December 25th

I was apparently the last one up, but everyone was nice enough to wait for me to appear to start opening Santa presents ;) Of course, I had already been up twice (3am and 6am) before finally making my appearance a little after 8am.

Avery slept through most of the Santa presents, but once she did make her awake status known she was immediately cuddled by her Aunt Jeni:

After presents were done, it was time to get down to cooking. I mostly ran interference on the rugrat and am very thankful that my mom sent me with pecan pies and chocolate cakes to feel like I contributed ;)

Jim fried the turkey with help from the men and grandkids:

\

Jan did all things kitchen-related, looking super-cute in her Mrs. Claus apron:

At the dinner table, we all went around and wrote one word on a strip of paper that we felt epitomized Papa. All the strips were put into an ornament that I have no doubt will have a place of honor on the Christmas tree for years to come. It was an awesome idea and a great way to feel his presence:

Avery was super smiley during dinner…. Totally avoiding a nap to make sure she got full participation in her first Christmas:

Every moment not pictured over the course of the 24^th and 25^th were either spent with me feeding Avery or sharing conversation and laughs with the family. Having everyone under one roof is just priceless.

December 24th

Time absolutely flew by at Reindeer Camp. Avery was doted on by everyone – especially her Gigi-Dub:

 Around 4pm we headed over to Nana’s to have dinner. Avery got dressed up in her li’l elf outfit J

Looking cute in her car seat:

Avery had made Nana a reindeer picture with her little footprints:

Randall explaining to Nana that we were donating to a Veterans’ charity on behalf of Papa this Christmas:

Family picture

Seeing how I look in pictures makes me understand why my parents both have their mouths open, too, in this picture from my childhood J

Santa came to visit, which sent Carson under the table. He was NOT a fan of this Santa.

Avery also didn’t look thrilled with his Santa portrayal:

After dinner and presents with Nana, we went back to Reindeer Camp to open our presents. I LOVE this video from the car ride back because it so captures her precious little smile.

Avery got to go first and opened her Jumperoo (well, we opened it, obviously). The box was way bigger than her tiny little self:

Oh, yeah, she lost her elf pants to an unfortunate accident ;) Rather than going through another outfit change (the 24^th was kind of a record for necessary outfit changes), mommy just ditched the pants:

I hope one day Avery is as entertaining opening her presents as Carson is. Each present he would open he would study and declare  “this is exactly what I wanted.” Well….. except when he got a frame with his name in it. to that he said, “I told you I didn’t want pictures!” so precious. Everyone went to sleep very thankful for what they had received and excited to see what Santa would bring that night.

December 23rd

2 things first…. Bear with me, I am trying to remember all the details from events nearly a week ago. I hate getting behind on the blog because my memory is SO bad, and I use this as the place to capture them before they evaporate. Second, I have to share this pic that was actually from Randall and Avery’s visit to the chiropractor on the 22nd:

She was apparently having a good time with Dr. Milton :)

The 23rd…. well, it was a travel day, so of course it was crazy! I am usually a very organized packer/traveler, but I got knocked out with the flu prior to our leaving, so  I didn’t get packing done until the day we were leaving :/ Our goal was to be on the road at 1pm, and we mostly made it out by 2pm. My mom came over to hold Avery while I got the packing done. She has been a fussy mess lately….just basically inconsolably crying when she gets tired. My poor mom got to hold her through it. We have tried everything: more food, rocking, bouncing, getting swaddled earlier, nothing works. I am hoping that this is the dreaded Leap 4/4 month sleep regression. I have heard horror stories about it, but at least there is an end point. It is heartbreaking to see her so upset and not be able to fix it. This is her in happier times the morning of the 23rd:

And her thinking about how the day will go….

I was TERRIFIED of how the 5 hour drive would go, but she actually did really good. I think the 2 hour crying fit earlier in the day wore her out, and she slept the first 2 hours:

 We stopped at the McDonald’s in New Boston to feed her, change  her, and get me an ice cream cone. That McD’s is now on our banned list… it has no changing table, terrible workers, a totally gross bathroom, and their ice cream machine wasn’t working. Total fail, except Avery got fed and settled back in for 3 more hours. Our most memorable stop on the way was at a gas station/Taco Bell/Subway combo. There was a line at the changing table, and I got into conversation with some ladies. One had just moved to Plano, and the other was bragging about being done with the days of changing tables because her son was 13 years old now and when the judge ordered her to have a hysterectomy, she said, “YES!” Um…. The fact that she was in PJ pants and an Arkansas t-shirt only made the story better :)  Anyways, the last hour of the drive Avery got a wee bit fussy, so we started playing with her bee in the backseat. It entertained her for awhile:

Then we moved on to the sunshine/music on her car seat, which worked for about 3 minutes:

So we spent the last 75 minutes or so staring at my phone display. That completely mesmerized her. We rolled into Reindeer Camp around 8pm ready for some family fun! Piper jumped right in with peekaboo:

