I love my Ava!

I wanted to take a minute to stop and really appreciate my little girl. I tend to get so focused on what she is doing and our family life. I am very lucky with my job. I work part time from my house and right now we are in between nannies as most of you know, so I watch her 24-7. I really, really enjoy every minute of it and know how lucky I am I know many moms don't get to be with their kids, but for a couple of hours every night. Some days are tough, I have to admit, but I still love it and wouldn't change it for the world.

This weekend we got up early on Saturday and headed off to the zoo. We got there at 8 am and walked around. Ava loves the animals. I guess I should really say, she loves them from afar, not up close. We got to pet a donkey, Pedro, and watch the rooster and turkeys and all the other great animals. She just loves going. Here are some pictures below.

Ava's personality is shining through every day. Overall, she is a great baby. She usually plays by herself in the mornings so I can get work done. When she gets frustrated, she will start to cry. I am trying to encourage her to figure it out with just a little bit of help so that she can build her confidence and not get frustrated so easily. It is difficult sometimes. I tend to do everything for her. She is exploring her space. She likes to crawl under the table. It almost always ends with a cry.

She is learning about opening and closing doors.She will go into the dark laundry room and close the door. I usually wait a minute or two to see if she cries, but she never does and then I go and open it for her.

She loves music. When she hears it she sways her body or bounces up and down. We play a lot of music in our house, because I need background noise.

Sleeping has been a bit rough lately. I am not sure what the deal is. Her naps are very unpredictable. Sometimes she will take two 1 hour naps or sometimes two 1-1 1/2 hour naps. Yesterday we put her down a little bit later than normal for her morning nap and she slept 2 hours, but didn't take the second nap. She has been waking up around 5 ish every morning and screaming as if she is scared. We go in and give her her paci, but she still cries for a bit before settling again. This morning she was up at 5:20am....I did notice a bump on her bottom left side where her canine tooth is coming in.

She loves to watch baby Einsteins. She knows a lot of it by hand now. she knows what is coming next on the video. Below is her and daddy watching it. On a side note, I was watching with her and happen to see the dancing part and realized that is where she learned to bounce up and down when I say to dance.

She is really shy. I know that I was pretty shy until about High School and I really hope that she will come out of her shell. If someone tries to talk to her, she will bury her head in your legs. When we were at Gymboree, they did this activity where all the kids sit on an air log and we hold onto them and bounce them and she was the only one that insisted that I hold onto her her as if we were hugging. The rest sat on top and let moms hold them and bounce them. She is more shy in bigger groups. The previous 2 weeks at Gymboree, it was Ava and Alli only. No other kids showed up and she participated in some of the group activities that she hadn't done before. She was too scared. It will just take her a little longer to get involved in things.