ava's words and other things i don't want to forget

Ava has really begun to talk this summer. her first words of course were dada and audrey and allie.  More came soon thereafter and then hi and bye. Ba-ba for Grandpa and shes for shoes. She loves her shoes! And then it just exploded. Mama, Mommy, seat, ball, and a million other b sounds for anything starting with b. And then she picked up the word "no." That's been fun. And I say that with as much sarcasm as humanly possible. She's cute though when she says it. I'll tell or ask her to do something she doesn't want to do, she responds, "no."

allie the other day, hungry, climbs up to the kitchen island and says, " I would like some carrots." I tell her she ate them all yesterday. She says, so seriously, "I'm so mad at myself!"

Allie at 3 years and 6 months or so has decided she no longer likes to go underwater. This, after about a week of living in the water on vacation. Go figure. So, she is no longer in swim for the time being.





Sarah

Summer Swim

Audrey and Allie both have swim lessons this summer on the same day and at the same time. Woo hoo!  My little mermaids.

Sarah

the zoo.

Today we went to Brookfield Zoo. The girls were able to see giraffes and bears. Quite possibly their favorite activity was the carrousel. Our girls love the carrousel! I stood by Allie, Ava stayed back with Jeremy and Audrey ran up and rode by herself. (She's getting so independent!) We had to cut the trip slightly short due to a torrential downpour and barely made it to the car before it started raining again.  The entire way home we saw flooded out fields. It for sure has been a wet spring. It was somewhat of an impromptu trip. 

a few more tidbits:
Audrey wanted to ride in the stroller, instead of Allie. She said her legs hurt. And cried and whined enough we just let her. Ava was fearless on the playground and really wanted to walk with everyone else.We got Audrey and Allie Dippin Dots ice cream and Ava was pretty mad she didn't get any. We now have to buy three of everything. The girls got to pick out a stuffed animal at the gift shop. Audrey picked a pink dolphin, Allie an elephant and Ava a small giraffe. Jeremy freaked me out when across the gift shop he gave me the "wrap it up" sign, but there were storms brewing and the tornados in Oklahoma were just too fresh in my mind, I thought he meant there was a tornado warning.

Sarah

a new bike for Audrey

My first born is growing like a weed. A weed who no longer fits on her bike we got her last month. Well, it seems like last month. It's been two years. TWO years since we got her a big girl bike. Mercy, I must have blinked in there somewhere.

When we got Allie one a month or so ago, we got her a size 14, the same size as Audrey's thinking Audrey still fit hers. We were wrong.Audrey just rode her cousin Ellie's old bike, which was a 20" out at G&Gpa's over Mother's Day weekend and it fit her good. But when we went to the store all the 20" were too big. So we got her an 18". She's always been a great bike rider and has been riding without training wheels for awhile. May of 2011 is when she got her first big girl bike.


This bike is also a Tinkerbell bike, like her first one, but this one is made for older girls and has a little bit of an attitude.

In the store, Allie jumped on every bike she could and tried them out while Ava decided she'd like  a wagon for the fall when we walk Audrey to school .


Tonight Audrey rode her new bike with friends Julia and Lily, who also just got new bikes.

Sarah

Ava 15 months

I love this age.

shoe obsessed.

wants to be big.

loves the swing. oh my goodness, does she ever.

fair skin, red hair.

climbs up the outside play house steps all by herself. just stands at the top of the slide until from seeing her across the yard, or from inside the kitchen window I about have a heart attack and run out to help her. thankfully she waits. We bought her a used mini slide, just her size, but do you think she has any interest in the colorful plastic one when she can be like her big sisters??

stands next to Allie while she's brushing her teeth and spits with Allie. Although, she doesn't actually spit, it's super cute.

She has to shut the gate on her room and Allie's room EVERY time she goes in or out of it.

She goes up the stairs with no problem, and is learning quickly how to go down without falling. She's only fallen down once.

The girl carries around her shoes. She will sit and put them on, and then take them off. IF we get in the car and she doesn't have shoes, she will whine and scream until you put them on her or at least hand them to her. She loves other people's shoes too. But not as much.

She enjoys the stroller on walks and takes off her sunhat whenever she can.

LOATHS hair bows, clips, headbands....anything that would make her little self look even cuter and pull her bangs off her face. Nope. Not happening. She just pulls everything out.

