Pumpkin Patch

I wanted to get some pictures of Avery at the Pumpkin Patch this year, so I thought with my mom being in town that would be the perfect time since she could be the photographer!

We went to the Owens Farm one in Richardson because it is right by Rustin's work and he was able to meet us there over lunch. 

I knew Avery would have fun, but I underestimated just how much fun she would have...and how cool that pumpkin patch is! 

Our first stop was to get some pictures while she was happy - 

If you're wondering what she was yelling at and throwing her arms up for - it was the goats. She was facing them while we were taking pictures and could not wait to get over there to them.

They also offered a hayride. At first I wasn't going to take her on it because for some reason I thought it would be really long and she would start crying and we'd be stuck. But the man who drove it approached us and said they were about to leave so I thought we'd try and I'm so glad we did! She had SO much fun! Of course, she's fine as long as we're moving, and during the hayride we passed ponies and more goats. She was squealing at them as we passed.

After the hayride we went to the other barns and she saw pigs, rabbits and horses.

Then at the end we all got to pick our own pumpkin out of the patch.

I think we all had as much fun as she did! I'm looking forward to making this a family tradition for years to come. 

Pulling Up

Avery is just dying to walk, and pulling up is the next best thing, so that's what she does ALL the time! 

Here are a few action shots - 

When she's ready to get out of bed, she lets me know by standing up... 

So we got her this activity bench at a garage sale for $5. (We love bargains!) It's the best $5 we've ever spent! She loves standing up and playing on it all the time. And it's a Leap Frog so it has all kinds of cool music, counting and ABCs. And you can even change the language to Spanish if you want. Perhaps she'll be bilingual?? :)

Also, please note her sweet Cowboys slippers.

Avery 13 Months

So I decided I wasn't going to do "monthly" posts after she turned a year. I wouldn't have monthly pictures to show anymore, and I thought I'd just write when something cool happens. Well then I got the urge to blog on Oct. 7 - right when she turned 13 months. I guess I had conditioned myself? But then I haven't had a chance to actually write until now...

So here's her 13 month update - 

She still weighs right under 20 lbs. She now has two teeth on the bottom and two more that are trying to come through on top. 

She's not walking yet, but loves pulling up. That's almost all she does all day. 

I think I have a picky eater on my hands. I feel bad because I always feed her the same stuff, but it's all she'll eat! I even got some recipes for baby finger food and spent all this time making them and she wouldn't eat a bite. The only things I can count on her to eat are avocado, peaches, and yogurt melts. Then of course she loves the Gerber puffs and crunchies, which I'm sure she'd be fine with me feeding her all the time but I am trying to limit it.

She has also picked up some bad habits while eating. She likes to get her hands super messy and rub them all over her hair. Luckily she doesn't have much hair so it is sort of easy to wipe out.

She also thinks it is super funny to drop things, and the more sternly I tell her "no," the more she laughs. I have started ignoring her and that seems to be working better.

While we were in Wichita Falls, she went to her first wedding. My cousin, Keyton, got married. She actually did great during the ceremony, and it helped that it was super short. Here is a picture of her and my parents before the wedding -

She also had the time of her life hanging out with her BFF, Willie. 

Also during the trip we went to my cousin, Lindsay's, baby shower. Avery was napping when I left to go so she didn't join in that event. 

Here are a few more pictures of her lately. This is us before we went shopping one afternoon-

This is her eating at Gloria's with my mom and me - 

Wichita Mountains Trip

I've been making trips to the Wichita Mountains (which contrary to popular belief are NOT in Wichita Falls, but rather in Oklahoma) most of my life. I always have a blast and talk about it to my friends, so we decided we all needed to make a trip.

There is a town close to the mountains called Medicine Park. It was founded in the early 1900s and most of the buildings are made of cobblestone. Since it's less than 2 hours from WF, I've never stayed the night, but have always wanted to stay in one of the cabins there.

I'm usually not the one in charge of planning trips (I'm not the best). But since I had been there a lot, I figured I'd take charge. It's a super small town, so there weren't many options that would fit 7 people. I tried two other cabins before this one and they were booked, so this is where we stayed: https://resnexus.com/resnexus/book/more.aspx?B=28&ID=811&ResID=25814.

So we all assumed from the pictures that these were all separate rooms (living room, kitchen, bedroom). But oh were we wrong. This was all ONE room that was smaller than a two-car garage...for 7 people (Andrea, Annette, Sherrie, Jana, Rustin, Casey and me)! We made do though - Andrea and Annette slept in the "loft" which should be more accurately called a crawl space. Annette even took a nasty fall early Saturday morning, which woke everyone up laughing. 

