March 2014... Moving so fast!

Whoa... it's the end of March already?!  Things are zooming by.

So, what's happened lately?

Portland Trip
At the end of February, I took Ava to Portland for a PT course, and my mom came down from Victoria, BC to watch Ava while I attended the course.  Everything worked out well and we were thankful to Nana to watch Ava so I could do this.

Hectic Lives
We don't feel like we've really caught our breath since the beginning of Feb.  Work has been very busy for each of us.  My boss had her baby and another therapist has left the clinic.  Plus, I was hardly breaking even by paying for daycare and only working 6 hour days, so my days have become longer.  As a friend recently reminded me "kids are expensive... get over it!"  and I still feel like I'm working on this balance.

We are running around and can't seem to do a good job of anything.  We both feel like we are doing a so-so job of exercising, working at our jobs, parenting, keeping up with household tasks and bills.  Actually, we've done less than a so-so job with our household!

Jason came home to find that I'd 'hung the laundry to dry' like this... clearly running out of time on the task and leaving.

Ava turned 8 months (and is almost 9 months!)
Ava is becoming more proficient at crawling and can get into everything, so we have reorganized and tried to babyproof our upstairs.  It seems Ava eats all day.  Wake, nurse, play, eat breakfast, morning nap,wake, nurse, play, eat lunch, afternoon nap, wake, nurse, afternoon snack, play, dinner, bath, nurse, bed.  She is eating 'off the menu' at school, which means she can eat most solids.  Her teachers marvel at how much she can take down - she especially loves avocado, sweet potato, cheese, and banana.
No teeth yet.

Rachel 
Rachel got her first ever haircut at a salon.  She didn't love it.  She got to sit in a fire truck chair and pick a treat and a sticker at the end and watch the move 'Planes' as the hair dresser tried to maneuver around her hand as it tried to block her out.  Rachel keep saying 'I don't like that!' over and over...

She did love seeing the movie 'Frozen' in the theatre with me as a special treat, and has been pretending to be Anna ever since.  She has even worn a dress and put her hair in pony tails a couple times, and knows all the words to every song.

She loves playing with all her 'kids' as always.

Rachel has loved watering a plant on the window sill and watching it grow, and is wondering when we can have a garden outside...  too bad it keeps snowing in between beautiful sunny days.

Rachel is enjoying playing with others a little more and is making more serious friendships at school, so that she misses them and asks to go to school on her days off.  She is also becoming a more interested big sister - playing peek a boo with Ava and giving her toys and interacting with her more.

Thankfully, Rachel still loves to read and will often read herself to sleep at night.  She loves to read Berenstain Bears books, Robert Munsch books, Mercy the Pig books, Little Miss and Mr books, and Franklin books.  We go to the library and exchange books 1-2 times per week.

Funny things she has said lately:

1)Playing with her Daddy's throat and asking about an Adam's apple.  Laughing so hard while watching it move up and down.  Then shrieking in delight: "Daddy - do it again!  Swallow your apple!"

2) Rachel loves to measure things.  She'll grab her measuring tape and measure my leg:
R: "Mommy - you are so tall!"
M: "Oh?  How tall?"
R: "65 bucks!"

3) Singing "... the more we get to Heather, the happier we'll be..."


Anyway, we are busy but happy.  Lucky as always to have each other.

Ava is 7 months

It's been a while since we've had an Ava update, and she's already 7 months old!
 (All of these pictures and videos are mixed in time lines from the end of Dec until mid Feb.)

It seems we've spent a lot of time with Ava in her high chair lately, and that is a great place to take pictures.  She has recently refused to take much of anything on a spoon, but is doing a good job of feeding herself little chunks of things.  She's a bit pickier than her sister was at this age (Rachel ate EVERYTHING and wouldn't stop), but it's really fun to watch her check out new things.

7.5 months old!

Ava is a great sitter.  She can move to her tummy (not very gracefully, yet) from sitting.  On her tummy, she can roll around, get on to hands and knees, rock on all fours, and push herself around a little bit.  She's trying to crawl but usually just pushes herself backwards and gets frustrated at this point.  She loves to play in her exersaucer and bounce around, bat at things, bob her head up and down, suck her thumb, suck her Mommy's hair, pinch other people's skin/face.

She can click, squeal, squeak, say 'da da da da' and 'ga ga ga ga' and 'ba ba ba ba' and 'um-ga' and 'ma ma ma ma'.

The last two weeks, Ava has been a little fussier and hasn't stuck to her eating/napping/sleeping schedule quite the same. We keep wondering if that first tooth is going to make an appearance, but nothing just yet.

