What a mess!

Last Friday night, I was over at my grandma's house and Ava saw a bunch of my cousins coloring. She wanted to get in there and do it so badly but was a little hesitant b/c there were a whole lotta people there. I know she does art projects at school but I'd never had any success with her wanting to color at home. But the next day, she came and crawled into my lap while I was at the desk and picked up a pen and started "writing" so I gave her a piece of paper and a couple of markers, and well - the rest was history.



When she migrated into the kitchen and I had blue marker on my floor, that was the end. Can you see those blue hands?? And the melt down that ensued when color time was over???


Good thing she's getting a set of each of these in her stocking this year!!!!


Maybe these will result in a less messy color time next time and we won't have to color nakey forever!

Abundantly blessed

I have SOOOOO much to be thankful for. Sometimes it's so easy to dwell on the negative things in life and forget those things that are good. I've been working very hard on seeing the positive side of things lately and these blessings are definitely among them:

First and foremost, I am thankful for a gracious and loving God. I could not get through life without Christ and He has blessed me more than I could ever deserve and everything I have would not be possible without Him!

I am thankful for my sweet husband and beautiful daughter. I love spending my days with these two and they bring so much happiness to my life.


With such a bad economy right now, I am so thankful for our jobs. We are able to provide all of our needs and many of our wants and for that I am grateful. We are healthy, have a roof over our heads, food in our tummies, and clothes to keep us warm. We have supportive, helpful families and wonderful friends who are like family. We are surrounded by love.

Yes, abundantly blessed and so incredibly grateful. Thanks be to Jesus from whom all blessings flow!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!!! I hope each of you finds many things to be thankful for this holiday!

Still in ♥

You stand by me and you believe in me like nobody ever has.
When my world goes crazy you're right there to save me; you make me see how much I have.

There could never be another who makes me feel the way you do.

We just get closer - I fall in love all over, every time I look at you.

I don't know where I'd be, without you here with me.

Life with you makes perfect sense. You're my best friend.
(lyrics by Tim McGraw)

Happy anniversary, Zach! I love you!

That's what I call resourceful

Thanks to everyone for the sweet words regarding the biting situation. I really appreciate all you had to say. Thankfully, we've had no more incidents this week. While I know she does this out of anger, I think she does it when she's teething. I know she is getting more teeth because of the incessant drool that is coming out of her mouth, the runny nose she has, and the fact that she's waking up several times in the night and she typically doesn't do that! I think the biting just manifests itself when her mouth bothers her.

I've talked recently about how Ava likes to explore and find things. If you read our 365 blog, you've seen these pictures yesterday and today - and while I don't usually like to put the same thing on both, I just had to share what we deal with on a day to day basis!


Ava loooooooooooves to open drawers and see what's inside. This is the scene in our bathroom every morning. If she can't see, she stands on tippy toes and reaches in and pulls stuff out. If she doesn't like it, onto the floor it goes. If she does like it, she usually takes off with it. This can get quite annoying as I find things I need missing and in a wrong drawer or somewhere random in the house. When I was ready for it this morning, my deodorant was waiting for me on the living room window sill. Actually, it is on our agenda for this weekend to baby proof the drawers in the house. I can only imagine the fits that are going to ensue because she can't get the drawers open. Should be funny! :) I know - it's probably not right to laugh at your kid when they are upset, but the girl thinks she is invincible and that she rules the house. I have a feeling she's going to be sorely disappointed when she learns otherwise.

So, tonight we got home around Ava's bedtime so we headed straight for the shower. Zach was getting her stuff ready and I was putting some laundry in the dryer and had just grabbed my camera to snap a couple of pictures before the shower. Zach yelled at me to hurry and get in there and this is what I saw:

How does she know how to do this?????????? Her little cube toy was in there from when she dragged it in there this morning. She obviously got sick of not being able to see what she wanted so she took matters into her own hands. I seriously have no clue how she knew she could stand on it to make herself taller!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Her little mind is working overtime. I really thought these days would come much later! WAY WRONG! She is 14 months old today and it amazes at all that she is capable of doing! (Oh and do you like her pants hiked to her knees and sockless feet? She and Zach met me after work for some errands and I asked why she had no socks on and he said because she wouldn't let him put them on. I probably pulled the pants down around 7 times and every time I turned around they were back up. I watched her do it. Obviously she likes things a certain way.) She is definitely keeping us on our toes!

And the biting queen strikes again

So, we know all classes have them - you know, that kid that has tantrums and acts poorly at school. I know we all had someone we went to school with and I'm sure that even though they'd never say it, all teachers have those kids that they really wish wouldn't be in their class.

And I'm scared that my daughter may be turning into that kid.

Ugh.

Zach calls me every day after he picks up Ava to give me a report on how she's doing and her day. And he said today that she got in trouble. And not once, but twice. She's a very temperamental child and does not like it when things don't go her way. But who really does? I know that there are sometimes I wish I could just flat out throw a tantrum (and if I'm really honest, there might be times that I do... but only maybe). But, I digress.

Ava got in trouble for biting. She's that kid. And I'm sooooooooooo incredibly upset and frustrated. I know kids go through stages and I know they misbehave but I just don't know what to do regarding this situation anymore! She did it a couple of times a few months ago. And it had gotten better. And I think then it was really more related to the fact that her molars were coming in and her mouth just plain hurt. But then it rared it's ugly head a couple of weeks ago. I was visiting a friend who'd just had a baby and I was holding him and when I got him, Ava saw, got incredibly jealous and walked up AND BIT ME! No lie. She bit me twice on the leg. And I grabbed her little cheeks and looked at her face and told her that we do NOT bite. And that had been the last of it.

