Ava's New things

What a nice weekend, but boy do they fly by. On Saturday, I went wedding dress shopping with my sister, Jaclyn. She found her dress and we all had a good time. I am in the wedding and had to pick out a bridesmaids dress. Now, since the wedding is in April, it will be cutting it too close to pick out a dress after the baby is born, so I sucked it up and tried on 2 dresses that I think will compliment my post baby body. I wish we would have taken pictures. It was quite comical to try on dresses 5 1/2 months pregnant. They don't have mirrors in the dressing room, so I was forced to come out to see what it looked like and show the entire world. I figure I will be a bit skinnier when I actually have to wear the dress. Once Jaclyn finalizes the color I am going to buy it and then I will have it to try on every month after the baby is here to make sure it fits. The lady at the dress shop said to get one size up from my pre baby size, so that is what I will do.

Sunday was a hang out at home day. I was feeling good in the morning, but the weekend caught up to me after lunch and I was down for the count. I pretty much stayed in bed and on the couch as I felt worn out and soooo tired. I guess I have over done it lately. Mike will be traveling this week. He has an overnight trip to Kansas City, so I utilized his help and rested as I will be doing it alone for 2 days.


It always seems like Ava learns something new so fast and before I know it, I can't remember her not being able to do it. She has really enjoyed coloring or scribbling with a pen and paper. My mom was down here this weekend and bought Ava an activity table. She loves it. She likes all the nooks and crannies on it.

She has started wanting to wear our socks and put on my flip flops. I don't have a picture of her with my flip flop on, but I managed to get a picture of her with my socks on. She tries to do it herself and after much frustration, she comes to me to put them on.

She is loving puzzles at the moment and getting really good at them. We brought them into our bedroom last night and she was putting them together.

I bought her "big" girl pj's that we put on last night. Right now she just sleeps in a long sleeve onsie and her sleepsack. She is starting to grow out of them and they don't really make onsies in size 2T, so we graduated to a 2 piece pj set. We had just been putting her in the top and a diaper, but last night we tried out the pants. They were a bit long, but we could tell she was so proud to be in big girl pj's.

So pretty..... that is what I think when I see this picture. She has been letting me put a barret/bobby pin in her hair lately. She still doesn't keep it in long, but some days she will forget about it. The other day, she was playing outside and got hot and sweaty and because her bangs are long, she let me put a bobby pin in. I think it cooled her off. Here is a picture from the other night. I wish she would wear them all the time as her hair is out of control.

Our fun Labor Day weekend

On Friday, I officially made it to the 1/2 way point in this pregnancy. Well, it is more than 1/2 way because I can schedule my c-section at 39 weeks and I will do just that. I will be done as soon as they say so, unless he decides to come early. I have been feeling really good.I have a lot of energy, which is a good thing and a bad thing. I want to do so much more, but then get really tired from over doing it. Oh well, I will never learn. Since I have it, I am going to take advantage of it. This weekend I went out shopping and helped the economy out. I was in desperate need of clothes. I just couldn't take all my shirts being too tight and starting to get too short as my belly is growing at a fast rate. I found some great clearance items at the Gap and a couple of things at Motherhood Maternity and a pair of leggings and a top at Sears (of all places). There are not many places to go around here, so the pickins' are slim.
On Sunday, my mom and Dwayne came down to hang out with Ava and Mike and I went shopping for new clothes for him. He needed new work slacks like it was no body's business. I have been hounding him to get some, but he was being cheap and would never go. Finally, I think he got sick of them and we decided to head out. It is hard for him to find his size because they just don't make a lot of 34 lengths out there or if they do, they are the first ones sold. Anyways, we started at Macy's and thought we would just "try" it. We ended up with 4 pairs of slacks, a button down shirt, a pair of black shoes and some socks. Then I had to have lunch and we went back to Macy's and found him a pair of shorts and a t-shirt for weekend wear. I bet everyone is sick of his orange Cancun shirt that he wears EVERY weekend. At that point, I was so tired we had to go.

Saturday afternoon we went over to my sister Jacy's for some food and college football on the side. Ava had a blast playing with her cousin Sophie. I think Sophie enjoyed it too until she realized that she couldn't really tell Ava what to do as Ava doesn't really understand it. Ava also isn't very good at sharing and if she wants something, she will go for it. In another year, those 2 will be best buds.

