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!

More Fall Fun!

We have our camera back! Just in time for some sweeping outside. I foolishly thought I'd get a little work done outside while the kids played, but they wanted to help me instead, so I took pictures. Sure, they wanted to sweep the grass and not the porch, but who am I to look down on a little help?

Carter's surgery went very well. I wish I'd had a camera for that as he was too cute pacing the halls in his little hospital pajamas. It was a quick surgery and recovery, and we were leaving the hospital by 9am and got home in time for his morning nap!

This afternoon, we took the kids to Young's Jersey Dairy. Mark and I went there quite a bit when we were students at Cedarville. There's a petting barn, tractors to play on, and, of course, ice cream.Ava enjoyed her first ice cream cone and was surprisingly adept at eating it. She got a good bit on her face, but that was the extent of her mess... she knows not to waste good ice cream!

Fall is here!

We've been having beautiful fall weather this week - lots of sunshine and cooler temps. Fall has always been my favorite time of year!

The other day, Ava fell outside on the sidewalk and scraped up her knees. We got bandaids and everything seemed okay, especially when our neighbor came outside with his dogs and she got to love on them for a while. Later when we went inside and she noticed the bandaids on her knees, she again turned into an invalid, holding her knees and hobbling around, acting like the simple act of walking was no longer an option for her and crying to be carried. Meanwhile, Mark and I turned away to hide our laughter as we tried to take care of our pathetic hurt girl.

The other day at the grocery store, Ava had her first public meltdown. Ava's favorite parts of grocery shopping are the free cookies at the bakery and helping to put items on the conveyor belt to check out. I never realized just how important these 2 things were until we had a complete meltdown today. She got her cookie, which is the part I always assumed would bring on a meltdown (should they not have any), but when we went to check out, she was too busy playing with some coupons to help put things on the belt. No big deal to me, but I did ask if she wanted to help. She said, "yes," but continued playing with the coupons. When I was finished, I pushed the cart down to the register. She looked up startled and said, "Mommy, I wanted to help!" I told her I was all done and she broke down. Tears. Sobs. The obligatory, "I want my Daddy!" Even the offer of a sticker didn't help! My reaction? Trying not to laugh. Such drama. Thankfully, it wasn't a loud tantrum and most of those witnessing the fit found it as amusing as I did.

Sometimes when she is on the brink of making me crazy and I'm tired and frustrated, she'll say, "Momma, can you smile?" And I always do.

Next Tuesday, Carter will have minor surgery for meatal stenosis. Basically, the skin around his pee hole (this must be the appropriate medical term as this is how the pediatric urologist referred to it multiple times in our consultation!) has grown over, making the hole smaller than it should be. One night when Mark was bathing him, probably 7 or 8 months ago as he was still in the baby bathtub in the sink, he attempted to spray Mark in the face, but instead hit the window over the sink! Mark was quite concerned that it hadn't gone straight, albeit thankful he hadn't gotten it in the face, so we asked our pediatrician about it. His son had the same thing, and it is a fairly routine surgery. It isn't routine for my baby, however, so I'm a little nervous. We will have to be at the hospital at 6:30 a.m., and I think that might be the worst part of the ordeal!

Hurricane Ike

I never expected to deal with a hurricane in Ohio, but on Sept. 14, we were hit by a huge windstorm (the remnants of Hurricane Ike) taking down many trees resulting in a widespread power outage in the Dayton area. It was a Sunday and we lost power around 3pm. Thankfully, even though we have woods right behind us, we had no damage from trees and relatively few limbs in the yard, although our neighbor had a tree fall on power lines. We spent most of the week without electricity, which for us also means without water since we're on a well. About this time a week ago, we still were without power when I heard a truck next door. I was giddy when I saw it was from the local power company! Another truck arrived and they proceeded to take care of the tree that had fallen at the house next door. We went to bed still without power, but woke up around midnight and noticed we were back on! Mark and I were so excited we got up and cleaned out our freezer and fridge. I'd saved most things from the fridge, but the freezer was emptied.

Being without electricity wasn't nearly as bad as I would have imagined... especially when we found out our good friends did have power and we were able to get a few hot meals and some showers/baths at their house. The weather was great, so no need for AC, although I didn't let the kids play outside since I knew I couldn't give them baths! We went to an indoor play area at the mall and took some other excursions just to get out of the house. Not horrible, but we are extremely grateful to have the power back.

In other exciting news, Mark has been promoted to General Manager and is at the Chipotle right down the road from our church! Of course, his first day was the day after the storm when the restaurant was one of only a few with power, so it was a crazy start to the new position. He's loving it, though, and is excited about his crew and store.

I don't have many recent pictures as our camera is acting up. Thankfully, it looks like Canon will fix it free of charge. Here is one of Carter, who recently has decided he wants to feed himself with utensils. I know he needs the practice, so from time to time I leave him alone and let him have at it. This is the typical result:

More pics from Maryland!

I got a CD from my Dad with more pics from our trip and we just got a new laptop so I can actually pull pictures off a CD (our desktop is having some issues).

The kids have not been well trained on the importance of sleeping in on vacation... instead they were up around 6am every morning. We'd often end up on the front porch swing and glider and a few mornings, we got to see the farm animals across the road close up (this same morning, a horse came right up to us and as Mark was petting it, I foolishly took a picture which scared the poor thing since it was still dark out and the flash went off).

One day we went to the Land of the Little Horses in Gettysburg. A bunch of the horses are out and about, ready to be fed... or hugged.

There were also wagon rides, tractor rides, swimming, bubbles, and general fun with Nana and Pap. You can check out the web album for more pictures of all that or see them scrolling in the corner. Toward the end of our vacation, my brother arrived with his family. Here's Ava with her cousin Abby. (We had to convince them they'd both fit in the car).We ended the trip with a Cartzendafner family reunion.