Pee on the Potty!!!

**This is a TMI disclaimer for the very few people who actually read my blog.  You couldn't care less about my child's toileting issues, but since I use this blog for recordkeeping I had to document this milestone!  Ha!:)**

Alexis fiiiiiinally went pee on the potty!!!  We have been sitting/practicing to no avail for months and she finally produced!:)  I was getting ready one morning and she was trying to go.  I had given up on anything happening and then I suddenly turned around and saw that she had went!  I probably scared the daylights out of her with my hysterically happy reaction!  Ha!:)  She was so proud of herself!  We called Daddy at work to tell him the good news and then we went for her reward!

She has been wanting Anna and Elsa dolls like Maggi and Ella's for months and we promised her that she could have them when she went pee on the potty.  I was thrilled to finally give them to her!!!

This has nothing to do with potty things, but I thought it was a cute picture of us while we were waiting on an oil change later that same day.  Elsa and Anna had to accompany us, of course.  I love my girls!:)

Ava: 11 Months Old!

Our little baby Ava is 11 months old!!!  Only one more short month until she is a year old!  Wahhhh!!!

Speaking of "wahhhh," we've heard quite a bit of that around here lately.:)  Our usually happy, content girl has been getting a couple of teeth and they are giving her quite the hard time!

It took several attempts to get a decent photo for this month...most of them look like this one!  My poor baby!:)

Ava, here's what you are up to this month:

• No official stats this month, but you weighed right around 20 pounds when we were at the doctor's office last week.  You are definitely growing like crazy and you eat just about everything in sight!
• You are wearing mostly 9-12 month clothes and size 2 or 3 shoes.  You are mostly wearing size 4 diapers, but you are finishing up some 3's still, too.
• You are nursing 4 times a day (8am, 1pm, 5pm, 8pm) and you eat 3 solid meals each day.  You usually eat oatmeal for breakfast and then whatever we eat for lunch and supper.  You will eat just about anything, but you are starting to wise up to things that you prefer over other things.  You like fruit, cottage cheese, oatmeal, yogurt, cheese, chicken, veggies (as long as they are the first thing introduced...otherwise they get spit out in favor of other things!), and just about anything that Mommy cooks! 
• Daddy calls you a scavenger because you will try to eat anything, and I mean ANYTHING, that you find on the floor!  The other day I had to fish something out of your mouth that you were chewing on.  After I got it out, I realized that it was a humongous dead spider!  EWWW!!!!
• You use a sippy cup so well!  With Alexis, we really had to work to get her to use one.  You picked one of your sister's up and started using it like you were a pro!  Right now, you just get water in it.  You mostly spit it out, but will drink it when you're thirsty.  Soon enough, you will be drinking your milk in a sippy!
• Speaking of milk, we will be working on weaning you this month.  This makes your mommy simultaneously happy and sad...but honestly, mostly happy.  You are a biter (although you've gotten MUCH better, thank goodness) and my milk production just isn't giving us much surplus!
• You currently have 8 teeth!  Two more are working their way through on the bottom, as evidenced by your grumpiness.:)  Also, you ran a 101 degree temperature for 3 days last week and we are thinking that it was caused by your teeth.  This is the first time you've run a fever with teething!
• You still crawl like a little crab and it is the cutest thing!  You can stand on your own for a few seconds at a time, but you haven't taken a step on your own yet.
• You are finally sleeping completely through the night...I don't see you in the morning until it's time to get up for the day!  Yippee!!!:)  You go to bed around 8:30pm and have been getting up around 8am.  We'll see if that changes when we fall back for DST this weekend!  If we're at home, you take a morning nap around 9:30 or 10 for a good hour or hour and a half.  You take a nap in the afternoon for anywhere from 1.5-3 hours, depending on how busy our day has been!
• Lately, you have been pretty attached to your mama!  I love that you are my girl.:)
• We call you Sissy alllllll the time!  We also call you Ave, Avey, and Avey Lynn pretty much all the time.  Your sister and Lill call you "Aba.":) 
• You and your sister are starting to interact a little more all the time.  Alexis loves to say to you, "Sissy, fonnow (follow) me!!!"  Sometimes you do and sometimes you don't.:)  You never fail to laugh at her antics and she tries to love you as gently as she knows how!:)

Baby girl,

One more month.  That is all that's left before you become a one year old!  I was snuggling with you after feeding you today and I realized that that is something that will probably be coming to an end sooner rather than later.  It makes me so sad, but I know that we have so many fun and happy things to look forward to with you in the upcoming months and years.  You are such a sweet baby and I can't wait to watch your personality develop more.  I'm going to savor every last day of your first year, my love bug!  I love you!

Mama:)

An ER Visit for Alexis

Well, after our fun night at Mickey Mouse Live, we came home and decided to take Alexis in to the emergency room!  She had been acting a little under the weather during that day, but mostly had been fine.  She'd had a cough for a couple of days and we actually had already scheduled an appointment with her pediatrician to address the chronic cough that she's had for months and months.  We were beginning to grow concerned that she had some serious allergies or maybe even asthma.  That night, her breathing started to get a little bit wheezy and we decided to go ahead to take her in to be evaluated around 9pm instead of making another truly emergency trip in the middle of the night like we did in April!  Pat came over and stayed with Ava and off we went!

Alexis was in great spirits!  She really wasn't acting very bad at all and we felt kind of silly for taking her in to the ER.  However, we knew that something was off and wanted to get it addressed. 

They got us in quickly and hooked her up to check her oxygen saturation.  It was somewhat low and they administered an albuterol breathing treatment.  Overall, she did much better with the nurses and doctor, but still had a complete fit with the breathing treatment.  It's not that surprising...I'd probably freak out too if people held me down and put a loud, steamy machine on my face!