As I mentioned earlier, on Sunday, my mom came down to visit and she bought Ava a little bike for her to ride. She doesn't really ride it, she just likes to turn the key, open the seat and put something in it and pull it back out and just sit on it. Here she is on it...(The one on the right is when I asked her to smile!)


She is having a blast all the time, exploring everything. She loves to play on our bed in our bedroom. I think because it is so big, she can just onto the pillows. She also loves to open the door on the console table in there and hide herself or bunny in there.

She likes to pull Mike's books out too and look at the covers. She is adding so many more words to her vocabulary and it is cute to hear. She will try to say a lot of words if you ask her to. My favorite is still woooow. She elongates the wow. She gets that from me because I always say it. She also says no, which is more like naaooo. It is usually in relation to me asking if she has a poo-poo. I have started to think about potty training and know that once I start, there is no going back, so I really need to do some more reading on techniques. I have gone back to my baby whisperer and have found some good tips to get started, but I have to be ready for the long haul. At first, I wasn't sure Ava was ready because she wasn't really showing any of the signs that they say to start looking for until about last week. In fact about a week and a half ago, she was standing in the kitchen obviously pooping and I said, are you taking a poo-poo and she looked me in the eye, grunted and shook her head "no". geez... But now, if I ask, she is starting to say yes with a wet and dirty diaper, so maybe we are on to something. The other thing that I would have to do would be to take away her water and give it to her during certain times of the day so I can sort of anticipate when she would need to go. At her age, it is about 40 mins after having some liquids. We have the potty, I just need to pick and date and go with it. Wouldn't it be nice to have her out of diapers before the second one is here!! She has started coloring and has some great masterpieces out there. I will have to take a picture and post. She is good at holding the crayons. She has regular crayons and the big bulb first time coloring crayons.

The next picture we just couldn't resist. Ava is famous for her hair and this is what it looked like yesterday morning...

Mike said she had wings!!

oh boy oh boy

We have decided on a name for our baby boy. His name will be Noah Adam Leptuch. Noah is a name that we both had liked when we were thinking of names before we found out we were having Ava. It was something we could both agree upon. So, when we were thinking of boy and girl names before we found out what we were having, it was on the short list. We each got one veto name and I had to use mine when Mike got stuck on Dieder. Yes, Dieder. I can just hear it now. (Noah, you will thank me later in life when you hear this story). I told some of our friends one night out that Mike was stuck on that name, knowing that the jokes would start immediately and hopefully help sway Mike away from it. Dieder, being a German name, they came up with Dieder Van Leptuch. Anyways, Noah it is!

It didn't take long for me to start the shopping. I sort of had an idea in my head on what colors I wanted to do for his room. I am going to make it difficult for my mom, sorry:( Because I found out the hard way with Ava that you can't use half the stuff in the bedding sets, I decided to just find paint colors that I liked and find crib sheets to match or accent it. I am going to do a tan color on 3 walls and then on the wall that the crib will be against, I am going to do a dark/light blue section on the bottom 1/2 with a dark brown stripe and then the other blue (dark or light) on the top 1/2. Turns out that there is a bedding set that has those colors in it, so I bought the crib sheet and I am waiting for coupons to buy the mobile and the 2 canvas wall art pieces. It just so happens that they colors match almost perfectly. It is the Cocalo Jackson bedding. Below, I tried to get the best shot of the sheet and paint samples, but the pictures don't really show what color the paint samples are, so I will explain after the pics...


The top blue color is similar to the dark blue on the elephant. The light blue is similar to the light blue on the elephant. The tan that will be the main color is the same as the light tan on the sheet and the dark brown is similar to the dark brown on the sheet. You can google the bedding to see the art and mobile if you get bored!

I thought that I would have a hard time finding boy clothes, because they just aren't as "cute" as girl clothes, but I did not. I did a bunch of sale/clearance shopping. I was in Carter's and they had $3.99/$5.99/$7.99 clearance items with an additional 20% off of that,plus I had an additional 20% off my purchase. I stocked up. I went to Kohl's this weekend during their Labor Day Power Hours sale and bought some pj's as well. I would have to say, he is doing pretty well up to 9 months. That is as far out as I am going to get. If he is anything like Ava, he will be in 0-3 months for about a month or two and then more right to 3 months. Ava was 3 months ahead of her age, so I planned the same for Noah. For the most part, living in AZ, you can buy short sleeve shirts/onesies and be ok because it is hot/nice most of the year. I can just buy pants or shorts depending on how hot or cold it is. Here are a couple of shots of his clothes.


