Sitti's, August 2010

Cousin Jaime, Momma, Aveah, Cousin Miles

All the cousins and Sitti reading Avi a book before bed. She was having so much fun with all that attention! If you asked Avi to point out the apple, she could find it and point to it. That impressed her cousins and grandma!

Looking up to Cousin Matthew.

Sitti feeding Avi watermelon.

Isn't this the cutest expression on Avi?!

Bath time in the sink!

Gotta have sun protection from that Fresno sun!

Avi using her first swimming pool (a Christmas gift from Uncle Matt & Cousin Matt).

Random iPhone pictures

Downloaded from my phone, here are pictures taken in the last 6 months. Low quality, but full of specialness!

Getting weighted at the doctors.

Here's an (unedited) picture of Avi asleep on my chest when she had eczema. Sad, huh, how rashy her face (and body) was. Thankfully, she has outgrown that now! Woo hoo!

Here's the same picture, but edited! Doesn't she look much more peaceful without all those rashes? If only I could have edited them out in real life for my little Dove.

Hanging out at home some random day. I like this picture because it shows life as it is: messy, comfortable and sunny! (Notice Keeta passed out on the floor.)

Hanging (literally) out before bed in our sky chair.

Reading Green Eggs and Ham before bed.

Avi's teething on me. Yes, those are bite marks. Yes, that is mommy's arm. Yes, motherly love is true love.

Avi in "class" with her friends. She's the one in the center with the pink dress.

Hanging out on Aryn's parent's porch.

She's a Hiker.

Avi is a hiker. Really, I'm not exaggerating. She hiked uphill for a good quarter of a mile on an official hiking trail along Multanomah Falls in Oregon. As she passed people along the trail, they would comment: "She's hiking better than me", or "Keep going, baby!", and "Oh, my, isn't she the cutest!", etc., etc. We've heard many comments from strangers before (having a baby makes you an instant friend of the world), but what was interesting was that everyone, yes, everyone we passed had something encouraging or sweet to say to her. I thought it was so uplifting and beautiful of the human race to edify this little hiker.

Aveah was so confident of her hiking abilities she was ready to hike downhill, too, even against her parents protests. We tried to hold her hands going downhill, but she waved them off by shaking free of our grasp. She probably would have been successful at her downhill hiking if it wouldn't have been for that gravel that she slipped on that plummeted her forward without time to put her hands out to brace the fall. Result: her first goose bump on her forehead. It was enough to break our hearts with worry. She sobbed, and luckily, mommy's milk was there and she was able to breast feed (the only thing that calmed her down). What would we have done without that secret weapon? Her forehead even had little scratches on it from the gravel. This experience was shocking enough to us that we decided to book it home, we were spent! (Thus, this is the official last post of our Summer 2010 epic vacation.)

Avi would fall and get right back up. What a trooper!

Here's one of her admirers that stuck around for 5 minutes or so. She just couldn't get enough of little Avi!

About 3 minutes before the "fall."

After the fall, Daddy is calming Aveah down with some food and a book, while mommy reads through the baby books about what are the signs and symptoms of a concussion! If you look closely, you can see the shine of the bump forming on her head and the bluish color underneath. Poor Avi.

Random Vacation iPhone Pictures

Downloaded from my phone - here are some random, low-quality (but high-meaning) pictures from our trip this summer.

Avi getting out her passport before crossing the border into Canada.

Tribute picture to Maren's brother Brant.

A moment captured. This was on the Sunshine Coast, about 30 miles south of the "end of the raod."

Michael and me at the "end of the road", or as the people in Lund, British Columbia like to say, "the beginning of the road/mile zero." This is where Highway 101 begins and the road north ends.

This is one of our (free) "campgrounds". This is in downtown Portland, along the river in a parking lot for a computer firm. We love this spot! Along a bike path, near downtown, quiet at night, free!

Here's a view from our "campsite" in Seattle. This was a residential/commercial street in the hip Freemont district. We stayed here close to a week. The bike path you see stretched on for miles. There were cute coffee shops in abundance nearby (it is Seattle!). In the evenings when Avi would go to sleep, one of us would sneak out to get food and a RedBox DVD, then we'd sit with the monitor outside and eat while watching the boats go by. In the morning, we'd leave our campsite, drive downtown, park and explore downtown during the day. Theo Chocolate factory was right around the corner (free chocolate tasting whenever our hearts and taste buds desired)!

Here's an example of eating dinner outside our camper. This campsite, though not as pretty, was centrally located. This was the parking lot of a hotel in Hood River, Oregon. Nearby was a Starbuck (think breakfast and coffee) and RedBox (think entertainment while baby is sleeping) - two essentials on this trip.

