All About Ava!

Going on 7 months now...

2009-01-10T11:47:00.008-06:00

In a week, Ava will be 7 months old! Crazy!! She's sitting up, "scooting", eating better, and smiling ALL the time!! I've been putting her in her highchair regularly now, and I think that's helping with the whole "eating solids" thing. She's into her routines and likes when things are consistent. I guess I created that trait in her from the beginning ;) She gets a bath every night and that lets her know bedtime comes next - I put her in her highchair and that lets her know that it's time to eat! And it works for the most part. Here's our happy girl in her highchair this morning waiting for her cereal!!

The Holidays were great - spent time with family and friends, both. Went to DeSoto to my Mom's house on Christmas Eve Day and spent time with My Mom (Nana B), Jim, Zach, and My Grandpop. We had a feast 2 days in a row, played lots of cards and some scrabble, opened presents with Ava for the 1st time, and had some adult beverages too! The morning after Christmas we got up and had brunch then packed up for the long drive to Marshall. 3 1/2 hours with 2 dogs and a baby. I thought it was going to be torture, but Ava slept the WHOLE way!! Man, that was nice! While in Marshall we got to see some friends down at The Hus, hung out with Pat's family, and saw my Dad (G Daddy). Had more good food, more adult beverages, opened more presents, played more games, etc! I even got my hair done while there - Thanks Erica!! Love it! So, all in all it was a very nice holiday season. Oh yeah!! The week before Christmas we decided to take Ava to the mall to meet Santa for the first time - she did great! No crying!! And he even had a real beard!

On New year's we didn't do much - let's face it, we're parents now! We stayed home and played our new Wii - which is SO many hours of FUN!! Well worth the money! I took the day after New Year's Day off, so I had a 4 day weekend, and what did we do? Played the Wii most of the time. Pat and I already have birthday wish lists to add to our Wii fun - I would like to have the Wii Fit and Pat wants some shooting games and a gun for the Wii. :) Anyway, Robby and Rachel were in town, so they came over and played the Wii and hung out for a bit on New Year's Eve, then we made a killer dinner on New Year's Day - Filet and Lobster Tail! Yum!! It beats fighting the crowds (especially when you have a little one) and you obviously get more for your money!! I took a few pictures of Ava on New Year's and she is really getting this camera thing down! She's so photogenic!! ;) She really does pose though, and I think she knows what the camera is - so she starts smiling right when she sees you with the camera! So cute :)

That's all for now! I really am trying to make an effort to blog more! Till next time...

Ava is almost 6 months old!!

2008-12-14T20:31:00.005-06:00

Next week Ava will be 6 months old - I can hardly believe it! I know it's been quite a while since my last post, so Ava has grown quite a bit!! She has been rolling over for a while now...from her tummy to her back and then back to her tummy again! One day I had her on the floor where she was playing under some hanging toys - I went in the other room for a minute and when I came back, she had rolled all the way off her blanket and the area rug onto the hardwood floors!! Pretty soon she'll be crawling, and then we'll be chasing her all over the place!!

She is also sitting up now, which is so cool. She has a whole new view of things and I think she's diggin' it! And, oh, the beginnings of solid foods! What an experience - for all of us!! First comes cereal, then orange veggies (we started with sweet potatoes) and man, she made some funny faces! Once she gets it down and gets used to the spoon (and the process) we'll move on to green veggies, then fruit!

Sarah took 6 month pictures of Ava one week ago today! From what I've seen so far, they are absolutely beautiful!! I got a sneak preview, so I'll share what I've seen so far and post a link later :) Hope you enjoy them as much as we have - Sarah is awesome!

Ava Adeline Hanson!

2008-10-03T16:27:00.010-05:00

I am officially back to blogging! Well, at least today I am! :) Hopefully I can keep this up. It has been a good 5 months since I blogged last, and well, a lot has changed! I had our precious baby girl on Thursday June 19th at 4:55 pm.

Welcome to the world:

Ava Adeline Hanson
7 lbs. 8 oz.
21 inches long

She is now 3 1/2 months old and cuter than ever! :) She loves her mommy's milk and now ways a good 15 pounds!! She is also over 24 inches long now! The doc informed us that she is in the 90th percentile for height and weight! That's our girl!