The drawer is full of 3 months and 6 months clothes. The pile on the front left has about 20 onsies. I did manage to find some good Carter's stuff at Ross and TJ Maxx. I won't buy anything Carter's unless it is at least 50% off and at Ross, it was more than that, so I stocked up.

My mom also bought him some clothes too! He will be just as spoiled as Ava.

18 month checkup

Ava had her 18 month doctor appointment yesterday. She is doing really well and Dr. Jafri was really pleased with her. Let's start with her stats. She is TALL!!! She is already 34 1/2" tall, which is in the 99th percentile. The saying goes that if you take your baby's height in inches at age 2 and double it that will be their adult height. So if Ava doesn't grow one inch in the next 6 months she will be 5' 9" tall. She will tower her mama! She weighs 26 lbs 1 oz, which is in the 75th percentile. We know that this would slow down as she doesn't really care much about eating. She is right where she should be on her speech. That is always her daddy's concern. As long as she is communicating and saying some words, we are all good. I asked about Ava not sleeping through the night and she said that it was common with all the developmental growth she is going through and that she can be having nightmares and with everything, it's just a phase. A LONG phase at that. At the end of the appointment, in which she cried a majority of it, she was drawing on the paper on the examination table. Dr. Jafri was impressed by how well she was holding the pen. I really need to go out and get those big bulb markers they make for toddlers. I think she would enjoy coloring. I think the nanny would enjoy having a project too!
Overall, Ava is doing great! She is our sweet pea and some days our sour puss, but she is a blessing. In fact right now, mike is getting breakfast and she is walking around saying, yumm, mmmmm! She has great noises and expressions!

New hat and piles of clothes

Check out Ava's new hat. We pulled this bowl out of our drawer and put it on her head. She instantly fell in love. She likes to put it on and wiggle her head to make it fall off..

I have been cleaning out all of Ava's clothes. It has been sad to see ALL these clothes go bye-bye. I am pulling some out to leave at Jacy's or Jaclyn's for when they have a baby (hopefully a girl) and the rest found a home at a friend of mines. There is just too much to give to my sister to hold onto. I have 10 totes of clothes up to 12-18 months and the longer they wait to have kids, the more clothes I will be sending over there, so I am editing out a good majority to send them about 2 totes worth. The rest have a new home. I am happy to pass along, but sad in a way that Ava is all grown up now. Here is what I have been working on. There are still 4 totes to add to this pile....

Today, we are having the pest people come and rid our house of some pesky termites that decided to invade our house. Mike noticed their tunnels last weekend and we had someone out to give us an estimate. It is not cheap and was something that I hoped we would never have to deal with, but oh well, such is being a home owner. So, bye-bye nasty termites, your hours are limited.

Underwear Necklace

I know that I am brave to post this, but this is a common occurance in our household on laundry day. Ava seeks out all my underwear and puts them around her neck as if it is a necklace. Last night I finally got a picture. I have wanted to get one for a while now, but haven't gotten my camera out in time. She gets as many as she can around her neck.

Don't forget to check out the next post, it is ultrasound pics of baby boy Leptuch!

It's a Boy!

We had our ultrasound appt today and Ava will have a little brother. I am super excited to have a boy, but would have been happy either way. I just wanted everything to go well and not have any problems. My Quad screen also came back normal. That is where they test for Downs Syndrome and Neural Tubal Defects. I relieved to hear that.

Below are some of the ultrasound pictures. There is a video too, which I will have to see if I can download. I will give you captions as some are hard to distinguish what they are looking at.

This is the side profile of baby's face



This is baby's spine. Not sure if he is looking up or down.


I know this looks like a skeleton, but this is looking down on baby's face

This is of baby's nose and lips. The arrow is pointing at the nose and the big white area below it is his lips.


Side profile of baby with head on the right.

The black spots in the middle are the 4 chambers of the heart

This is baby's foot. The little white spots are the toes.

And this proves it is a boy! There are 2 "blobs" (for lack of better words) in this picture and the one on the left with his "manhood" is sticking straight out at us.

This is a measurement of his leg. At the bottom you can it is measuring in the 96th percentile. In fact, a lot of his measurements were in the 90's, so he could be a tall one like his daddy!

I of course went out shopping right after and realized that boy's clothes just aren't as cute as girls stuff and the sections are much smaller. I only went to Target and I could barely find the little boys section. Oh well, I guess it will save us some money. It will be weird to go in the baby stores and now be looking at both sides.