night before. The hair clip wasn't there anymore. Hmm.

I searched around the table, under the couch, under the desk and under the foot stool. No sign of the clip. I began to worry that Ava may have found it and put it in her mouth. She seemed fine so she hadn't choked on it (thank God) but there was the chance that it might be in her tummy.

After thoroughly searching the living room for this little green clip, I decided to call NHS direct for some advice. Because we couldn't say for sure she hadn't swallowed it they told us to take her to the A&E for an X-Ray.

Luckily they could see that the clip wasn't inside her, and the whole visit took less than 40 minutes from the time we parked to the time we drove away.

We still haven't found the clip so she has clearly found a very good hiding space for it!

More Words

Ava's vocabulary is growing again. She now says:

- Car
- Plane (sounds like Play)
- Balloon
- Fish (Fi she can't seem to put the 'Fi' and 'sh' sounds together)
- Oh no
- Oh wow
- Light
- Bubble
- Go
- Knee
- High Five
- Foot
- Phone
- Bum
- Nice
- Why
- Tick Tock (for watch)
- Show, show
- Pee boo
- Cuddle (Cuggo)
- No
- Wow
- Wee
- More
- Yummy
- Num num
- Up! Up! Up! (means 'I want mummy to pick me up!')
- Bear
- Augie
- Robbie (Wobbie)
- Laura (Wawa)
- Rabbit (Wabby)
- Cow
- Monkey (Ummy)
- Moo
- Juice (Ju)
- Mummy
- Daddy
- Dog
- Baby
- Toe
- Eye
- Mouth (sounds like Mouw)
- Shoe
- Cat (Dat)
- Bounce, bounce, bounce (bow, bow, bow)
- Hi
- Hello (Ho!)
- Nose
- Ear
- Hair
- Bye bye
- Moon
- Pretty (when she sees flowers or plants)
- Teeth
- Tea
- Poo
- Stinky (Dity)
- Down (she says this when she's going down the stairs)

She loves the TV shows In the Night Garden, Show Me, Show Me, and Waybuloo. She has begun giving us cuddles and kisses and likes to play 'Go Get Daddy!' She'll do a pretend growl and run over to Graham and tackle his legs, smiling the whole time. She loves it if we get down to her level and she can 'attack' us.

She's in a funny stage where she's really enjoyable but also really difficult at times!

Mystery Object

I walked in the back door the other day to the overwhelming smell of baby poop. Just then, Ava poked her head around the door. Her face was covered in brown smudges and she was holding a brown lump of something in her hand.


You can only imagine where my thoughts went when I saw that. Luckily the poop was still in her nappy and she was just eating a piece of chocolate that she had found on the table.

Relief!

Difficult Days and Nights

Ava has been going through some difficult stages over the past few weeks and we're not entirely sure why.

It all started around the time she had her 12 & 13 month injections. For the following 10 days she was miserable all day, every day. She became very clingy with me and would throw tantrums if I tried to leave her with anyone else. She would settle down if she couldn't see or hear me, but as soon as I was nearby she would freak out unless I picked her up.

It was very hard to manage because for 4 days we were staying at other peoples houses. Normally I would just leave her to get over her tantrum without giving in to her, but because we were at someone else's house, I couldn't just leave her to scream until she settled down.

Even though she was bad during the day, she was at least still sleeping properly at night. Since we got back from Canada she was sleeping from 7pm to nearly 8am every night.

Finally she stopped being miserable during the day and seemed to be back to her normal self again. She still would have temper tantrums but not as often as before.

A week after she calmed down, she suddenly began waking up during the night screaming her head off. She would go on and on for hours every single night and it would take ages to settle her down.

Eventually we'd get her to sleep but as soon as we left the room she'd wake up screaming again. It was horrible, and after 8 nights of it I lost my patience and shouted at her. I felt bad but when you're sleep deprived and you have a baby shrieking in your ears all night long, it can be very hard to stay calm. Her screams have developed a very shrill sound to them as she's grown and they're particularly hard on the ears.

It was made more stressful by the fact that Jenni has been living with us for a few weeks while she looks for a permanent place. She began a new job last week nearby and has been waking up at 7am every morning. Every time Ava would cry I was aware that Jenni was trying to sleep so I would try to settle her down quickly.

Finally, last night Ava slept from 7pm to 7:30am without waking up once! It was great. I woke up in the exact same position I fell asleep in 7 hours before. Of course it was the one night I was home by myself. Graham was away working and Jenni stayed at a friends place in London.

Lets hope she carries on sleeping well!