Grand Grandparents!

Avi spent most of her second summer hanging out with her grandparents and us in the Pacific Northwest & Canada. Though my dad would still like to pretend he isn't capable of taking care of her, all the evidence I saw and heard tells me otherwise. He slept with her when she was fussy at night while babysitting, took her on a stroller ride in the morning before I woke up, let her sit on his lap while she ate. And though he never braved changing a diaper, I know that this man, who orchestrates the construction of huge buildings, would have succeeded just fine in that, too.

Mimi was the opposite of Grampy. Where he liked to act like he didn't know what he was doing, Mimi knew she knew what to do with little Avi. And though my mom had a lot of good ideas, she never tried to push them on Michael or me, but let us make our own decisions (and mistakes). She encouraged us to get out and have little dates, while she would watch Avi, and those moments were precious to our marriage and friendship. Thank you, Mom.

Avi just loved having her grandparents along. She would jump up and down and giggle when they were around. She felt just as happy in their arms as in ours. Having four "parents" really was a blessing to little Avi. I think it really helped her develop faster and more fully - she truly did a lot of amazing things this summer!

Avi learning to walk between Mimi and Grampy.

Their last moment together right before we parted paths in Oregon.

The Multi-Million Dollar Bike Ride

While in Hood River, Oregon, we took an 8-10 mile bike ride with Avi, Maren's parent's, Uncle Brant, Aunt Aryn & her brother Joel. This bike road was the former highway along the Columbia River Gorge. It had gorgeous views throughout the ride and included a huge tunnel! Supposedly, this bike trail took about $13 million to make! (That's a lot of money right now Aveah, in case when you grow up gas costs $300,000 a gallon and a new pair of jeans is $2.5 million.) See, I feel rich, and indeed we are very rich to live in a country where we can experience such beauty and fun!

Avi's not in her seat in the front because she's asleep on Maren's back!

We found a really cool cafe that had a kid's section. After Aveah sat on Auntie Aryn's lap and got a story read to her, it was Maren's turn.

Grampy, Crazy-Lady Aryn (complete with bike grease on her face - where else was she to wipe it after having to replace her bike chain twice?), Maren, Avi (feeling and reciprocating the energy from Aryn), and Michael.

Multi-million dollar tunnel. Sooo fun to ride through - the wind was intense!

Avi pointing like Lewis and Clark did hundreds of years ago.

What I think about at 4:16 a.m.

I dream of Avi sleeping through the night so I can get some decent sleep. She's 13 and a half months old now and she still wakes up anywhere between 2-5 times a night to feed. Lately, she's been doing better at sleeping. Now, some nights when I'm lucky, she'll only wake me two times! Last night, I fell asleep at 11:00pm. At 11:13 p.m. she woke up and so did I. Then, a blessed thing happened: she slept until 4:46 a.m.! Well, it would have been divine if I hadn't woken up at 4:16 a.m. wondering why she hadn't woken up in hours to feed! So, I laid there (knowing she was going to wake me up the second I fell asleep) and thought about how much I miss her. Even though she is just in the next room over, and I just breast-fed her 5 hours ago, and I will see her all day long, I missed her intensely. I felt so lonely. I began to mourn her growing up and going to school someday. My husband lay asleep next to me, and his quiet slumber added to my loneliness. I recounted how everyday Avi grows farther and farther away from me. At one time, she was literally as close as another person can be to another person: inside my womb. Then she was born, and in that few fleeting last seconds of birthing, as she slipped a million miles an hour out of me - we grew monumentally further from each other. I held her all day long and slept next to her all night long for that first half year. Then she was ready for her own bed. And then she was ready to be put down on the ground to play on her own. Then she was crawling, crawling towards things and away from me (and then back to me). Now she is walking. Soon she'll be running. Then driving. Then flying...

I guess all this pondering makes me realize I really don't mind her waking me up in the middle of the night. I treasure picking up her little body in my arms in the twilight dusk, curling up on the mattress in her room, while she impatiently sucks a mid-night snack and while I bury my nose into her fine, barely-there hair, breathing in deeply, trying to inhale those remaining wisps of her newborn self which are now just a memory. A bittersweet memory. This time, in the middle of the night while the rest of the world sleeps, is our time. Just Avi and me, together, hanging out. My hope is that we will continue to have precious times - just the two of us - as she gets older: a young girl, a teenager, an adult and woman, and maybe even when she is a mother of her own. Let's just not continue to do it at 1:00 a.m., okay!