Sarah

Audrey's surgery

Today Audrey had three abnormal appearing moles removed. Two from her scalp and one from her belly button. Her pediatrician, dermatologist and plastic surgeon all agreed it was good to remove them. We now wait 10 days for results. The surgeon did say he removes more than 2500 moles a year and only 10% come back abnormal, and 10% of the 10% only appear very serious. So, in all, 1% chance of it coming back as anything too bad. But because these were in places that you don't see just by looking at her, or she wouldn't see in years to come by herself, it was good to just remove them. The one on the back of her head I had seen a year or two ago and just thought it was a birth mark. Then, this winter when she had the crazy flu and vomited an insane amount in 24 hours and I was up with her all night long, I noticed when I pulled her hair back in piggy tails that that spot had changed and maybe gotten bigger. This alarmed me and so we got it checked out. While meeting with the plastic surgeon, his nurse found another one on the side of her head and her pediatrician early this week saw one on her belly that she's had forever, but that he didn't like either. So, since we were already there, we had them remove that one too.

This procedure was just as hard on Audrey's nerves and emotions as the last one she had when she was 2.5. I wasn't as nervous though and neither was Jeremy. She did have Versed beforehand to calm her down before they wheeled her down the hall to the surgery area. She was never screaming or making a scene, just in tears and very scared. The nurses said she was asleep when she arrived at the operating room. We watched the board, looking for her number to see if she was in surgery, in recovery, etc, read the news, watched the news, etc. She slept for over an hour after she got out--so tuckered out by all her emotions and the Versed for sure and the anesthesia too. When she got awake enough to start asking for Daddy they moved her to her final recovery room where she was offered juice and popsicles, and graham crackers. She must have been famished because she didn't even seem to mind that her hand was yellow with IV tape. She sat on Jeremy's lap and watched the rest of her Barbie movie that they offered her. We got her dressed and they took out her IV without her fainting--yipee, although Daddy had to look away and a nurse poked fun at him and thought it funny that he couldn't look. He couldn't leave the room this time, as Audrey was sitting on his lap. Interestingly though, she complained, a lot, about the band-aid they put on her IV injection site. (Note, they don't put the IV in here until the kids are asleep. Whew. That was a huge relief). She just didn't like it. And wanted it off.

We promised her a toy afterward so we went to a local Target, and walked up and down the aisles until she settled on a My Little Pony remote control car.

Sarah

wednesday april 24. oh, poop.

Allie has been doing great with wearing panties and pooping and peeing in the potty. Today while cleaning Audrey's room, which meant she got to play all by herself with Audrey's Barbie dream house, I saw her run into the bathroom while I was putting away clothes and making her bed. Then I noticed that Ava had followed her. I yell to make sure she's ok. No answer. I quickly tuck the top sheet into the bottom and yell again. No answer. Every mother knows that when there's no answer, there's a trouble brewing. And there was. Allie didn't quite make it to the toilet in time  and although she finished on the toilet, there was poop smeared all over, and I mean all over the top, sides, bottom of the seat. And a little on the floor. Ava appeared to have something all over her hand. When I asked Allie, ( hoping it was the Larabar she'd been eating), Allie said it was poop. A smell test confirmed that Allie was right. Into the tub they went.  Then I asked Allie if Ava ate any of it. At first she said no, but then quickly she changed her answer to yes! Good times.  I called the pediatricians office, just sure they were going to tell me to watch for meningitis. Apparently when I read about that, it must have been a very rare case. We finished with the baths 5 minutes before we were to leave to get Audrey from school.

Again, the above story is why I don't clean deeply during the day. Every time I do something bad happens. Every. time. 

A trip to Target, a trip to the dentist to pick up a school form. That was pretty much our day.

Tomorrow Audrey has outpatient surgery.





Sarah

Audrey's Kindergarten physical: I How we got two visits from the Dr. without even leaving the office.

I think it's safe to say that without massive therapy, Audrey won't be entering the nursing field.  Now, she could surprise us and turn around as she gets older, but if we're going off family history, I look for her to aspire to be something non medical for a career.

Today during her kindergarten physical Audrey fainted. But not right away. I was watching her fairly close after our incident at Ava's one year check-up, and of all places, we were in the bathroom collecting a urine sample as part of the exam. She had just gotten her finger pricked about 7 minutes before. Audrey washed her hands first and I was finishing up and grabbing a towel when she just fell to the ground. She landed face first and hit her head pretty bad on the floor. At first I thought she tripped on her shoes, or slipped in some water. But when I went to pick her up and felt how limp her body was I realized she'd fainted again. She had been really complaining about the band-aid on her finger. She laughed, she was talking, and then out of the blue she kept asking if she could take it off when we got to the van, and the next thing I know she's on the ground.

So the nurse takes us back in to a room, takes her blood pressure and I just hold her for a little bit until she calms down. She was crying, uncontrollably at this point. Very scared, and her head hurt. She told me later her head felt wobbly and then she went to sleep (fainted). Poor baby.

The physical, prior to that, went fine. They weighed her, measured her height, we talked about homeschooling and private school, vitamin supplements, etc.

I did not take a picture before Audrey fainted and after she did, it was the farthest thing on my mind.

Thing is, her father, and uncles, and grandpa all faint easily when dealing with medical.  At least she can't blame me for this.




Sarah