Avery: Seven Months!

Dear Avery,

You are SEVEN months old! Ack!! Where has the time gone?!?!  Just to refresh your memory, this is what you looked like a mere six months ago.... I literally don't even remember you being this tiny!

Thankfully, you've been growing SO well and are in the 13th percentile for weight! That was a huge accomplishment for you this past month. We're so happy to see you growing and getting chubbier cheeks by the day. Your smile is infectious :)

You still love your brother like crazy (almost as much as you adore your daddy). You love doing just about anything with him, and thankfully, he's really come to love "playing" with you.  I think once you started sitting up (almost two weeks ago!), he felt like you were finally growing up and old enough to play with :) He loves to read to you, sing to you, bring you lots and lots of toys... and you just love it all :)

 Oh yeah, and seriously, you love your daddy!

We've had so much fun with you this past month... hope you're enjoying life in this crazy family :)

Other fun things about you:

* we had been concerned about your lack of "talking", but starting just a few days ago, you babble all the time! It's like you've finally found your voice, and we love it! Sometimes a room will be quiet and all of a sudden we'll hear "Gagagagagaga!!!".

* you are a little shy when you first meet people (i.e. sometimes you just start crying when somebody other than me, daddy, or Benjamin talk to you)... but you usually warm up to folks after a bit. Quite the opposite of your extremely extroverted brother, that's for sure!

* you have gotten great at eating solids and usually gulp down whatever it is we're feeding you (though you still grimace when you have to eat green beans!). Now bottle feeding, that's a different story... you love to make it difficult! (You're up to 5 capsules of enzymes before each "meal"! But we're moving to bigger doses/capsule, so we'll start 3 of those soon)

* you love reading books with your brother.

* you got your first TOOTH! About a week ago I noticed it popping through on the bottom... that might explain some of your cranky nights lately!

* still no real rolling over other than almost immediately after we put you on your tummy so that you can quickly get back to your back. I'm not sure why you hate being on your tummy quite so much, but I foresee this making you disinterested in crawling for quite some time!

* your sleep is all over the place.  One night we got a solid 8pm-7:30am sleep with only one need for a pacifier readjustment (which was amazing!!), but that apparently was a fluke because you still wake up about five times wanting your pacifier back. And usually you end up in bed with us around 5:30am so the rest of the family can sleep for another hour :)

And a few more things:

Your brother really loves to read to you lately, it's so darn cute I can hardly stand it! He likes to pick books that he knows most of the words to :)

You went to your first basketball game (at CU):

You like visiting the museum:

You sit up like a champ now!!! (with the occasional topple to left or right)

You had three doctors appointments in three days, but your brother was there to support you and you seemed to love that :)

 Look how big you are!!

Still love seeing buddies!!

Here's a pic of your first tooth!

Oh, and your hair is coming in (just a teeny bit, but we'll take it!). Every day it seems just a little fuzzier than the day before :)

Took your first big girl bath without the baby tub last week! You're still pretty unstable on the slippery tub, but you seem to love it (and so does Benjamin!):

And that's it for now sweet girl. We are having so much fun with you and are loving watching you grow. Can't wait to see what the next month brings!

Love,
Mom & Dad

February Photo Dump

Well, true to my word, here's the second photo dump, this time of February. Maybe I'll get better about posting more frequently so I don't have to put a thousand pics in one post, but let's be honest, that likely won't happen. :)

Here are some of things we did in February (aside from what's already been blogged like Avery's dedication and our date night):

This happened to my 6 month old phone causing a string of events including about eight visits to various phone providers. Fun!

Visit to the museum to say goodbye to the whale exhibit:

Benjamin really loves helping with grocery shopping lately...

We watched the Hutchinson kiddos for a bit and had fun with buddies of course!

I mean, these kids are CUTE.

Benjamin often wants to read books with Avery in his bed:

More soccer fun!

A little video of him in action:

Playing some "pickup basketball" at Stedman Elementary school after work one day. Benjamin declared "I am a basketball player!!":

Watching a movie, Benjamin's favorite past time:

For Valentine's Day, we didn't have any big plans so just made a fun day of hanging out together. We took a trip to Cake Crumbs for lunch and then made a nice dinner at home!

We even opened a nice bottle of Barbera from our wine country trip in 2013 :)

The next day we headed into Boulder to go to a CU Buffs basketball game.  We left with sunny, blue skies, but arrived to a snow storm!  I was worried Benjamin wouldn't make it through the whole game, but he ended up loving it! It probably helped that we sat next to the band and near Chip (the mascot), so he was in the thick of things!

This is concentrating look:

Seriously, so special for me to bring my kiddos - in their Buffs gear! - to a game on my old campus!

Chip even came to talk to him!

Another visit to the museum:

Oh, you know, riding a big boy bike:

Kari and I went on a girls night complete with drinks, dinner, and foot reflexology!!

Some neighbor friends came over for dinner:

don't worry, Iyla invented this game of putting magnets down her shirt, Benjamin did not :)

More snow:

Meeting Natalie at the museum:

Benjamin likes to be buried with all the shopping goodies these days:

More reading in bed together:

Reading on the couch:

Hmmm... I think this picture was from the Superbowl. Yes, we probably did watch it at home while in pajamas and playing board games.

Oh, and at the end of February, I headed to Vegas with my awesome sister who took me there for my birthday/Christmas complete with seeing Britney in concert.  That deserves its own post soon :)