Quick Update

We've had a series of issues that have kept me from being my diligent blogging self over the past week! Never mind the fact that we are in full blown Christmas chaos mode, I lost my phone the other night, which kept me from taking hundreds of adorable Avery pictures. I had looked all over the darn house for it and after about 36 hours of it missing I had to wake up at 5:58am to basically track it down when the 6am alarm went off. I definitely felt like a ninja, creeping around my house in the darkness listening for the ring of the alarm. I finally found it buried in the closet. No way I ever would have found it had the alarm not been set. Whew. Also, as of Saturday evening I've been basically confined to the bed to shake off being sick. I'm supposed to be napping now, but there are big piles of laundry to be dealt with.....and I have to share just a few sweet shots of Avery, so everyone knows she's still being doted on here :)

Ready to take on the day! Miss Wiggly Watson has taken to scooting out of her Boppy Noggin pillow :/

 And a tongue-out shot because that's what we do these days

 Thinking about crawling

 Look how big my head is on my tiny baby body!

FOUR Month Update

For some reason, 4 months just seems so old!

Here are her 4 month pics. When comparing to the 3 month, I see the biggest difference is that she's noticeably long and lean (sigh... more on that to come). She's working on some six pack abs. I blame Tony Horton. She's addicted to doing the Superman exercise from P90X.

She looked like she was trying to stretch up to show us how tall she is

Ready for her close up

Big eyes!

The outtake ;)

 Oops, found our A&M stickers and realized we'd missed the first 3 months :(

What are the stats and what does the doctor say?

We had our 4 month checkup (+ more shots) today. We were finally back to our regular pediatrician, who is back from her maternity leave. It was good to see her and let her gush over how cute and sweet Avery is these days. Avery took the shots like a champ with just a little bit of so sad crying.

Her weight continues to concern me, but doc and everyone else is ok with it. She just keeps sliding down the growth curve. I will go back for a weight check in a few more weeks, just to see if she's still falling off :( I did tell Randall I was going to have to stop giving her a hard time about her head bobble - she's balancing a 69th percentile head on a 17th percentile body!

Date	Height	Percentile	Weight	Percentile	Head Circ.	Percentile
8/23/14	17.5 in	10%	4 lb 12 oz	8%	31.8 cm	24%
9/19/14	19.5 in	30%	7 lb 2 oz	31%	34.3 cm	32%
10/20/14	20.8 in	30%	9 lb 0 oz	42%	36.8 cm	38%
11/21/14	22.75	66%	10 lb 0 oz	28%
12/19/14	23.5 in	55%	11 lb 2 oz	17%	40 cm	69%

What is she eating?

Mama's milk, all day every day. We have a lot of conversations about when we'll start introducing solid foods. I don't see it happening before she's 6 months, since she was a month early and want to make sure her digestive system is fully functioning. I do fear I'll lose Randall as my partner on diaper duty once solids are introduced, so that factors in as well ;) She has sat in my lap at the table a few times and shows no interest at all in what we are eating.

When does she sleep?

She always sleeps through the night these days - or at least I do! She may wake up and go back to sleep from time to time, but to me she's out around 10pm and up for first feeding at 6am. She blew me away Tuesday night and basically slept from 5:15pm until 6am. She had 2 feeds in that span, but she really didn't wake up for them. I'm all for moving to longer nights! Ideally she would not be up after 10pm :/

What do your routines look like?

Pretty much the same as last month... eat/play/sleep in 3 hour blocks all day long starting at 6am. For playtime ,she is LOVING her piano mat. We usually do some tummy time a few times/day, and she will occasionally charm us with her roll over. She is starting to hold/grasp toys, so I've been putting some rattles in her hands.

We are still struggling a little bit with the last feed/sleep of the day. I feed her around 8:30 and she stays awake fighting sleep until after 10pm. It's not fun for anyone. 

What size clothes and diapers are you wearing?

She's still mostly in the 0-3 month clothes. She can rock the 3-6 month ones, but her feet don't really reach the footies yet. 

What are some things she loves?

• Her parents. She's (still) giving us lots of smiles and reassurance that we're her people. She'll talk to me in the mornings and chuckle from time to time. 
• The puppies
• Her piano play mat
• Walking (with assistance, of course). If she's fussing at all, just pull her up to her feet and she is ready to go!
• People, being adored. She's very social!
• Drooling/blowing bubbles

What are some things she doesn't like?

Being tired but not asleep. This is literally the only thing that makes her cry these days, but it REALLY makes her cry. Oh - she also apparently doesn't like her bottles cold anymore. Randall and Jeni discovered that while I was gone.

What are some thing she can do?
Eat. Sleep. Poop.. she's still mostly just doing those things. This month's major milestones are:

- rolling over!
- She's definitely starting to grasp intentionally. I'm thinking a necklace wasn't the wisest baby gift, but she sure does love to get a grip on it. 

What are we looking forward to in the next month?

Celebrating Christmas and the New Year with our baby girl and our families.

First Overnight Trip

I finally got the call for my final interview last week. It was scheduled for noon Monday in Atlanta. This caused me a tremendous amount of anxiety.... I think just with all the stuff going on over the weekend + planning to leave overnight + slight stress over the whole job situation, I was just a little overwhelmed.

There were 2 main highlights of the trip: (1) I got to have breakfast before the interview with Andrea Braun, which was an awesome perk (and how is it we never get pics together?!) and (2) I got the job! I officially start on January 5th - yay!!!!