She is cooing, babbling, squeeling, smiling, and just loving life - even at this early age!! She absolutely loves bath time, too. Every night I give her a bath and no matter what kind of mood she's in before that, as soon as I put her down in that warm sudsy water she is happy as a clam! Some of her other likes and loves right now are playing in her Exersaucer, watching Baby Einstein DVD's, swinging in her swing, batting at toys above her, pulling my hair, licking her cold teething ring even though she isn't teething yet, going to MU Football games (well, only 1 so far, but she did great!) and lots more...

She still has blue eyes (hope they stay that way) and a head full of hair!! She's also sleeping through the night, which is awesome! She's our little angel and pride & joy! There's so much more I could go on and on about, but I'll save some for later.

Until next time... :)

77 days to go!!

2008-04-09T20:45:00.003-05:00

OK, so it's only been about a month since I blogged last. Woops! The Hanson's have had lots going on since the last time I wrote, so I'll do my best to update everyone now...

As everyone knows, I have the handiest husband in the world - and he's been working away on our house!! He ripped out all the carpet and has laid new wood floors that look amazing! The next step is new carpet in all the bedrooms, and then we can get baby girl's room all set up. Let me tell you, I can't wait! I am soooo excited to see all the cute furniture set up - and I even talked Pat into letting put up a chandelier for the new light fixture. It's gonna be sooo dang cute :) I promise to post pictures as soon as it's done, but that may be a little while from now!

Other than house work, we are pretty boring - we did go for a regular check up at the Doc's office earlier this week and it seems as though our little one has positioned herself correctly in Mommy's belly! She's head down as of now. Cross your fingers that she stays that way - no breech baby's here!! ;) She has also been getting the hiccups quite regularly, which is cute and annoying all at the same time. The first time that it happened, I was like "Awwww, she's got the hiccups - feel it babe!" But she gets them like 10 times a day, and let me tell you it gets pretty old!! Ha.

So, now to address the title of this post - ONLY 77 DAYS TO GO UNTIL MY DUE DATE!!! What?!! How in the world did that happen?! I think most women want that day to come, like yesterday. But me - I can't believe that I only have 77 days (or less) to prepare for her to enter the world! Ahhhhhhh! Scary. But, we'll be fine I know. I hear that these thoughts are totally normal! ;) If anyone has any words of wisdom, pass them on! Oh yeah, here are the latest belly pictures. The one on the right is from last week and the other 2 are from tonight (29 weeks)! She sure is growing! Have a great night.

Long time comin'

2008-03-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

OK, for those of you that have been checking my blog regularly only to find that I suck at keeping up with this - I'm sorry! I have lots to update on, I'm sure, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum :)

Last weekend, my Mom and Pat's Mom came to Columbia and we had a nice girls day out! We went to finalize all the baby furniture for her room! So exciting. My Mom bought the crib for us and had it at her house, so she brought it to our house since she was making the trip to CoMo. Pat's Mom bought the changing table for us, which is totally awesome - more on that in a minute. My Dad bought us a toy chest and a bookcase for her room, too. So, Baby Hanson has furniture! Yipee :)

By the way, there's a man in Mexico, MO by the name of Jim Stubblefield that makes AWESOME furniture. He custom made my changing table for me. All I had to do was tell him what I wanted. That's where us girls went last weekend - I wanted to check and see how things were coming...and it's coming along great! I couldn't be happier with ALL the furniture that we have picked out! The room is just going to be too cute :) We went with all black distressed furniture and we're doing pink and green for the room. I can't wait to get the crib put together and all the furniture moved in her room - I mean have Pat put it all together! Ha. As soon as we do, I will post pictures of her room.

For now, I have a picture of the crib that my Mom got us (the black one on the left) and pictures of the crib bedding that we got (the pink and green bedding in the picture on the right!) Pottery Barn Kids just might make me go broke real soon! Their stuff is soooo cute! Enjoy!

Oh yeah - I am also posting a new picture of the ever growing belly - 25 weeks now! Man, this is going quick!!

One long weekend!

