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.

Nancy's wedding pictures

As I promised before, here are some pictures from Mike's sisters wedding that we went to in July. I just got these yesterday evening.

The bride and groom

Ava, daddy, mama and grandma Heidenfelder (Mike's Mom's mom)

All of us again.

My little miss sunshine. This is the only picture that I have of her in her dress:(

A day in the life of Ava

Yesterday was a pretty eventful day in the life of a 18 month old who is teething and in her "terrible twos". I was talking to Mike the last night and said to sum up the past 2 weeks I would have to say "handful", because that is what Ava has been. As I have mentioned before, I think there are many reasons, one being her teeth. Yesterday she was in rare form and would just whine and cry. Here is a picture of her and daddy reading and as you can see, she is chewing her thumb. (No, she is not sucking it). Some of it is that I don't let her have her pacifier at all during waking times, so I know that is what she wants and it does quiet her, but I have to be strong.

Last night, I tried putting a rubber band in her hair and it is so cute. I wish she would leave it in for longer than 30 minutes.

See, she also found that she can chew on daddy's short string.

She has also found it fun to get into the drawer in the kitchen where we keep our cutting boards. She likes to put them on the floor and walk on them..

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I got to spend sometime out yesterday helping a friend that is pregnant register at Babies'r'us. It was a lot of fun. I had help from my sister in law when I registered and I could not have done it without her, it is so overwhelming for new moms. I don't know why they don't have more help for that sort of thing there. It would be helpful for first time moms. I, myself will register, even if I don't have a 2nd shower just because you get a discount on items on your registry 2 weeks before the baby is born and then after the baby is born. I am all about the discount.

There will be some things that we will need anyway and depending on if it is a boy, we will need more stuff. I just can't put a boy in girls clothes, but he can use some pink burp clothes.

A year and a half old

What happened? Today, Ava is 1 1/2 years old. In 6 months, she will be 2 with a brother or sister around. Crazy. Time sure does fly. She keeps us busy.

This past week has been a little rough. I know that she HAS to be getting her 2nd set of molars.She has been chewing on her finger as if they are candy. She also spiked a low grade fever on Thursday. It was about 100.6 all day long with Tylenol every 4 hours. The last and worst sign, is that she has some sleepless nights. All signs point to teeth. Last night was the worst. She woke up at midnight, 2:30, 3:30 ( and was up crying on and off for an hour), then decided to wake up at 5:22am! The day before, Friday, she took a 45 minute nap too. I am only hoping that tonight is a better night sleep. It is exhausting. I did some research online only to find that many kids around 18 months old start having sleep issues. She is also getting ready for many more words to come, so developmentally she is getting ready to advance, which has been known to cause sleep issues. At least this is what I keep telling myself when I am wide awake at 3:30am praying for her to fall asleep or not wake up.

She has added some new words to her vocabulary. She says "zoo", "wow", "mmm-hmmm" (for yes), "na" (for no), "da" for dada and "ma" for mama and many more. She will try to repeat your words if they are not too hard. She learned how to blow kisses too, which is cute.

She is a good helper and listener. The other day, she got into the kitchen drawer that has all our dish towels and pulled every single one out. Then I asked her to put them all back in and she did just that. She will bring me things when I ask her to. It will be only a matter of time before I can teach her how to get on a stool and get me water!! jk!

She is learning about emotions as well. If you are sad, she will make a sad face and come up to give you a hug. If you have a boo-boo-owie, she will kiss it. If she hears a baby crying, she will make a sad face too. She is very concerned if people are not ok. I just reassure her that it's ok.

She is very curious and along with all the curiosity, comes a lot of crying too. She wants to climb and be all up in our mix lately and if we don't give her 100% off our attention or don't give her something she wants, you got it, crying and throwing things.

Tonight we were brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed and bath and Ava decided to play in the shower....



Here she is with her "where's so and so".. She puts her hands in the air and says "ohhhhh"

She is really enjoying her time with her nanny. I can tell because when she goes to leave, Ava gets upset. That usually means she is not ready for her to leave.

I am still in the process of weaning her from her paci. I was doing really good until the day she was sick. I let her have it that day, but other than that, I am only letting her have it in her crib. Again, I don't have a time frame on when I want her to be done with it, but I read that you should do it before they have all there baby teeth in, which is age 2-3, but there aren't many more teeth for her to get. I would also like her to be off it fully when the new baby is here.

Speaking of the new baby. We find out what we are having on Tuesday. It was originally supposed to be on Wednesday, but they sent me a letter saying that they had scheduled my appt when the ultrsound tech wasn't in. When I called them back, I asked for an appt on Monday or Tuesday and that is what I got. yay! I will be sure to post to let you all know. There will be so much to do at that point.

I have finally decided to finish up Ava's baby scrapbooks. I started a scrapbook before Ava was born, with the ultrasound pics, pics of me pregnant, the nursery, the showers and then wanted to finish it with some pics of her when she was born. I then started her first year scrapbook. I have 40 pages in it as of now and about 10 done. I am going to try to get it done this next week. My plan will be to have a book for every year, but we will see about that. It did take me 18 months to get that first one done and seeing that we are halfway through her second year, I am a bit behind. Then add a 2nd baby...yikes. I will have to do a page a month per child just to keep up. We all know how that goes.