Weights and Measures

The numbers are in...

James at 2 months (a few weeks ago):
Length = 25.5 inches (99th percentile)
Weight = 15 lbs 11 oz (99th percentile)
Weight for length = 50th percentile


Ava at 3 years:
Height = 34.5 inches (5th percentile)
Weight = 25.5 lbs (5th percentile)
Weight for height = 20th percentile

Oh, the Abuse

Being the last-born in each of our families, we've long believed that the youngest in the family is the toughest. Now we know why.

Sleeper hold

Eye poke

Steam roller

Leg rest (at 8 days old)

Today in Ava

Ava's not at her best in the mornings. She's a little lacking in joie de vivre and has, on more than one occasion, made Helen cry with her morning greeting of "I don't want to see her."

Things have taken a welcome turn over the last few months and this morning she brought tears to Helen's eyes again with today's greeting:

"Good morning, mama. Do you need a hug? 'Cuz I've got two big arms waiting to give you a hug."

Are you kidding me with this? Enough to warm your icy heart. Amiright?

Sleepover!

To ring in the New Year, Ava had friends Elliot and Maisie over, not just to play, not just for dinner, but to sleep over.

Ava and Elliot were out of control excited about the whole idea of a sleepover and when given multiple options about where to sleep, Elliot and Ava opted to sleep in Ava's bed together.They started out the night like this:

After a few hours of reading books to each other and telling each other their innermost secrets, they ended the night like this:

Aaaaahh! Don't look at me...I'm hideous.

A letter from the editor:

Dear faithful readers,

By now you've no doubt noticed our new look. I imagine it's as shocking to you as it was to us only moments ago when a click of the wrong button de-customized our template. We're still recovering but, just as we've managed to go weeks without showering, we'll have to postpone  the blog makeover as there simply aren't enough hours in the day.

In the meantime, avert your eyes and think positive thoughts for a speedy recovery.

December 2011, brought to you by the letter "Why?"

Aside from Christmas festivities taking center stage this month, we had several milestones as well. James is smiling, cooing, and acting less like a helpless newborn every day. We've made absolutely no progress in the duration of his nighttime sleep but he has, at least for the moment, become easier to get to sleep. We'll count that as a victory, albeit a small one.

 

Ava has a renewed interest in letters (or what we're grandly terming "early literacy," because we can.) She can recognize each letter of the alphabet and relate words to the letter that they start with. She can also write A, T, V, H, O, and J with ease. At this point most other letters look like centipedes or Sanskrit.

Ava is also either incredibly curious about the world around her or she's getting great enjoyment out of the one-two punch of "Why?" and "What you said?" (decoded: What did you say?) Combined they land us in a downward spiral of explaining, repeating, explaining, repeating...so on and so forth. We're all for a love of learning but we wouldn't mind just a teensie bit less curiosity.

Enjoy this months set of photos! It's a biggun', but you know you love it.

Our Last Christmas of Low Expectations

It's been a few days now and we're still getting over the web of lies we just told Miss Ava Kate about Santa. It's a messy business, this parenting thing. You start out with an innocent, "Hey, some bearded stranger is going to give you presents for Christmas," and then all of a sudden you're working through extensive follow-up questions. Why? Where is he now? Why does he need milk and cookies? Ava didn't appear to buy the story at all but seemed to understand that presents would come to her if she just nodded along. Next time we'll just have a movie take care of the explanations.

"Seriously? Milk and cookies gives him his energy?"

Glamour shot by the tree

Our primary gift to Ava this year was a trunk of dress-up clothes. It quickly became clear to us that we had failed to give her the proper little girl training when she thought the full-length satin gloves were in fact latex, and should be used to change diapers like they do at school. Or at least that's what we assume she meant when she screamed out, "I'm going to change someone's poopy diaper!" as she pulled them on her hands.

Christmas? What a hoot!