2008-02-24T21:06:00.000-06:00

So, I am finally back and happy to report that Pat and I made it through registering at Target just fine! Since the weather was so bad on Thursday night, there was literally no one in the store and we got in and got our stuff done and got out! That doesn't happen too often :) I gave in and let Pat put a few things on the registry that he wanted - like a camo diaper bag and a jogger stroller! That made him very happy!

I had quite the encounter with my toaster oven this weekend - weird, I know! I baked homemade mini chocolate chip cookies on Friday - by the way, they turned out awesome - and I decided to store them in a big ziploc bag on the counter for easy access. When I was all done baking, I wiped up the kitchen counters and I guess I put the ziploc bag on top of the toaster oven so I could wipe up and forgot to put the cookies back down on the counter. Saturday morning I got up and decided a bagel with cream cheese sounded lovely, so I popped one in the toaster oven and set it and basically forgot about it. While it was toasting, I went and checked my email...not a very good idea. I heard the buzzer go off so I went into the kitchen and there was smoke coming out of the toaster, the bagel was black, and to top it all off the bag of cookies had begun to melt to the top of the toaster oven! Wow - I officially have "baby brain" or "mushy brain syndrome" as I like to call it! Moral of the story - pregnant women should only try to do one thing at a time! Multi-tasking is not as easy anymore ;) The good news, though, is the cookies were fine! Thank God! I pulled the bag off immediately - knowing that my bagel had no hope I decided to save the cookies first thing! I just had to put them in a new bag since this one had a whole eaten through it. Ha. After the toaster oven incident, Pat and I got to work painting 2 rooms and a hallway in our house...big job, but we got it all done this weekend! The kitchen is next, then off to the baby room we go to start on the nursery. We are making progress. Thank goodness for handy husbands. I don't know what I would do without him sometimes. Painting is probably one of the things I despise the most, so Pat pretty much took the lead on this project...just like all the other ones! What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes. Wow. He even decided that he'd make me dinner tonight since it had been such a long day and I needed to sit for a minute. It was a yummy dinner too. Man, I love him!

Well, that's all for now. I'll be back soon with more funny pregnant stories. I have attached the latest "belly" picture that we have taken. I am 22 weeks now and the belly isn't getting any smaller!! I can't wait to attach photos of our cute little baby girl instead of my growing belly!! LOL.

February 21st, 2008

2008-02-21T17:31:00.000-06:00

OK, so I am jumping on the band waggon and starting a blog. I feel a little silly about doing this - but I have had some requests to document/journal my pregnancy experiences. So, this is my way of getting you all of the info (good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant) about my day to day encounters with being pregnant for the first time. And don't get me wrong - I will have to throw in some non-pregnant stuff now and then, too! Just to keep us all sane and also to ensure that my friends will in fact venture into the wonderful, but scary, world of mommyhood ;) Because I'm sure after reading some of my posts, you might think twice! Don't be scared, just do it!!

Here goes nothing!

Today was pretty uneventful. I decided to work from home since the weather was not on my side. Freezing rain all day is not what I call prime weather to be out and about making sales calls. So, I spent the majority of the day on my computer and on the phone. OK, I must confess - when I say I am working from home, I actually mean shopping online and researching anything and everything I can about pregnancy and baby gear!! There - now that this is off of my chest, I can continue! So, today I bought a pair of maternity "skinny" jeans! I've been looking for a pair that I liked for a while now - I've even ordered a couple with no luck and had to send them back. So, hopefully these will work. Not that they will make me look any skinnier, obviously, but they are too cute! I'm excited to get them in the mail. Tonight we are going to brave the horrible weather and head out to Target to see if we can't get the baby registry started. I excused Pat from having to go through a day of registering at Babies R Us last weekend (my Mom and I went through the pain together instead), so I figure the least he could do is join me for the Target registry. He happily accepted and was really greatful that I didn't subject him to our 6 hour day at Babies R Us! Yes, 6 hours...don't ask! So, I'll be back tomorrow to let you all know how Target went. Hopefully Pat won't get too overwhelmed with all the onesies, carseat/stroller combos, and binkies to choose from! ;)