Sherrie and Jana were going to sleep in the pull-out bed, but upon opening it, found a pair of dirty socks and a stick??

I guess it was too many girls for poor Casey because he slept on the porch. But I must add that I'm pretty sure the wrap-around, screened-in porch was bigger than the cabin. 

During all my previous visits, it has NEVER rained, so of course it rained all day while we were there. Luckily it wasn't coming down too hard so we went for a hike anyway. 

After our hike, we went to the Visitor Center and then to eat at Meers. It was DELICIOUS as always. If you're not familiar, Meers is a hundred-year-old restaurant that serves longhorn burgers the size of pie plates. 

Back at Medicine Park, we went to the lake there. There were a lot of fish, ducks and turtles around for us to feed. 

The next morning we decided to go to the only bakery in town. To be honest, we didn't have that high of expectations but it was really good! They had these "muffins" that were made of biscuit mix, sausage and cheese and served with gravy all over them. 

There are many other funny stories to tell, but most of them are the "you had to be there" type. Hopefully I can talk them into going again and we can get a bigger cabin and no rain! 

Avery's 1st Birthday

Wow so this post is super late. We had some technical difficulties with the camera/pictures. I was waiting on those to get resolved, but not sure how long that will take, so I'm just going to post them. The camera was on the wrong setting (my fault) so the pictures aren't that great. Rustin and Casey took a lot with the "big" camera, but they are in some sort of format that we can't download without some other software program. At least you'll get the general idea.

At first I compared myself to the other one-year-old birthday parties I've been to or seen on Facebook that reminded me of that show "My Super Sweet Sixteen" because they were so over the top. Part of me feels like I need to keep up, but I really try to keep that part of me in check. Keeping up with everyone in Dallas is as futile as keeping up with the Kardashians!

I wanted something low-key with just family and close friends. And I didn't see the point of having entertainment like a bounce house, pony rides, clowns, etc. For one, Avery is too small to enjoy most of it, or it would have scared the crap out of her. Also, most of my friends are still single, so there wasn't even going to be that many other kids there.

I decided to go with an "owl" theme. Partly because I still think it's cute, but also because I wanted to use decorations from her nursery. Here are a few pictures of the decorations -

I got this banner at Hobby Lobby. They actually had a lot of cute 1st birthday stuff there.

I hung all of her monthly pictures above her high chair. 

My wonderful and talented friend, Sherrie, made the cupcakes and Avery's smash cake. I got the owl cupcake idea off Pinterest and she did the rest!

So Avery was not happy at all for most of her birthday because little did I know, I was poisoning her with whole milk (see previous post for more information on that).

Yeah this pretty much sums it up haha... There was no way I was taking the paci out.

A lot of great family and friends came to wish her a happy birthday -  

So all the pictures of her eating her smash cake are on the other camera. But I think this one is before we had it ready. I tried to tide her over with some crunchies (which she loves). Then distracted her with the smash cake so she'd stop taking her birthday hat off!

For most of the party Avery wore the super cute dress my Aunt Holly got for her. But then she changed to her casual, after-cake onesie. It even has a 1 on it (thanks Hillary).

My parents got her this princess car and she loves it. I think she wasn't too sure about Aunt Andrea touching it. Or maybe she was interested in her wine...

Playing with Myra, Neeraj and Kavli's little girl. 

All her "loot." Thanks again to everyone for making her first birthday special!!

Weaning

So Avery turned a year, and everything you read says they need to be off the bottle at about a year. I always get stressed out when things change. I guess I like things to stay the way they are because I start to feel like I kind of have it figured out. When it changes, I'm back to being a rookie.

After all, I had been feeding her a bottle since she was born. I couldn't really imagine not giving her one. Would she starve??

I was going to try to wean her after her birthday party (I know I know I'm late on that post. It's coming soon! I'm waiting for Rustin to upload the pictures he took from his camera.) but she was so unhappy that I didn't want put her through any major changes.

Well since she's been drinking the rice milk and doing much better, I decided to try. She drinks water out of sippys with a hard spout, but wouldn't drink milk out of them, so I bought another kind - Nuby - with a soft spout and she LOVES them! The other day she was in her high chair and saw me get one out of the dishwasher and she started fussing because she wanted it.

I used to give her a bottle when she wakes up in the morning, before naps, and before bed. So I have kept giving her the sippy at those times. I really thought she would put up a fight, but she has been fine. I haven't given her a bottle in 3 days now.

