:) and :(

What a week of ups and downs! Really for me personally, Ava's doing quite well thank you except for dinner can be kind of skimpy lately, but I'm jumping ahead. The 8th was Momma Gail's 30th birthday! Yay! And for my birthday weekend we all went to the local pottery sales for me to pick out pottery for Jeremy to give me. Ava was a great sport and fun to show off. Someone said "Wow, how much did that baby cost ya?" on the way out of one sale. Then, on Sunday, we all went to my best friend Gaby's for some incredible Paula Deen-style birthday brunch with she and her husband and my two other best buds. What a spread! Hash brown potatoes, cheese grits, sausage balls, bacon, homemade bread, and my new favorite, pecan crusted french toast casserole! Yummy!

Here's Ava's "Auntie" Kate with her-

Later that day my parents came in to town to celebrate my birthday. We all met up at my sister's at which point Ava decided she'd had enough of the day's activities and decided to get pretty darn fussy. We ended up sending my folks to Five Star Day Cafe in town and picking up some food which they brought back out to the country house so Ava could sleep and we could socialize. Here's Grandpa Don holding Ava for the first time (in between fussy spells)-Three things happened on Monday. One, I turned 30! Woo hoo! Two, Jeremy's folks came up from Douglas to stay a few days and they let us go out for dinner without Ava that night. And three, I got an ear infection. (Boo, hiss) I laughed about it for a while, "speak up sonny, I can't hear ya" but it steadily got worse until Wednesday we went and checked into the ER. Yep, bad ear infection, swollen shut, and then it spread to the other ear on Friday. Well, certainly won't forget this birthday. On Tuesday, before the visit for the ear, we visited the hospital for a happier checkup with the midwives just so they could check to see that I'm healing up well enough, which I am.

Here we are with Angela, the midwife who delivered Ava.


And here we are with Susan, the new director of the midwifery center and the leader of our pregnancy centering group. We REALLY love these two ladies! The midwives are awesome!

-notice Ava explaining to Susan "and this is how I stretched when I got the heck out of there"

I have an appointment with an ENT tomorrow. We'll keep you posted. It's been super painful and hard to be a mom at the same time but Jeremy's been great taking care of me. :)