A Weeks Review

I'm writing(typing) this with one hand as Ava sleeps on my chest. So, we've been slack with the posts lately and I'm gonna try to bring everyone up to speed with recent developments. Last weekend, Grandma Ginger came to stay and help us out again, which was really like a little vacation for Jeremy and I. We were able to catch up on things around the house and I was able to do some power shopping at Target with the gift cards while Ginger kept the cart in motion. : ) We were also able to attend our friends the Kruskamp's wedding at a local B&B, which was beautiful and tons of fun! Ginger babysat with milk I've just started pumping at Ava's one month mark and she's occaisionally taking a bottle- but she won't from me cuz I'm the real deal and she knows better! Here's Grandma with Ava- Not only has Ava graduated to taking a bottle sometimes, but she's also started to smile at us and in response to things we do, like kissing her or playing with her, or when Daddy's a goob- which happens quite often! It's very rewarding to be able to interact with her more now and get to know her sweet personality.

Here's Ava cracking wise at her Daddy's mustache-
It's kind of blurry but here's one of many smiles, they're hard to catch with the camera-
Thursday, Ava and I went for her one month check-up and Hep B shot. She's really growing like a weed! That day she weighed 10 lbs 2 oz and we also have to correct her birth length because right now she's 22 1/4 inches long. She must have been 20 inches when she was born and they mismeasured. Actually, when we went to the pediatrician the first time, they said she was 20 inches but I thought they were wrong. Oh, well. The hospital never sent us home with anything printed with her length, just weight and time. We just heard them say her length in the hubbub of the delivery room. So, correction.


Another development, Ava has taken to sleeping in a Moby wrap, which I wear and then I can do things around the house with her close to me. So, here we go again, another shot of my bosoms-

And to round out this post, Jeremy's office had a Mustache May party on Friday, which was Ava's first party to attend. They didn't have a good Ava sized mustache there but here's Mommy in a fu manchu-
And here's Ava's mustache, which she sprouted just in time for the end of May, (must of been Rogaine or something in her bottle...)*
*No babies were harmed in the making of these pictures. And for all of you who may cry foul at my dressing up my baby in a mustache, I simply refer to my parents dressing me up as a conehead when I was a baby and taking pictures. It's tradition...

Happy Birthday Aunt Randi!

It's Ava's real Aunt's Birthday today! Too bad (or good?) when we stopped by to see her today, Ava was passed out in her carseat from the day's activities. She went to my work at the archaeological firm I've been at the last 6 years and then we went to Jeremy's work to visit as well. All that visiting was hard work staying cute for! ;)

Here are a couple of pic of Randi and Ava from her visit with us last weekend.

4 weeks/ 1 month old!

Yippee! Can you believe it? Ava's already 4 weeks old and growing like a weed. I swear she must weigh at least 9 1/2 lbs already. As of last Thursday she was already at 9. We go for our one month pediatrician appt. next Thursday and we'll see how much she weighs then. After posting yesterday, Ava was pretty much fussy all afternoon and into the night, which was worse than the night before. I couldn't even go in for decaf coffee at the racetrac last night! She cried as soon as we hit the parking spot. Dang! Oh well. Today, we're keeping our fingers crossed that today's really good rest will help. She actually slept by herself for two hours in the cradle. That's huge! Here's some cute pics to celebrate!


Jeremy at the Centering Pregnancy reunion last ThursdayI love this pic! She's smiling! She likes the dangley toys a lot.
Another one from her first bath.

