Today..

At this point does anyone believe me when I say I'm going to be blogging 2-3 times a week again? Ha! I know I said that in my last post on the 11th. Life, man, what can I say? I've got a ton of back posts, but I'm going to just keep it simple today and start with....today.

As usual I had another sleepless night with Ava. Every night is consistently bad, but some are worse than others, The past two nights have been hard. Sleep deprivation has a way of playing with your head. I definitely get more emotional and easily agitated when I've had a rough night. I felt like I had a touch of the blues, but everything is wonderful. There is much to be happy about and I knew I needed to count my blessings. I thought that maybe a little beach therapy might help. There's something about the ocean that instantly makes you forget any troubles. I loaded up Ava and Mariam and we were at the beach by 9:30 am. It was actually my first time taking Ava by myself and it went surprisingly well. I wore her in my moby wrap and wore a backpack. I also brought a mini umbrella, so despite these pictures, she was otherwise shaded from the sun. 

Ava 11 months!

Super behind on these seeing how she turns one tomorrow, but here is a recap of 11 months.

Weight

I haven't weighed her in a while so I'm not sure, but she's probably around 20 pounds by now. She'll be having her one year checkup soon.

Health

Over the summer nobody got colds, but with Serena and Layla back in school, the back to school germs are back. Layla started to get a cold which Mariam then got, and then Ava. She never got a fever with this one, but it was over a week of a runny nose. She sleeps even worse when she's sick, which is expected, but super hard when she already wakes up 2-3 hours a night on the regular.

Sleep

Still the same. Two short naps a day and then waking up every 2-3 hours at night. Only once a month will we get like a 4 hour stretch thrown in there. Several friends tell me to let her cry through the night, or feed her something heavy right before bed, or stop nursing her etc. The list goes on, but H and I don't feel comfortable letting our kids cry it out. I've debated not nursing her anymore since everytime she wakes up she expects it, but I'm not ready to end this bond yet. I really want to make it till two years old like I did with Mariam. I know I need to make some changes as the pediatrician suggested, like cutting down on nursing at night. Start trying to wean her off the night time feedings. Believe me my muscles are tired and I don't want to nurse her almost every time she wakes up, but I'm so tired and I know it makes her go back to sleep pretty fast instead of thrashing around for an hour. I have some great news though! She slept through the night last night! After rolling around in her crib for what seemed like forever she fell asleep around 10:30 am and didn't wake up till 5:38 am! I nursed her and then she slept for another hour. I can't stop smiling. I want to shout it from the rooftops! Tomorrow is her one year birthday so she picked an interesting time to do it. I hope she does it again. 

Clothes

She currently wears 12-24 month clothing. Depends. If we are at home I usually put pants and knee pads on her since we have all hard wood floors. 

Diet

Still exclusively breastfeeding and eating solids. She loves beef and she's not a fan of anything green unless it's mixed in with other foods and she can't see it. We still don't give her eggs and dairy since she starts getting a rash when we do, but we'll try again at a later time. She's never taken to a bottle, but she has started to take a sip or two from a sippy cup. 

Milestones

She's done so much these last few months. I haven't updated since she turned 8 months, but she's started to take a step here and a step there. She also points to things and says "da" when she wants something. She enjoys blocks, getting into the spice cabinets and knocking her sisters books off the shelves in their closet. She tries to repeat words, she loves to give hugs and she's just so sweet and getting more social. I know I'm missing a lot of things here, but it's not all coming to mind right now. 

Life Lately....again

Soooo...looks like the last time I updated was when school started. Silly me. I don't know why I thought things were going to get easier and more relaxed with 2 out of 4 in school again. Quite the opposite. I think it's gotten busier, less stress then with all 4 kids at home during the summer, but busier. I love it though and I plan on getting back to blogging 2-3 times a week again.

In the past few weeks, I joined the Junior League (which I'm super excited about and will go into detail later), the school advisory council for Layla's school and the PTA. Meetings, school functions, play dates, my business and 4 girls, well you can imagine that it's been go, go, go. The past weekends we've kept it pretty low key as we try to reel down from the busy week and still sleep deprived. A beach outing here, a pool outing there, baking, church, walks, grocery shopping, etc.

Oh I almost forgot to mention I've been home schooling Mariam who is 3 as well. She'll be 4 in November so with a late birthday, she misses the cutoff age to enter pre-school this year which means she doesn't get to start till next year. I want her to have a head start so we've been doing school in the mornings, broken up since I still have Ava to tend too. So far it's been working out well and I've noticed it's been helping her temperment too. She's very strong willed and challenging to put it nicely, but she can also be very sweet and she's pretty articulate for her age. 

Happy Labor Day!