avery's first blog post

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and that's all she has to say about that.



a quick behind-the-scene:

best $10 ever spent...

a while back, we experienced a loss.

andrew's left toe nail got seriously injured during basketball.  i mean we only have 10 of these little nails, and as hard as we tried to keep it, that black and blue nail eventually fell off.  now if any of you have ever had a similar experience, growing a new big toenail is no easy feat, and andrew has had quite the time of it :)

as we were going through this struggle, i kinda gave andrew a scare that he had developed a fungus. (think inception, but on a much larger scale...first i threw the idea out there, casually...he denied it.  then i started googling 'toe fungus' pictures, reading symptoms...etc.) about the time we had andrew rubbing vick's vapor rub on that big toe--has anyone tried this? supposed to be a great home fungus remedy--i knew my comment had gotten to him.  long story short, let's just say i teased his way into the office of a podiatrist within a month.

this story isn't all doom and gloom...there was no fungus!!  but the doctor did offer andrew this handy dandy toe sleeve for the low, low price of $10.  andrew thought he had struck gold until it got all stretched out on day 2.

but the real reason i post this grotesque picture and story about a foot is that it is so characteristic of my husband...if there's a problem, he fixes it right away. (i need a dose of that in my life. instead i just let my knee bother me for months and never figure out the problem.) plus i just think my kids will look back at this picture and laugh at their dad like i do.

(P.S.  if you want to see another basketball-related injury that required a funny apparatus, click here)

double double

i give andrew a hard time about never surprising me, but truth is i'm no better.  i tried really hard this year, because june 17th was both andrew's birthday and first father's day!! talk about pressure.  

i won't go into details, but i kind of botched the weekend...although i did think the actual day-of was pretty good.

i let andrew sleep in (til almost 10am!!) and tiptoed around, keeping avery fed and asleep so he wouldn't wake up.  he woke up to hot waffles and bacon with the works for breakfast.  i had his gifts all wrapped and sitting on the table with confetti around them (i think only i enjoyed this detail...ha)  when he got up, avery was making noise, so i asked him to go get her.  i think he was kind of confused, like "why are you telling me what to do first thing on my birthday?" but he did it anyway, and then found this cute girl....

(this was after the fact, when she had already drooled all the washable marker into a smear on the onesie) but the front said "happy 27th birthday dad!!" and the back said "...and happy father's day dad!"  anyway, it was cute.

and i have to say, avery does have one of the best dads around.  he loves this little girl more than anything (i have to fight to get face time with him, ha) and takes such good care of her. a lot of the time he teaches me ways to keep her happy or get her to sleep, etc. don't know where he gets it, but he's got the touch.  when she's sad, he will often step in and won't let me take her, because he "doesn't want me to be the only one able to soothe her".  he is very involved and i never have to encourage him to put in the time with her. she's a lucky girl to have him.

 i should say we both are. he is the my best friend and partner...actually he is like the conscience i don't have...tries to help me eat healthy (this doesn't work...but he does his best) and keeps me on a cleaning schedule ha ha.  some of our friends joke that he is more of the wife than i am.  he definitely diffuses his fair share of breakdowns and freak outs.  i just tell him that i'm only 22 so hopefully i'll grow out of all these shortcomings and can someday handle the house full of kids that i eventually want. ha ha.

anyway...like the onesie says, happy birthday AND father's day, andrew!

UPDATED--june 15, 2012

it's so funny how amazed you are by every little thing your child does.....or in this case, your child's involuntary bodily processes that they have no control over (that somehow still make you proud, ha ha).  i know she's been teething for a while--the trail of drool is a good indication--but when i first felt the tooth cutting through, i got so excited. i was surprised that such a silly little thing brought out so much emotion...but i was smiling and laughing and saying "yaaayyyyy avery!!!" so of course she started smiling and laughing back, and we were all just so happy for this little tooth popping through...

UPDATE!! here is the evidence:

the life and times of a 2 month old

 hanging with grandma

look at that cute grumpy face

 2 month shots

 she is really healthy and "growing like a weed", to quote the pediatrician

cute chubby legs

first easter egg hunt...it was hard to contain her excitement.

i know i sound like every other mother on the planet, but time is going so fast.  it is so fun to watch her start to develop a little personality, start being vocal (still need to teach her please and thank you, but we're working on it) and smile regularly, although i don't have any photographical evidence that she does so.  she is such a good baby, i'm worried what she has in store for us during her terrible twos...

truly a texan

a friend and i went to take pictures in the bluebonnets because everybody's doing it and we like peer pressure :)   we went in the middle of the day, with blazing sun over us--you can tell we are professionals.  elaine held the blanket over avery to get her to peep her eyes open. 

get ready for photo overload:

then, i decided i'd stick my baby in a bucket. she was so confused ha ha. i couldn't get her to smile, but i still like them:

(those last two are so overexposed they hurt my eyes, ha sorry.)

Q & A

Q:what do you get when you cross a bottle of baby shampoo, a naked baby, and the infant bathtub?

A: baby's first trip to the ER at 6 weeks old.


definitely one of the worst moments of my life so far. it sounds silly looking back on it, because everything turned out just fine. but the plastic pump on the baby wash scratched her eye, and i picked up my screaming baby, looked down and saw blood coming out of her eye. andrew was home, luckily, (because two adults freaking out like chickens with their heads cut off is better than just one, naturally) and we rushed to the emergency room and they got her taken care of. it was just a scratch on her lower eyelid, with a little abrasion on the cornea....nothing a little antibiotic ointment couldn't take care of. she is fine now!!

but look at the little trooper once we got her home from the hospital:

 the orange stuff is a drop they put in to see where the scratch was

you also get a close up of this little cute baldie head.