The next thing I am trying to wean her from is her paci. She loves her paci! And it's not that I necessarily mind her having one for a little longer, the problem is the only paci she will take is the Wubbanub (the one with the animal attached) and it's only for babies up to 6 months. I haven't been too worried since she had no teeth, but now that she's getting teeth, I don't want to mess them up! I bought orthodontic pacis in the same brand as her others and she just spits them out.

So I decided to only give her the paci in her room. She usually crawls around with it in her mouth while playing, so I wasn't sure how this would go, but she did fine. We even went to the grocery store without it (I kept it in my purse in case of emergency) and she did great.

The next step is weaning her off of it at night. I have a feeling that will not be easy. She has been waking up at night the last few days (something she hasn't done in 8 months). I am guessing because of teething, so I don't want to take it away while she's going through that.

Anyway I just wanted to write about what I ended up doing with her since I asked many of my friends what they did. I feel like it always helps to hear other stories of what worked and what didn't.

I'll close with a recent picture. She looked so cute for church on Sunday, we just had to take some pictures! Dena got her that cute dress for her birthday. Since it's just us 3, Rustin and I had to take turns being photographer.

Avery 12 Months (1 Year!!)

I can't believe she turned a year old! This may sound silly but I felt a sense of accomplishment - I mean I raised her a whole year and she's still alive and so am I!

I took a few pictures of her on her birthday. Of course, I had to finish up our monthly pictures with her 12 month sticker.

I also wanted to take a picture of her in her birthday dress from my Aunt Holly.

I ran out of formula about a week before she turned one. I know you're not supposed to start cow's milk until a year, but I figured 5 days didn't matter that much. And I didn't want to get a whole new can of formula. 

She seemed to like it but about 3 days later, she started acting incredibly fussy. I felt like it was a flashback to her first few months of life. She was constantly crying. I couldn't do anything because she was only happy if I was walking around holding her. Her naps went back down to 45 minutes and she was waking up at 5:30am. I really thought I was about to go insane. Sorry TMI but she also had diarrhea for several days. It was so bad that there were several times when there was nothing I could do to get her to stop crying so I ended up crying with her.

My mom said all of those things could be symptoms of teething - and she was getting her first tooth in on the bottom so that made sense. But I was still worried because she was so incredibly unhappy. Even for her birthday she was so upset. There were moments she was ok, and I think all the people being at the house helped distract her. But I'll do a separate post about her birthday.

So anyway she had her 1 year check up at the doctor scheduled for Monday. If she hadn't I was going to call them anyway because I was so worried about her. 

I was really wondering if the milk was the culprit and not teething. I had her on Similac Alimentum formula because I felt like she was very fussy on soy or anything milk based. I thought maybe I was being too cautious since I never knew for sure if she had a milk allergy, so that's why I decided to just go for whole milk.  

Anyway at the check up, the doctor said she looked great. He said those symptoms could be teething, but if it was, it was some bad teething! I asked him if starting her on the milk might have done something and he told me the only way to find out was just to try something different. He said I could try soy or rice milk, but since I had tried soy formula before and it didn't seem to make it better, I thought I would try rice milk.

Hallelujah! I feel like I finally have the baby back that I know and love. She is smiling again and crawling around and playing - none of which she had done in a week. And she is sleeping normally again (which means mommy is sleeping!!).

The doctor said that if she has a milk allergy (which apparently she does), most babies grow out of it. I hope she does because if she's like her mom and grandpa, she's going to like drinking milk!

She now weighs 19 lbs. 6 oz. and is 30 1/4" long. He said she's in the 30th percentile for weight, but 80th for height. So as expected since she was born, she'll probably be tall. Not sure where she gets it.

Her favorite thing to do is run errands with her mommy - especially the grocery store. She loves seeing all the people and making noises at them. The other day we kept passing this older man in the aisles several times and she would smile and squeal at him each time. When she gets fussy in the store, I give her a wagon wheel and she laughs and looks around like she wants everyone to see what she just got and is very proud of herself.
I'm trying to get her used to other people taking care of her. I have been going to a women's Bible study at my church on Tuesday mornings and taking her to the nursery. It's still a little hard for her. I guess she's like me - I didn't like my mom leaving me either. But hopefully she gets better.

I'll close with a few pictures of her this month.

This is her at BJ's Pizza celebrating Uncle Casey's birthday -

And this is her with her first birthday present (I gave it to her a little early. I couldn't wait!) from her mom and dad. I think she liked it.

I am so thankful for the gift of being her mommy a whole year and look forward to many more with that sweet girl!