Sleep begets sleep

We're having a sleep catch-up day here at the Tarver household. Ava was pretty much fussy all afternoon and into the night yesterday, constantly verging on sleep but fighting it and waking back up after ten or so minutes. So today little girl has been power napping all but one hour but still eating about every two. I had a breakdown myself last night after hours of me and Jeremy trading off soothing her, and after falling asleep breastfeeding, en route moving to the bed she got herself all worked up again. I woke up Jeremy crying, he took her and told me to sleep, which I did fitfully for a couple hours, until I woke up from a bad dream, missing Ava,and went to look for her. Wish I had a pic for ya'll but I didn't want to wake ANYONE up with the flash, because Jeremy was sleeping hard on the futon, with Ava swaddled fast asleep in her vibrating chair next to him. We're learning quick whatever it takes- vibrating chair, car ride, gripe water (which helps a lot with tummy troubles but I don't always remember to use it in time), stroller rides (we're wearing out the tires on the gravel already!), or just rocking and patting. At any given time, she can hate whats worked before but something else will do. For now I'm just banking on an adage an experience mom told us- "Sleep begets sleep". Let's hope these naps help!

Actual information

We are doing pretty well (today). The first half of the week, Sunday - Wednesday, went quite swimmingly. Gail and Ava didn't have any problems, and I was able to sleep through the night in the other room (either living room or bedroom, whichever wasn't occupied by babes and boobs). However Wednesday night Ava decided she she was not pleased with 1am to 3am. I'm not sure exactly what it was that made her feel this way, but she let us know of her disapproval. Gail hadn't been able to get much sleep, and when the silver bullet (breastfeeding) didn't work, she was tired and frustrated and didn't know what to do, so she woke me up to share in the misery, erm, joy of a baby. Sadly lacking boobs myself, I've always had to resort to creative soothing. So that mom could get some sleep, I took Ava for a midnight drive. Babies like car rides, its a pretty good approximation to womb like conditions. So I drove around in circles on Flat Rock Road for about 2 hours. Sometimes she slept, sometimes she woke up and voiced her displeasure. I had the foresight to bring along marital aids (or as Gail likes to call them - "earplugs"), so when Ava was dissin' 2:19AM, I was able to hear the muffled version. Along the way we saw 4 deer, 2 cats, 2 racoons, and a possum. By the time it was close to 3am, and I knew Gail had gotten almost 2 hours rest, we cruised back to the hacienda. Ava got a midnight snack, and the both of em chilled for the rest of the evening. I stayed jacked up on coffee and delirious for the next few hours.
Thursday I'm fairly worthless at work, although I did manage to help mount a cd rack on the wall. Thursday night, repeat. We saw 3 deer (although to be fair, maybe it was two and we saw the 2nd deer twice), 2 cats, and two other scampering sets of unidentified eyes. This time I drove around for only about an hour and a half, and came back hoping Ava would sleep easy. Gail fed her, then we swaddled her and put her in the vibrating chair on top of the bed. It worked! Huzzah! So mom and baby got some rest. I was bent from having really weird sleep hours, and around 4am emailed in that I was too stupid to work. Friday I just did my best to keep it together. Saturday was ok, although it felt like there was never enough time to do anything. Dishes were piling up, Gail kept trying to do stuff like laundry, and I kept having to bitch slap her and say - get a nap honey! Throughout the day we kept talking about breaking down and calling in some help from Aunt Randi, but we managed to get through the day.
I guess Gail had gotten enough naps on Saturday such that during the night she was able to cope with the fussiness. I think at one point Gail tried to wake me up, and I rolled over and said something probably incoherent or ridiculous, and it got me off the hook, because she let me sleep through the night. So today I feel almost mentally at par, and have had time to catch up on the blogging. I guess the schedule for updates will for the foreseeable future be on the weekends. I'd hoped to be more consistent throughout the week, but breeding is so much easier than rearin...

She's like this all the time, I swear!

Couple of Firsts

I'm gonna cut straight to the chase on this one...

First Bath!

I fear the adjectives "cute" and "adorable" are going to be worn out and break apart from overuse. Perhaps I'll invent a new word to save the English language from the inevitable fallout.

Here's Gail coming home from her first stroll with Ava.

We totally live in the country.

Random bit

Pictured below is our diaper champ. The thing gobbles diapers like bankers do cash. I've taken to calling it R2Poo2.

The Alabama Android

Cat pictures

You guys like cats? How about pictures of cats???

