Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Help! My arms are too short!


I absolutely love how Avi's arms, we'll all baby arms, are "too short". Because of their abnormally large noggin, the arms look dwarfed in comparison - this is completely evident when they raise their arms over their head and all that sticks above is their little hands and wrists. We especially love it when Avi flops her arms above her head and then back down at her sides. We try to imitate her, but our long arms just go flopping wildly up in the air.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Play Time


This picture was taken about 3 weeks ago. This picture is history. Avi is crawling and scaling and cruising now- all within the last 3 weeks! She is amazing, and tiring. Mom can't sit on her butt all day now and eat bon bons - she's got to get up every 5 seconds to stop Avi from putting something into her mouth or from climbing over the dog or from crawling outside and eating dirt. Ahhh, life's tough!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Bucket of fun!

Avi really likes dogs. Whenever she she's one, she turns to face it front on, her body goes tight with anticipation, and she grunts until she can touch it. Keeta is her little companion, but I don't know how excited Keeta is about this designation. She tolerates Avi and sometimes even gets excited about little Avi.

I love how her arm is wrapped over Keeta, here.

Avi is soooo excited!

How's this pose?

Keeta is like, Get me out of here!

Waking up with Avi.

So waking up with a baby cooing and talking is just about the sweetest thing in the world. Avi will "talk" it up in the morning. She has so much to say! Boy, am I going to miss her sweet little incoherent ramblings when she begins to actually be able to accentuate and articulate "real" words! Avi's "language" has developed like this over the last few months. She began saying real sounds (as opposed to cooing and grunting) around 6 months or so. Her first words were "di" and "da". She said these pretty much non-stop whenever she was doing something, like playing with a toy or looking at something. She was explaining the whole world with these two mono-syllabic sounds. The next sound was "ta", followed by "ka" about a week later, and finally (drum roll...) "ma" (which Mommy is still very excited about).

Today, Avi shocked us in several new ways: First, she is really moving towards crawling, she had her palms and knees on the ground underneath her today and moved one knee forward while keeping the other stationary. Next, two new teeth were discovered (by Great-Grammy Louise) on the top of her mouth - this will be her third and fourth teeth. Finally, and the most endearingly, she waved good-bye to her daddy! It was the most precious thing in the world: she held her arm straight up and then closed and opened her fingers over her fist to "wave". She did it several times and I died inside each time. She is really communicating now - which means she is really growing up - which means she will move out someday - which means I will die from missing her... Oh, this parenting thing is much more difficult then they ever say.


Is she not the prettiest girl in the whole wide world!?!

She's changed so much already!

I finally got around to editing and posting some pictures that a photographer friend of mine, Rachel Neumann, took in September when Avi was only 3 months old. Hasn't she changed so much already?!






She won't lay still like this on the changing table anymore!


Look: we have not found her neck yet at this time!


Mommy Maren modeling the Ergo Baby!


Tuesday, April 6, 2010

story time

Avi is really, really into books right now. She will concentrate on them for an amazing length of time for a nine-month-old. She will look at the pages as if they were moving artwork unfolding a new world before her, even though they are just colorful cardboard two-dimension drawings. Her imagination is working, you can just see it in her sparkling eyes. She even turns the pages herself, and she knows they go from right to left - isn't that amazing?!

Daddy is a great story teller. Avi is intent on the story.

Even though the books are interesting to look at, Daddy's moving lips are just as intriguing.

And it's always nice to have a foot to go along with a good story.

rubbery ducky, you're the one...