Summer Time in Chicago

On Saturday we went downtown to the beach. Mason Jennings was there picking up the beach and put on a concert at night. We walked along the beach and swam. The water was pretty warm but Ava still thought it was too cold to go in with me. Effie enjoyed getting some sun and going out to eat in the Hancock building. Ava was such a big flirt she would smile at every person we walked past.

Ava's best Friend

Ava loves Samson so much. Every time she sees him she smiles and laughs. When she is very upset we just show Samson to her and immediate she stops and starts trying to squirm her way to him. He is very good with her. He will lay and just let her pinch and pull at him.

We are looking for a small saddle so she can ride him around. We need to get a least a wagon or cart for him to pull her around in.

Ava First Food

On Friday July 24 Ava ate her first food! It was rice cereal and she loved it. She has been really curious in food lately and always reaching for what we are eating or drinking. She was very excited to get to eat her own food maybe a little too excited. She could not eat it fast enough. It didn’t help that she does not know how to eat. She tries to nurse from the spoon and gets frustrated when she only gets a little spoonful. She got rice cereal all over her, and even hid some for later in her chin folds.

How can you say no to that puppy dog eyes!

Ava is a hand full

So Effie has her hands full with Ava all day so she asked me who sits at a computer all day to add some new pictures to the blog. I hope people still check here. A lot has happened since the last post but instead of playing catch up I will just post some pictures of Ava and try to stay up to date in the future.

Ava is doing great. She is slowing learning to laugh and doing so more frequently. She is very curious and has to be looking at something new or she wants to be walking around. Since she cannot walk yet this can get very tiresome after a few hours. She tries to walk when we stand her on the ground. She has the foot work down just not the balance part. We had her blessing two weeks ago, Effie’s mom and mine came out for the blessing.

This is Ava on her three month birthday. She only smiles for the first minute on her belly anything beyond that is a slippery slope downhill that ends in her screaming until Effie comforts her.

Samson likes to watch over Ava when she is in her bouncer.

This is Ava on her blessing day.

Trying a new hat out!

Sorry for those I emailed these pictures too, I know it was nothing new for you I will try and get some new ones up soon.

Noooooooo

Ok, so a couple days ago Pat put these pictures on for me because I hate how you can only put 4 pictures on at a time and he being the computer guru he is did it way faster than I could. So I went on and typed all the commentary I wanted on my pictures(it took forever since I have not been on here in a while and had a LOT to say about Ava) and BAM! just like that the computer dies and so does all my commentary. So here I am again(it has taken me a few days to modivate myself to come back and do it all over again). So here we go, the begining of Ava, starting out so very small.......





7 months


This was taken only a couple of days before Avas first appearance. Word of the wise(or unwise I should say) never and I repaet NEVER go to the theater and sit through a 3 hour movie while you are this pregnant! :) :)
K, im not going to type as in detail as I did before because it sucks to type things twice, so I'll summerize :) I was on the phone with my sister when water started pouring out of me and I was like "um either my water just broke or I just peed my pants!" Pat just about had a heart attack and so did my little sis. So I called my doctor and they told me to come into the hospital to get checked(did I mention it was about 5-6pm and I was just about to eat) so I took a shower really quick, called some people and ate my food(I was still pregnant...) then off to the hospital we went not really knowing if it was really happening and we were just going to turn right around and come home. They put us in this rooma dn we waited for about 2 hours before anyone came back(apparently they had forgotten about us). Then the nurse tested the liquid and said it was notamniotic fluid(hmmm, k what is it then???) so we waited about an hour and she checked me and said my water hadn't broken. But just to be safe she had the ultrasound guy paged to come check my fluid. When the nurse came back she said that I had all my fluid(which I don't know if I buy) but my contractions were soooo painful by then that they admitted me. We walked around the halls and looked at the babies in the nursery and I was like "I know im supposed to be having a baby right now but there is no way one of those is coming out of me". My contractions got worst and I was starting to throw up after every one AND on top of that I was so soo tired I would doze off only to be woken up a few minutes later by a contraction. SO they gave me some drugs to the the nausea and pain, which lasted for about an hour before the wore off. FINALLY the next morning they let me have an epidural and I don't think I will ever forget the nurse that said I could have it. She was my favorite person in the whole world at that moment. I slept for an hour and woke up to crazy pressure contractions. Labor was so crazy. I think my epidural was wearing off a little because it was defiantly very very painful but I know it was probably not even close to those that do it natural so my respect for those women just grew 100% more than it already was!! I pushed for about 2 hours before she came. Here comes the good part :) Never in my life have I had such an amazing, wonderful, life changing experience as when they put Ava on my stomach, sometimes I totally miss that moment that I saw her for the very first time but I swear there are so many new wonderful moments that I keep having, like the first time they brought her into me and I recognized her little face. Man there is just something about having a baby that is so amazing and wonderful. As much as I hated being pregnant and going through labor(seriously, terrible :) ) I would do it all over again to have my little Ava. I absolutly love being a mom. :)





