Party Time

Over the weekend, we celebrated Ava's birthday with my parents and my brother's family. Here are some pics!

Opening presents made by her cousins.

Fancy dress-up clothes made by Nana! (As I expected, she wanted to wear these to church on Sunday.)

Another dress from Nana that she did wear to church... but not the pink play shoes (even though, once again, she did request to wear them).

Her ducky birthday cake - she'd been asking for a ducky birthday cake, so this is what she got. Not sure if it's what she had in mind, but it looked like a fairly simple cake to make (and it wasn't too bad). If you can't tell, it's supposed to be a bathtub with rubber duckies floating in it. Here she is singing along with everyone else singing "Happy Birthday" to her.

Earlier that afternoon, I was changing Carter's diaper and he jumped up and ran away before I had a chance to re-diaper him. I hope it's not in bad taste to post this pic, but I couldn't stop laughing at his cute little tush!

Here's a rare smile caught on camera. It isn't that he doesn't smile much - quite the opposite! But, as soon as he sees the camera, he starts making faces and squinting.
He's only smiling because he's not supposed to be on the coffee table and he thinks it's funny that he made it onto the table without being caught. Notice he has the same little blue matchbox car in his hand for each picture - he LOVES cars.

Happy Birthday, Ava!

Our Ava turns THREE today!

Since Mark is working tonight, we celebrated with birthday pancakes (pumpkin!) this morning.So excited about presents, we didn't even bother to take off the bib!And Carter gets to play with the plastic.Here's a look back at how she's grown:

At her well visit on Friday, we found out she's in the 97th percentile for height and 75th for weight! I'm amazed at how she's transforming from toddler to little girl. The doctor also said her speech is at about a 4-year-old level. Must be because she practices talking so much :). I have no idea how such a little person has so much to say!

More Fall Fun

Each of the kids does so many fun things I never want to forget, but I know unless I write it down, they will fade from memory (since I often can't remember why I left one room to go to another, it's no big surprise).

Ava loves her "lipstuff." She was always wanting to use my chapstick, so I got her some of her very own. She takes very good care of it and always seems to know where it is (as I was typing that she asked if she could go get her lipstuff and put it on!). She also loves to help fold clothes, although she usually ends up wanting to put the clean clothes on... hers, ours, doesn't matter.

Carter is changing so much with each day. He's finally started to say some words. He's made the sounds, "ma ma" and "da da" for some time, but they didn't seem to mean anything. Then one day, he started saying, "hi" and waving like crazy. Shortly after, he seemed to realize what "ma ma" meant and his third word? "Banana." While sometimes, it's only 2 syllables, he'll often come up with all three. He still likes to snuggle and will often sit with me for a while after he's woken up and every once in a while comes over and sits down in my lap. I think my favorite thing right now is his love for shoes. He often runs the other direction when I ask him to come (usually due to an impending diaper change), but if I have shoes in my hand, he comes without me having to ask and plops his little bottom right down to get them on. Sometimes he'll see his shoes, bring them to me, and sit down so I can put them on. On the other hand, he's always trying to get his socks off. Go figure.

We've been spending a lot of time outside and I'm driving Ava crazy taking her picture.






Carter is not fond of Ava hugging him. Of course, this makes me laugh (I try not to as I remind Ava to give Carter his space). The picture above is right before he threw a fit as seen below:

Amazing how they already know how to push each others' buttons!