The rest of the trip was horrible! I chose to fly out Sunday night, since the first flight Monday landed at 10am. I was scared something would go wrong, and I'd end up being late. My flight was to land at 10:40pm, so I was hoping to be settled in and asleep by midnight. Wrong. The flight was 90 minutes delayed. We were actually early heading out to the runway, but had to turn around to get more fuel. UGH. I checked in to the lovely Quality Inn at around 1:30am and got my eyes closed around 2am. I was supposed to get MORE sleep while away from the infant, not less! The bright spot was opening my suitcase to find this smuggled in.... I have a tradition of putting stuff in Randall's suitcase when he travels, and he remembered to return the favor. It made my night :)

The Quality Inn was not so quality... the pillows were like bricks, and the curtains did not close all the way. I was on the first floor facing the back parking lot, so that creeped me out enough that I got up and touched the top of the curtains (ew) to safety pin them together. When I tried to take a shower the next morning, there were all kinds of issues. First, the shower wouldn't go from the faucet to the overhead piece. I had to go to the front desk and get asked, "if I knew how to work it." I did - and they even had directions on the shower for those who lack basic problem solving skills. I was just afraid to continue tugging on it becuasee the faucet was already partially detached from the wall. The desk clerk had no issue tugging and declared it fixed when it looked like this:

And then there was the shower curtain.... They promoted their curved rod, but when the rod sags in the middle the shower curtain does this:

Anyways.... I escaped the hotel and had a WONDERFUL breakfast with my friend Andrea. I realized over the past 6 weeks I've gotten some drop-ins from many of my favorite out-of-town friends (Laura & fam, KT & Brooke, Andrea + Paige coming soon!), which is so awesome. 

I headed from breakfast straight to the interview, and it turned out to not be very interview-ish. He basically just started talking to me about things I'd be doing with the job. What a relief. I am really excited about this opportunity! 

That was pretty much it. I headed from the restaurant back to the airport and headed home. That was all mostly uneventful, except I was in a middle seat sandwiched between two big guys. Ah, Delta.

Avery's Aunt Jeni came over to hang out with her while Randall worked. Randall sent me this pic mid-day letting me know that Avery was going for a walk:

I'm not sure what all they did, but it looks like they had fun:

Also while I was gone, our stockings arrived and got hung on the mantle:

 And the boyz took the evening watch over baby Avery:

Baby Dedication

We had Avery's baby dedication in church on Sunday morning. I am SO bummed to discover the archive video of the service only includes the sermon and not the music/dedication portion :( Our brother-in-law videoed it, though, so hopefully I'll have that to share at some point.

It was honestly very challenging. I tried to cover the main issues we'd deal with... we didn't get Avery into her dress until we got to the church, and I brought back-up dresses for BOTH of us. She was quiet in the car on the way, and super happy/social while we waited....

...and we waited.... we had to be there at 10:30 and wouldn't go onstage until 11:15. When your baby is super smiley at 10:30, you know that by 11:15 you will have an entirely new baby on your hands. She went onstage with her pacifier in, we were that close to a meltdown.

Luckily (?!) she spit it out (onto the ground) while we waited for the other couples to be introduced, so we do have some pics of her without it in + we made it through with no meltdown!

I had no pics of me holding her, so Randall humored us when we got home and (both) kicked our shoes off:

And I will leave you with this outtake - quite possibly my favorite ever:

Have You Missed Us???

I mentioned that this month is crazy-hectic, right? We'll just write off last Thurs and Fri because I cannot for the life of me remember what we were up to! This is what Avery looked like on those days, though:

Thursday

Friday

Ah, yes, now that I see the Friday picture, I remember that we risked going OUT to dinner at Fishmongers. Avery was an absolute angel and had many of the wait staff gushing over what a cutie she is. And, yes, now I remember that Thursday night Randall had a soccer scrimmage, so Avery and I kicked it at home alone with the dogs.

OH OH OH.... and now I remember why I have almost no pics from Thursday.... it's because I got to hang out with Kim Thomas and the lovely Brooke at the airport! KT and Brooke took all the pics for us, and Kim is supposed to be blogging about our adventure :) I do have this one to share:

That was a very very very awesome treat!

Saturday night her Aunt Jeni + cousins Michael, Luke, Emma, and Carson came over to hang out with her while Randall and I had a double date to see Ebenezer Scrooge. It was awesome to have a date night, and I'm glad Randall got his fix of some of his most-quoted Christmas music. I have 0 pictures from Saturday, and neither does Randall! What neglectful parents we are! I will admit that I was in stress-overdrive due to a lot going on.... but I can't believe I didn't even get a pic of the cupcakes I we made. It was (1) my first time ever making cupcakes that I can recall and (2) my first time using the KitchenAid mixer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. I had to strike through taking all the credit on them, since as many projects I take on excitedly Randall ends up getting called in to help out on for one reason or another (usually Avery feeding related / me not budgeting enough time to get everything done/get distracted).

More to come on the reasons I was stressed out in the next post. This one is already too long for my husband to make it all the way through ;)