She got some stickers for her effort and, of course, put them on her face!  Silly girl!:)

Daddy got some stickers on his face, too!:)

The doctor decided that he wanted her to have a chest x-ray done while we were there.  We were honestly kind of annoyed because we didn't think it was necessary.  She was so good when we went to the x-ray room!  She sat like a big girl on her own and loved the little "skirt" that they gave her to cover up her girlie parts.  You can see that her Anna doll came with us and also had to sit beside her while she got her x-ray.:)

Daddy was EXTREMELY annoyed that I was taking photos while we were waiting for them to do the x-rays, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to document his awesome car apron!  Ha!!!

We went back to our room to wait for the x-ray results and she rested for about .239584 seconds with Anna, Elsa, and Nemo!  Never mind that it was nearing midnight by this time, she was up and playing the whole time! 

Imagine our surprise when they came in and told us that she had pneumonia!!!  Luckily, it was just the start and it was very mild so they told us that we didn't need to stay inpatient!  Praise the Lord, we had had a long couple of days and that was the last thing that I wanted for our little Lex.  We were so surprised because she was not acting at all like someone with pneumonia...no fever, plenty of energy, and very few symptoms!  They prescribed antibiotics, breathing treatments, and a follow-up with Dr. Landrigan for Monday and sent us on our way!

A huge perk of your daddy being the hospital pharmacist...we just walked down the hall and filled our scripts before we went home!  Alexis loves playing in the pharmacy and it gives Mama lots of anxiety!!:)

When we finally drove home around 12:30, she conked out!  She was such a good girl, despite the late hour.

Documentation of Lex's 2nd ER visit!:)

Mommy and Lex doing a breathing treatment at home!  She does so much better at home, thankfully.  We went to see Dr. Landrigan for a follow up and she put her on steroid inhalations and reflux medicine to see if that might address some of her long-term coughing issues.  So far, she hasn't coughed AT ALL at night...we go back soon to be re-evaluated to see what we are going to do on a long-term basis! 

Mickey Mouse LIVE!

We got to go see Mickey Mouse LIVE at the Coliseum!  I heard about this program when I was at the Coliseum for the Beth Moore event and I knew that we needed to take our little sweeties!:)

It wasn't Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but more the traditional Mickey and Minnie.  They had other Disney shows featured in the program, as well.  Here's me and my girls before the show started!  All of these pictures are less than stellar, unfortunately!

Lex and her daddy!  She seemed like she was a little bit under the weather and we very briefly considered not going, but she perked up when she saw some of her favorite characters on the stage!

The four of us! 

Me and my big girl!  Can you tell we had a little bit of time to kill before the show began?:)

Daddy and Avey Lynn!

Here's some of the characters that we got to see...Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Woody, Jessie, Buzz Lightyear, Ariel, Eric, Sebastian, Aladdin, Jasmine, the Genie, and the magic carpet!

At first, Alexis was pretty nervous about what was going on!  The lights were mostly off and the music was pretty loud.  She settled down quickly and started to enjoy it!

This little peanut loved every minute!  She seems to really like anything musical.

During the intermission, we went out to stretch our legs a little bit and ended up buying a $15 snow cone!  At least it came with this amazingly awesome Ariel commemorative cup!;)

Overall, we had a really fun time doing something unique as a family!  I love experiencing new things with my sweeties!

Fall Fun

We have been having some fun this fall! 

There's nothing better than jumping in a pile of leaves in your backyard!:)

Lex loved it!

Avey tolerated it.:)

Great Uncle Jim stopped by and raked piles for Alexis to jump in.  She would have done it for hours!

We also had fun painting our pumpkins!

Ava loved holding her own paintbrush.

Mama painted a Minnie Mouse pumpkin!

This sweet girl painted a blue pumpkin, of course!

Daddy painted a monogram for our family.:)

Little sister had to take a snack break.

Then she was ready to paint! 

Not sure what the big deal was...I'm sure she was mad because I wasn't letting her eat the pumpkin!;)

Ha!  She didn't even realize that she had paint all over her face!  The Halls sure love the fall!

Night at the Movies

Alexis has begun to fall in love with movies!  Up until recently, she pretty much watched short shows like Mickey Mouse or Doc McStuffins.

Lately, she is all about eating some popcorn and snuggling up to watch a flick with her family!:)

Ava will tolerate a little bit of snuggling herself.:)  She also loves popcorn!  She gets impatient while we are breaking off itty bitty little pieces for her to eat!

One of Lex's favorite movies is Finding Nemo.  For a couple of weeks, she literally asked to watch "Nemo TV" just about every waking moment!  We went to the library and borrowed Beauty and the Beast.  I was so excited because this is one of my favorite childhood movies!  Alexis loved it, too!:)

Her current favorite is Lion King, known to her as "King Lion.":)  Today she asked me to watch it no less than 5 times.  She is so persistent so it can be hard to not let her watch the movie alllllll day long!  We're doing good to keep it to 2 or 3 partial showings each day.  We love our Disney shows around here!:)

Science Central & Beth Moore

A few weeks ago, Bryan and Rick took the girls to Science Central!  

The girls were looking cute and were all ready to go!

Alexis just loves being with Maggi and Ella!



They are such sweet cousins/neighbors/friends!

They had a blast playing together!

Ava hung out in the stroller, like usual.:)

Alexis got to explore in the toddler area and Bry said that she loved it!

Daddy was lovin' on his Avey and she thought it was pretty great! While they were at Science Central, Tabby and I were with lots of other women from our church and all over the area at the Beth Moore conference!  She came to Fort Wayne to do her annual simulcast that is made available live all over the world.  It was so cool to see her live and I loved soaking up her teaching.  I am a woman of God!!!