Until today. So now she's bitten two kids. And I don't know how to fix this. She's not doing it at home so I don't know how to teach her that this is not ok if she's not doing it around me. I don't want her to keep doing it at school because I don't want her to be the kid that the teachers don't like because she is unruly, and I don't want the parents to not like her because she's biting their kids!

I know that this is totally a phase that many, many kids go through, but it really upsets me because it's my kid that's hurting others! This is NOT OK! Does anyone have any tips on how to get her to stop biting????? And teachers out there - do you have any little kids that act up and do bad things that you still love????? Make a mom feel better please!!

How can this cute little, crooked hat wearing little girl from this morning be so feisty????

Any tips anyone has would be greatly appreciated. I hate having to write about this because I know that no one likes to admit flaws and I hate that anyone might think of Ava as less than sweet - but it's true that she's wild and has a mean temper tantrum and I know that's part of her personality but this is real. This is life at our house and I know I'm not the only mom out there who's felt that way! I asked Ava's pediatrician about this last time we had a check up and he said it is a phase and if a parent got mad at us then oh well. He said he tells indignant parents whose kids are bitten that they will probably be embarrassed the next week because it will be their kid biting. When Ava got bit earlier, I wasn't uspet about the biting - I was just upset that she had gotten in trouble for it but then it was kind of blown off when it happened to her!!!! Anyway, help please???!!!!!! Thanks a ton!

Little Miss Busy Body

Ava is learning so much these days and since she is doing so many new cute things, I just wanted to write about some of them, mostly for my benefit. And if you don't like it, then oh well - it's MY blog!!

This is what I call deer in the headlights Ava! You can totally tell she was caught doing something she shouldn't. She had gone into our room and she knows she is not supposed to be in there if we aren't. Ava is all about pushing the limits these days. She is majorly independent and this girl is a total busy body and thinks that she is the queen and the world is her kingdom!!!! She gets into EVERYTHING! Every morning while we're getting ready for work she is opening and closing our bathroom drawers and getting stuff out of them constantly. She opens dresser drawers, she takes things off shelves.... it's amazing the things that just randomly show up in our living room or kitchen. And although it's a little frustrating to try to keep her out of stuff, it's incredibly cute that she's so proud of herself!

The other day Zach was playing his play station in our extra bedroom and Ava was in there playing so I went in there to talk to Zach and ended up laying on the bed playing on my phone while we talked. Just a little preface - our extra bedroom is where I store things like my already purchased Christmas gifts and other items that I don't feel like putting away permanently because I know I'll just have to get them back out. Well, there was a box with a present in it sitting on the bedside table. So as I'm laying on the bed, I all of a sudden realize that Ava's head was right next to mine!!!!! What the heck???? She's not that tall! So I looked down ... and that little stinker had lifted this box off the table, pushed it over to the bed and CLIMBED UP ON TOP OF IT!!!!!!!!!!!! As I was looking down she was in the process of trying to climb the rest of the way up on the bed!!!!! How does she know how to do this?????? I was shocked and told her not to climb but I was secretly proud that she is so resourceful! When she wants to do something, by-golly she's gonna find a way to do it!!!!!

She's also starting to put lots more syllables together to "talk". She has a new word that she walks around saying all the time and that is uh-oh!! Sometimes it's used in the right context - sometimes not so much! But I can definitely tell the talking is coming. Tonight when I walked in the door after work, she said something that sounded like "HEY!" and then got up and came over to me!! Adorable!

And to end the night, a couple of cute pictures:

You know a girl's gotta be tired when she has to lay down to keep playing with her toys!

And I'll leave you with Ava-Zombie!!!!! Good night!!!!

Free at last!

Ava got her cast off Friday afternoon!!!! Praise the Lord! I was so ready to see that thing go! It was definitely more difficult doing every day things with it like eating, bathing and getting dressed! The dr said her wrist looked great and that we should try to prevent falls (has he ever had a child???????) and that we don't have to go back unless we notice she has issues with it! She got to enjoy a long bath that night with no bag on her arm!!!


She was so cute when they cut the cast off. She kept rubbing her hands together like she was glad to feel them together again!

We had a good weekend. It was pretty tame but it's nice just spending time together. We have another busy week ahead but they seem to fly by so before we know it, it will be the weekend again

It was a beautiful weekend here and while Zach was grilling dinner, we played outside for a little while.


It seems she's pretty enthused to have the cast off herself! :) I'm glad to see those two arms again!

And that my friends is all I've got!

Nonsense

I don't have much to say tonight - just wanted to share a couple of cute pictures!

UGH! Do you see how NASTY that cast is??? Praying we don't have to have it anymore after Friday!!!!


Love, love, love this grin! I cannot believe how grown up she seems these days!


It's super busy around here and it probably won't slow down until after the holidays. That's ok though. Speaking of holidays, I'm definitely getting excited about Christmas!! It should be a lot of fun this year!

Like I said - nothing important! Thank goodness we're over halfway through the week - I always feel if I can get through Wednesday, then Thursday and Friday are a piece of cake! :) Hope your week is going well!!!