Mom's visit from Canada

My mom came to visit us this past week and unfortunately got a bit caught up in the whole volcano mess. Luckily for her, her flight was only bumped back by one day and she was able to leave this afternoon. I miss her already, she was such a big help around here (even if I grumbled a lot of the time about things being done differently than the way I'm used to doing them) I really appreciated all of her help. I wish we lived closer and could spend more time together. Ava really loves her too, she would get so excited every time she saw my mom.

Mom bought Ava a walker/ride along toy. She's not very good at using it properly yet, but hopefully she'll get the hang of it soon.

Being fed lunch by Grandma.

We have a regular visitor these days. Moustache Cat belongs to one of the neighbours but he often hops the fence and hangs out in our backyard waiting for something to eat. Ava is absolutely crazy about him!

Ava picking up the oranges in the fruit bowl.

Grandma trying to take Ava back to Canada with her.

Ava's First Word!

Ava can now say 'dish' (but she means fish) and when you say the word 'fish' to her she looks over at the fish tank! She doesn't say it all the time but she has said it enough for us to know that it's not a fluke.

It started because every time we would come down stairs together I would take her to the fish tank and say "Fish!" a few times and after a few days she said "Dish! Dish!" and I just freaked out! I ran to grab the phone and I called Graham to tell him. Unfortunately he was away for a few days but she did it again for him when he got home.

I have some video of her reacting to me saying Fish to her and you can hear her say "dish" quietly as she tries to grab the tank although it's a bit slurred when she says it on the video so it almost sounds more like 'Dsh'

I had to leave the camera sitting on the couch so she didn't notice it because it always distracts her and then you can never get her to do anything.

She even points to the fish in the tank and follows them with her finger.

9 Months!

Here we go again! 9 months old today!


I took Ava to be weighed on Thursday and unfortunately she had only put on 4 ounce since last month. I knew she wasn't going to be very heavy because she hadn't been eating much lately. The health visitors told us it was because she wanted to feed herself but we think it must have been because she was getting her tooth and then had a cold which probably caused her to lose her apetite (Graham had the same one a week ago and said he just didn't want to eat at all.) She has started eating again thankfully, although not as much as before but at least now she finishes a meal.

She did really well on dinner tonight, she had about 100g of creamy pasta carbonara and 125g of creamy porridge for dessert. I'm trying to give her more fatty foods right now to bring her weight back up. It seems as though her apetite is coming back though :)

So as of April 1st Ava weighed 18lbs which put her just slightly above the 25th percentile. She had been following the 50th line almost perfectly since she was born but maybe we'll be able to get her back up there by next months check up.

I took Ava to be weighed yesterday and unfortunately she's only put on 4oz (which might have actually only been the juice I gave her before we got there) They said that it's probably because she's very active now and the reason she's not eating well anymore is because she wants to do it herself. She wants to be more independant. Now I certainly didn't get that from Ava, but these people usually seem to know what they're talking about so when they told me to just put a plate of food in front of her and let her get on with it I decided to give it a try.

Here's what happened:

I turned around to wash some dishes and when I looked back...

I'm pretty sure hardly any of it actually went into her stomach so I don't know if I'll be trying that again for a while. At least not with mushy food.

Sleep Update

Ava has been a little star this week. Five out of the last six nights, she has slept through the night! Up until now she hadn't slept for a total of five nights in her life!

It's been great, I hope she keeps it up. Graham and I were really starting to feel the effects of not sleeping so we needed this.

Ava's tooth is slowly coming through. You can feel it when she bites your fingers but it's difficult to see. She's been really fussy with eating this week and I think it might be because of the tooth. She'll often only have about 3 or 4 bites of food and then gets upset if you try to give her any more. It's frustrating because it makes me worry about her and also it's annoying wasting perfectly good food. I'm taking her to the baby weigh clinic tomorrow so I'm going to speak to the health visitors and see if there's anything I can do to encourage her to eat more. Poor thing will waste away if she does this with every new tooth.

Graham left this morning to go to Pisa until Friday or Saturday, and then he's off to Malaga where he might have to stay until next Friday :( I hope he'll be able to come back sooner but he doesn't have a set plan from his boss yet so he'll likely only find out on the day. It's not going to be an easy 10 days on my own with the baby if he is stuck there until next weekend!

Teething, Dancing, Standing and Clapping!

My baby is getting her first tooth! (Finally)

It will be her bottom left central incisor when it comes through. We noticed it yesterday in the grocery store when she was laying in one of the baby seats. (I don't want to sit her up in the child seats yet because she chews on everything and I haven't got a cover to put over it) She doesn't seem to be in too much pain yet and isn't even showing any signs of teething. Although on Saturday when I had to leave her with friends for the day, she was an absolute nightmare. We thought it might be because she was upset that she was with different people but whenever I was holding her she was still cranky so we tried some Calpol (it's like baby tylenol) and 20 minutes later she was back to the happy baby we know and love.

Her cold went away about a week ago but today she has a runny nose again. Maybe the one she gave me has come back to her again?!

She's also learned how to pull herself up into standing position from sitting. Graham sat her down in her crib yesterday while he went to warm up her bottle by the changing table and when he turned around she was standing up holding onto the rail!

She waves all the time now too, it's really sweet. Somehow she seems to know that it's a way to greet people and she'll do it when you first see her or when she hasn't seen you for a little while. She also waves at Mirror Baby every time we go by a reflection.

Today we went to another baby class and this time Ava really got involved. She wanted to stand up the whole time and wiggled and danced to the music. She's never done that before so it was really amazing to see her do it all on her own (I was holding her up of course, she can't stand by herself yet) She was smiling and squeaking and clapping her hands too. When the teacher put a bunch of toys in the middle of the circle and said to put any babies who were able to move on their own down to go get some toys, I put Ava down and she scrambled for the toys like they were about to disappear! Everyone was laughing because she was the only baby who went after them and she also crawls like she's an inchworm. She hasn't quite figured out how to use her knees yet but I suppose if this way works for her, she probably never will.

8 1/2 Month Update

So Ava had her first cold and thankfully it was just a minor one. Mostly a runny nose and a bit of sneezing. Unfortunately Graham and I caught it as well!

She slept really well last night from 7:30pm until 7:15am and only woke up once around 8pm, then again at 2:30am but I didn't even hear her. Graham got up and put her back to sleep so I slept straight through the night! I woke up just past 7am and almost had a heart attack because it was light out and she hadn't woken me up once. I ran to her room and she was in her crib chatting to herself :) I wish she would do this every night! (Minus the 2am wake up of course but even if she only woke up once a night I think I could handle that)

I took Ava to a baby class yesterday and she seemed to enjoy it more than the first one. We missed last weeks class because she came down with the cold and I didn't think it would be fair to her or the other parents if we got their babies sick. She really enjoys playing now and she has even started waving! Whenever I carry her past the bathroom she always leans around me to wave to the baby in the mirror, it's really cute.

We can leave her sitting on the floor with toys and she almost never falls over anymore. Right now she's sitting beside her playmat and she's clapping her hands together which I've never seen her do before :) I think she's also having a conversation with the giraffe.

We're going away this weekend to visit Graham's family and friends but Graham is going to be on a stag party in Bournemouth for the weekend. It's going to be interesting having the baby to myself away from home.... I'm really not looking forward to it. It's always much harder to relax when I have to make do with travel sterilisers and her travel cot and sometimes I can't find a microwave.... Oh well. It's just one weekend. Wish me luck!