End of Summer

Summer is winding down and so we wanted to use one of the last hot days for Ava to swim! We went to Grama and Grampa's and she swam in the baby pool in the front yard then ran up and down the street (with one of us of course) it was fun!

Cup

Ava has been off the bottle for a few months now and now we are leaning towards getting off a sippy!

Today was day 2 of no sippy at dinner. I'm surprised she's doing so great! Dan kept trying to keep her from spilling but I told him its the only way for her to learn.

Counting

We discovered on Friday that Ava can count with us to 10. Sometimes she'll repeat the number after we say it and other times she will say the next number in line. She also skips 8 which is funny and gets excited about 9 and 10. We went swimming on Friday and counted in the pool with her she thinks its so funny. When did my baby get so grown up!?

(16 &) 17 Months Old

Ava is 17 months old!! I somehow missed writing a 16 month update for Ava with getting tubes last month but here we are and she's already 17 months old!! 1 more month and she's off to nursery and will be 1 1/2!!! How is this possible!

She's talking a LOT more since she got the tubes in her ears. I keep track of her words and phrases in my phone and its AMAZING to see how many shes developed just since getting tubes! I honestly think she said about 5 or so words before she got tubes. That day we got home she said 2 new ones and has been adding tons since.

I'm writing this list for me for future reference so enjoy lol and this is about the order she learned them... but not totally

Words:
Dada
Mama
Wow
Hi
Num
Ya
Bye
Kenji
No
Uh Oh
Down
Thank You
Up
Nice
Eyes
Nose
Go
Papa
Night
Share
Baba
Whose there
Hello
One

Has said before but not as easy to get her to repeat:
Lisa
Dortha
Yes (ya-sss)
Ya I do
Doggie
Grandma
You
How are you
Food
Two

If you ask her want a snake says she says "SSSSS" Its cute, she'll sometimes do kitty right and we are working on what a dog says now :)

Ava is wearing 2T and even some 3T clothes now but I haven't had the heart to put away ANY of her 24 month clothes... I need to though. She is wearing 5/6 in shoes. We went and got her shoes the day she turned 1 and those were a size 4 and now her 5's barely fit, so I think we will be in 6's full time here real soon. Why can't she stay tiny!!! We have a ton of clothes we have been storing and I have even more stored coming up for her to wear... Girl has way too many clothes!

Ava has 6 teeth now, and 5 or 6 more coming in soon! She's got 5 teeth in front and 1 molar on top :) Everytime I try to get my finger in her mouth to feel she tries to bite me! Thankfully she doesn't bite otherwise.

She is such a well behaved little girl. Ava and I traveled 4200 miles in 3 weeks through Az, Ut, Id, Wy, Sd, Nd, and Mt. She was perfect the entire time. She sleeps, she eats, we get out a couple of times when we get gas, she plays with some toys, she doesn't whine or fuss or cry. Its sooo nice to travel with her! If she didn't travel well I'm sure I'd never make the drive anywhere because I hate driving!

I'm really impressed with how easy she is. She loves other kids and is such a sweet heart. I am so grateful for what a blessing she is in our life. I've wanted another baby in our home for 9 months now. Unfortunately we know the wait to have one is going to be a lot longer. Its hard for me to think that getting pregnant with Ava was so simple, if this 2nd child was like Ava I'd be giving birth in a week.

This already shows me that every child is different and although my plans were to have another child already, that's not necessarily gods plan for us. I've learned a lot in the last 9 months, and 17 months for that matter. I am looking forward to the day that we find out that I'm pregnant again and pray that it all works out and our battle with secondary infertility will end soon enough. I need to go back to my doctor and talk about some more medical options because so far I haven't seen much changes with the meformin I've been taking.

Here's to more exciting updates in the future :)

Savage Montana

Arizona Trip

ITS HOT HERE! Ok now that I stated the obvious, lets move on to fun stuff!

We got here a week ago Saturday. We decided to split up the trip into 2 days and stop in Saint George over night and see Dan's Grandma! Ava got to see all her animals and loved them! It was fun to stop to see her!
We stayed in a motel but since it was pioneer day weekend motel prices were nearly double (75$) for 1 night!!! NOT FUN! And Ava decided to only sleep for 2 hours. She started getting a cold right when we were heading out on Friday and I didn't want to cancel because of it so it made the trip a bit more interesting. I ended up staying up with her the whole night that night and by 5 am we just gave up and got on the road. We ended up getting into Tempe just after noon. We were exhausted.

Grandma bought Ava this little slide and at first she loved it... not so much after the first fall, but it will be fun to have a grandma's house our next visit!!