If I fits in it,
I sits in it.

This is an interesting picture of Froggy, just checking things out in the woodshed. Her bobbed tail is just barely visible sitting on the kindling shelf.

Mothers Day 09

Entirely out of chronological order... but I'm skeptical about the nature of time anyway. Here is a beautiful picture of Momma and her baby.

Happy Mother's Day sweetheart!

Below is a quick photo I snapped while we were setting up for the glamor shot. Fisher is assisting with the lighting check.

Baby pictures

You guys like babies? What about pictures of babies?

Adorable.

This next one's just funny - Ava looks like she's been caught in the act of breaking into a convenience store.

Busted!!!

Visit from Scot and Grace

Saturday (not yesterday, but the Saturday belonging to last weekend) we had some visitors. Scot and Grace came over along with their two girls Ella and Aubrey. Grace was kind enough to make us up a bag full of sandwiches, each individually wrapped in foil, so as to be popped into the toaster oven and devoured after 10-15 minutes. They were delicious and extremely handy - Thanks Grace!

What are they talking about? I think it's embarrassing BB.

Back to the visit... while Scot, Grace, Gail, and BB sat around discussing God knows what, I was entertaining the girls. Now trampolines are an extreme form of entertainment and shouldn't be taken lightly. Ours produced four black feet, three new games, and tons of giggles.

Here's a video of Ella and Aubrey bouncing themselves into (temporary) exhaustion.

Don't talk with your mouth full

We're still working with her on some of the finer points of etiquette.

I love my family! Happy Mother's Day everyone!

Someone once told me, "If you think you love your husband now, wait until he holds your child." They were so right. And even more so when he blogs about her. As he said, the help that our mothers have given us the past two weeks was incredibly helpful. We love our Moms! On that note, here are two pics of my slightly pudgy self with Ava in honor of my first Mother's Day.

Unstoppable cuteness

Here's a picture of Ava in a shirt her Aunt Lisa got for her. (If it seems like there are lots of aunts and uncles, it's because we're basically calling all our friends aunt/uncles. It's not like we both have 24 siblings.)

The shirt is pretty awesome, it says "I can't wear pink everyday".

So I've been reading "The Book of Flying", and enjoying it very much. This afternoon I was holding Ava, and thought I might want to continue reading while holding her. But I just couldn't do it - I couldn't stop looking at her. Everything she does is enchanting and new, even when she makes unpleasant faces like when she's trying to argue against the flat tax, she is captivating. I'm a pretty serious reader, and not easily torn away once in the grip of a good book. Why once when I was reading A Tale of Two Cities I finished a chapter even though there was a snapping turtle latched on to my ear and my left leg was on fire. But today I couldn't even manage to pick up this beautiful lyrical book because of the unstoppable cuteness in my lap. She's beginning to worry me.

Tough guy eh?

Sure I've been sewing, but I play a Native American sport known as the Little Brother of War, and am a world champion. Here's a picture of Ava and Dad. I wanted Gail to take this picture because I'm wearing a shirt with the sleeves cut out.
Because I'm tough...
So shut up about the sewing, ok?!?


You might notice the shadow between my nose and mouth. This month is Mustache May at Partner Software, so I'm trying to sport some fuzz.

Swaddle Bomb

Swaddling is awesome, but can be tricky. As one of the few things I can do to soothe an upset baby, I took it seriously. So I got fairly adept at turning a blanket and a baby into a baby burrito. However there are times when the blanket is too small, or its late at night and your coordination is gone, or maybe the baby seems to have learned karate. The little rascals tend to wriggle and squirm and get their arms out of the wrap, then startle and upset themselves by getting smacked in the face by these weird uncontrollable appendages. So I figured there's got to be a more refined technique to keep a baby wrapped that doesn't involve duct tape (never managed to talk Gail into it...) So I did the Google, and found a few commercial offerings. One in particular caught my eye, and seemed like a good design. I could have ordered it, but that would have taken longer, I wanted something within a day or two. So I went to prototyping.