Pat has been an amazing daddy already. They love each other :)
Taking Ava home!!!!

Singapore! (and a little Malaysia)

I'm terrible, but as you will scroll down you will find out why. I have been meaning to get on here and do a post about our Christmas in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia but we kind of took a LOT of pictures! I think there are over 1500!! I wish everyone reading this could have been there because as beautiful as pictures are it just doesn't compare to the real thing! So, sorry if you guys reading this are bored, there is a lot of pictures to look at and I still havn't even put on the ones of Thailand which are my favorite! I will have to do that tomorrow : ) : ) : )


So, with how crazy things got over the holidays, I never took my seven month picture with the little sign :( BUT I sure do have a bunch of pictures of me at 7 months, so here they are! When I put pictures from Thailand you can see a lot better how big my tummy is, ya know, cause I was in my bathing suit pretty much the whole time!

This was China Town

One of the million pools at my parents house! Pat made it a point to swim every day!

We went to Orchard st. (I think that is what it was called anyways) it was kind of the rodeo drive or Michigan ave of Singapore. It was probably the most elaborate and colorful display of Christmas decorations I have ever seen in my life! It was so cool though, I loved it. It was like Vegas when everywhere you look for over a mile was decorated in Christmas lights and displays.

My mom really liked this tree because the ornaments are HUGE

Pat and I in Malaysia. We went shopping because everything in Malaysia was sooo sooo cheap and a lot of it was designer brands.

One of the malls in Malaysia

Taking the bus into Malaysia. It was not the nicest city we were going into to say the least.

This was in Little India in Singapore.

A lot of the places to eat look like this, there were not a ton in Singapore just because Singapore caters a lot towards people from the U.S. and Australia, but when I was in Taiwan a while back most places to eat looked like this. I'm not going to lie though, the food that comes out of these places is soooo gooood(at least I think so)

We went to the Botanic gardens in Singapore. It was absolutly beautiful!

They had waterfalls all over the place!

Elijah holding a snake on Sentosa Island

One of the days we were in Singapore we went to Sentosa Island, which is still a part of Singapore but we took a cable car to get there.

Joey getting a coconut down

Sentosa Island

This picture looks gross :) But they are building a casino in Singapore for all the tourists. Natives of Singapore arn't allowed to go to the casino its for all the tourists! :) It is going to be HUGE!!!

These were the cable cars we took to get to Sentosa

One of the pools at my parents house

Here are some more pictures of China town. It was really cool, I really liked it there. You could try to talk the people selling things down in price

One of the stores in China town had a bunch of masks and carved statues which I though was really cool

In China town, some of the drinks they had were just coconuts with the tops chopped off and you could eat the coconut out with a spoon

China town

We rented Kayaks one of the days that we were in Singapore

The good ole MRT (Singapore's subway, Isn't it crazy how each country calls the subways something different?)

What our little girl is going to look like! ha ha! Kiyah had a wig she put on pat to see what our little girl would look like, such a good sport!

The mall in Singapore had all kinds of things in it, incuding this food place, yes those are ducks in the window. But it had the post office shopping stores, the grocery store, places to eat and pretty much anything else you can think of.

My mom and Kiyah taking the dogs out

Some more pools...

They had all these excercise stations set up around where my parents are living

It was Samson's very first birthday before we left, so I had to show his big day! he got two doggie toys and a whole can of wet dog food all to himself. What a lucky guy!