Kate and Kirk came over the first day right after we got in and we immediately started in on projects! Kate and I did this crayon melting project that took 2 days... this was the first half
We decided Ava needed her own week long project :) She did 7 paintings while we were here! She loved playing in the paint!
Sunday we got to go to my moms ward which I always love doing! Ava dressed up in "corona colors" and looked adorable. She spent the whole time walking around or coloring. Her 2 favorite things!
We sat our crayons outside all day Sunday
Ava made more art
Monday we hung out and I ran errands :) and we went to my Dad's for dinner. Ava also enjoyed playing Grandma's piano while we were down
Tuesday we took Ava to the splash pad, which she loved!!! This girl is a busy little bee!
Tuesday night we went to a BBQ at Lonna's mom's house and got to see a lot of our friends.

On Wednesday we went to lunch with my friend Tera and took Chloe and Ava to play at the mall playground. I was chasing Ava the entire time because she thought it was so much fun to run out of the play center so I had to catch her! Still cute but exhausting!
Thursday I woke up with horrible back pain, probably from Wednesday. We took it easy that day, not to mention Ava's lungs were sounding really bad. Either from the cold or from asthma. It was NOT fun! I hate when she gets wheezy and I don't have all her medicine with us. We still went and had dinner with my dad that night and after getting Ava to bed finally went and saw Harry Potter.
On Friday I met up with my cousin Melissa and helped her find some hair flowers for her wedding (11/11/11) It was fun catching up with her.
On Saturday I worked on projects most of the day... etsy onesies and headbands and bows. Dan and my mom watched Ava most of the day. It was Kates birthday so we went to an aquarium to celebrate with her.

Update

I don't feel like I've written in a while! We've had a few things going on!

First we've been talking about doing tubes in Ava's ears for months now! We almost did them in March but because of a bad cough we kept postponing till we finally cancelled all together.

After our last trip to AZ Ava got another ear infection and her ear drum burst. We realized we had to move forward with tubes. We were trying to get Ava into a doctor in Salt Lake when we found out our health insurance was going from pretty good to very bad, all starting August 1st. The doctors in Salt Lake couldn't get us in for surgery before the 1st but thankfully a doctor closer to home could get her in!

We took her in on Tuesday this week. Thankfully she was 2nd for the day and from the time we walked in till we left was 2 hours exactly. There was a little boy that was a little older than Ava that was going before us. They took both of us back at the same time to wait in a little hospital room with a curtain dividing us. He screamed and fussed the whole time before he went back. Ava just hung out with us and we watched "Wonder Pets" They took the little boy back first and he was back there for a long time compared to what they told us.

They finally came out and told his parents he was done and they took Ava back. Then the screamer came back, but this time he was screaming like someone was murdering him and did so for the entire hour till we left! It was probably the worst part of the whole experience, so thats pretty good.

Ava was only back for 15 minutes before they came back and told us she did great, passed her hearing tests and would be coming to us in a few minutes. This was the part I wasn't prepared for. I had no idea how sad it would be for her to come out of anesthesia. When the nurse handed her to me she was crying so hard and had her eyes shut. She was totally out of it. We gave her a bottle of formula and she chugged it since she hadn't had anything to eat since midnight.

Unfortunately the nurses or doctors didn't tell us that we shouldn't bring her milk. We should have brought her juice...... She then threw up on Dan :( We took her home and she threw up 1 more time and then started going back to normal.

We can already tell a difference the tubes are making just in her hearing alone! She's said more words since Tuesday than she has in any other week. She also is responding to us a lot faster than normal when we speak to her. She is up to 15-20 words! Its crazy!

I need a baby boy!

Happy 4th of July

Question Time with Ava

Working on our words

This week Ava has started saying more things. She has said things that sound like "Hello" "Thank You" "Kenji" and "Bye" with a few others, the only one she says clearly for me in the video is Bye but its sooo cute

Getting help

Yesterday the pain from my throat was too much to handle. I finally remembered the name of the doctor I saw (that I liked) 4 years ago when I had mono. She got me in and told me I had strep and ear infections. I'm now on antibiotics and hoping that the pain goes away ASAP!

I happened to ask her if she had any suggested about an OBGYN in the area that had experience working with women with PCOS. Turns out she herself is a specialist in the area, I had no idea! I almost started crying I was so excited. One of my biggest hurdles of starting down this path was to actually speak to a doctor about it since the last times I have done so it hasn't been received well.

This was the opposite case with this doctor. She is very supportive and encouraging! She was also understanding of why its been so hard for me to lose weight, it goes along with the PCOS and Insulin Resistance. She has started me on Metformin (which I'm going to start next week once i'm feeling better) and we are hoping that starts to help me lose some weight, use insulin better and to get my body back to "normal"

She also made a point to tell me what a miracle it was that we were able to get pregnant with Ava and have a healthy pregnancy. I'm so thankful for Ava and I know now what a miracle she is. There is a reason she is here with us and that she came when she did.