I call it the Swaddle Bomb, pictured here is Mark III.

To test the dimensions I took the obvious approach and used a bag of sugar and a banana.

Ava is actually both longer than this, and sweeter, but the test was still valid.

Now Mark III was pretty close, but her little monkey feet kept popping out. So I added some material to the bottom of the right wing, which worked fairly well. I adjusted the pattern to match the fabric modification, and changed the slope around the shoulders so it would be a bit more snug. Mark IV was much closer to the ... ahem ... mark.

Like a straight-jacket, but for babies.

Did I mention I learned to sew last week in order to do this? Probably not, because you'd try to beat me up and take my lunch money.

Parenting Tip

When the baby is crying her head off, it's a real downer, but fortunately there are a few tricks you can try and chill out the baby. One common technique is driving the baby around in a car. The vibrations and humming noise sooth them by apparently mimicking the sounds in utero. A favorite technique of ours works basically the same way, but it saves some gas and as a bonus gets laundry done at the same time. The trick is to put the baby in the car seat, and put the car seat on top of the ironing machine (or as Gail likes to call it - the "dryer").

If you look closely you'll see that we've got the cuteness set on high.
(keeps 'em from wrinkling...)

Y'all still reading this thing?

Awfully persistent of ya. We haven't posted for dang near a week. I'll try to make up for it with a flurry of posts this evening. The chronological order of the events and photos will be avant guard (or if you've a penchant for the truth I barely know what day it is anymore). Maybe I should start writing it down on my pants. When I wear pants. Ok - so pictures, everybody loves pictures! This is one of the last ones we have of Nana Tomczak before she left us on Thursday.

Pika was kind enough to give Nana room to put up her feet after a long day of baby holding.

Nana was tremendously great. Listen folks - if you plan on breeding, I highly recommend getting yourself some grandparents, find em at the mall, the dog park, craigslist, wherever. But you need at least two. I don't know what we'd have done without help from both our mothers.

New pics

Today was my first day back at work, and I sure could have used a nap about halfway through it. I'm a bit tuckered, so this post will consist mostly of pictures. Here's a great one of Nana holding Ava.

Auntie Helen and Ava

And in completely baby-unrelated news, while I was outdoors working on a massive landscaping project I happened to catch sight of this snake slipping out of the buffet...I mean bird house. I snapped several pictures, and got some video near the end.

Us and "little foot"

Buddha Baby

I've started calling Ava "little foot" despite her monkey toes which she inherited from her mother.
She's also a squiggler, a squeaker, a snorter, and occasional snorer. She likes to talk with her mouth full too, as she can really carry on while she breastfeeds. Breastfeeding is going really great, but the trick will be when and how to go somewhere between feedings. I've already fed her in the car a couple times-parked just so you know-once right when we were trying to leave the hospital (I want to eat now thank you very much)

Friday, Grandma Tarver headed home to catch up on some sleep during the weekend before finishing out the last few weeks of the school year teaching. Nana Phyllis came Friday evening and has turned out to be an excellent shusher for Ava.We still have some rough bouts at night but I think I'm starting to learn more about how Ava behaves when she doen't get enough sleep or we try to do to much activity for her during the day. I've also been reading about setting a bedtime and about teaching her to sleep in her cradle. Lately we've gotten in the habit of sleeping together on the futon bed, which I enjoy some because I can be so close with her and wake when she stirs before she gets upset, but this arrangement also cuts into my ability to stretch out comfortably. Several folks I know have told me for a while their babies had to sleep on them to settle for those first few weeks, but I can't sleep sitting up. We'll see. I'll gladly take any constructive advice, but please be easy on the critcism.
Ava had many wonderful visitors this past week, including her Uncle Ron (from my work), Jesse Bowling and Helen Kruskamp, Jimmy Cretney, and her Aunts Gaby Lindsey and Kate Kaiser.


Ava and her Tia Gaby
Ava and her Auntie Kate