Her eyes are amazingly blue still and her sleep schedule is generally quite awesome still.  It's less motivating to leave the house these days for several factors.  One is that we've had lots of snow and cold weather.  Two is that Ava sleeps well in her crib.  Three is that Rachel is generally happy to play inside at home.  It's so different than when Rachel was little and wouldn't sleep in her crib, so I took her out all the time in a car seat/backpack/stroller and she slept en route and I got out.

On a good day, her sched looks like this:

6:45am - Rachel wakes her up. Nurse.
7:30am - high chair solid food breakfast.
9:00am - nap
10:30am - nurse
11:30am - high chair solids
12:30pm - nap
2:30pm - nurse, change
3pm - highchair solids
4pm - get fussy and tired, optional short third nap, optional nurse
5pm - highchair solids
6:30pm - nurse and go to sleep, usually sleeping through for 12 hours.

So she's nursing 4-5 times per day and eating solids 3-4 times per day.  It seems all we do is eat, clean up, eat again, sleep, wake up, eat again!  She must be an Oliver!

She's growing up very fast and it's tough.  I'm sad when she grows out of cute outfits and I put them in a box for someone else.  I see newborns now and they seem so tiny.  I'm sad sometimes when she only nurses for 10 minutes and she's done.

When Rachel was an infant, and I had to nurse her every night as part of the bedtime routine, I felt trapped.  Rachel also had inconsistent nights and I was up with her a lot more and she nursed a lot more often for a lot longer time frame.  With Ava, nursing seems like such a luxury.  I sit still and cuddle my sweetie.  I play on my phone.  I rock in the chair.  I don't have to get up and do other things.  Jason often goes through Rachel's hectic bedtime routine and tries to settle her down while I enjoy the peace and sweetness of nursing Ava.  I don't feel trapped at all.  I feel blessed and I don't want that to stop.  I don't even mind getting up at night to nurse when Ava is fussy in the night.

It's not that Rachel and Ava are so different.  It's probably just the normal differences between a first and second child.  I was so excited for Rachel to grow up and get to the next thing.  With Ava, I'm trying so hard to cherish these precious moments because life is so busy and they are disappearing so fast.

Our very verbal child

It's hard to believe that, when Rachel was 8-13 months old, I was concerned about her language development.  At 15 months she started talking and hasn't stopped since.

Many people comment on Rachel's creative and imaginative story telling.  Sometimes when people call her 'verbal', I wonder if it's their nice way of asking if she ever shuts up?!

She is a little bit hyperactive... and often a LOT hyperactive...  I find myself saying 'quiet voice' and 'be gentle with mamma/Ava' and 'take a breath' and 'Rachel...settle down'... all the time.

But the things that come out of her mouth are the most charming things about her.  Lately she's had some really good ones.

Singing the jungle book song:
"The bare necessities, the basic bare necessities, forget about your worries and your stripes.  I mean the bare necessities, old mother nature's..."

She loves to play a game where I tell one story and she tells another story and we take turns, sentence by sentence.  We've played this game a LOT!  Forgive me for looking so bored and tired in this video, but watching it you can get the idea that Rachel CANNOT sit still.

When playing picnic with her kids, she is experimenting with language:
"Please pass the grapes... Nunu hollered"
"Certainly.  Here you go... Mumbled parrot quietly"
"Yummy cookies... Cried pig"

Recently we got another chapter book from the library in the Mercy Watson series.  Mercy is a pig who has many adventures.  This one is called 'Mercy Watson fights crime'.  So we got it from the library and Rachel sat in the car, flipping through the pages, making up her own story to match the pictures.

"And Mercy Watson was asleep I her bed when Crime walked in the front door.  Crime woke Mery and scared her.  So Mercy fought Crime and battled him and Crime ran away..."

So we then discussed that crime was not a person!

She seems to think that the bumblebee in the movie Thumbelina has the following name:
first name: Bumble
second name: Buzz
third name: Coming Soon To Theatres

We love our little chatterbox.

She loves to 'be crazy' these days, which often involves making a mess.  Here's a little mess and her little sister watching her with delight:

Playing in the snow...

We are taking a parenting class right now called 'Positive Parenting'.  We've gone to a couple so far, and they really have helped us change our perspective on a few things.  We are trying hard to be patient and understand Rachel better so we don't get so frustrated with her.  We're trying not to control her and 'punish' her, but instead reward her for positive behaviour and have a teaching message behind each thing that we are really working on.  It's helped us to love her charming and hilarious things more, and to fight with her or get in power struggles less.

Sometimes we can hold her down long enough to snuggle or read a book... even if we have to catch her first