Gabe's 7th Birthday and Avery is 8 Months!

I really need to blog more but I am trying to keep it up at least once a month!

On March 18th, Avery officially turned 8 months old. I have always said that about 8 months to 12 months is my favorite age. Then they start walking and get to be a lot of work physically because they are constantly moving! So she is just getting into my favorite age! I like this age because they are smiley and can sit on the floor and play, but yet they are still young enough to wrap in a blanket and rock to sleep and young enough not to be getting into everything. Avery is quite the sweetie pie right now. She recently learned how to stick out her tongue and it is her favorite way to smile now. Here are some other facts about Avery:

Weight: about 21 pounds (didn't take her to the doctor for a while so that's an estimate using our scale)

Height: about 28-29 inches

Hair: Dark brown and long enough for a ponytail on top!

Teeth: She is getting one on the bottom! I didn't even expect it because the boys didn't get any until they were 1! Then the other day (after her waking up during the night a couple times) I was like, "She has a tooth! Omigosh!" She wasn't even that crabby!

Sleeping habits: Goes to bed around 8:30, if she wakes up before about 3 am I just give her a pacificer and she goes back to sleep. If it's about 4 am or later I will give her a bottle and then she usually sleeps until about 7:30 - 8:30 am. Some mornings she takes a catnap about 10 am and other days she just goes down for a nap at about 12:30 and sleep for a few hours. Otherwise if she does take a nap in the morning it usually is 2:00 - 5:00 that she sleeps for a nap.

Personality: She is usually a pretty easy baby. She isn't afraid of being held by new people yet.

Tricks: She just barely learned to sit up on the floor without falling over. We kind of had to force her to learn because she outgrew her baby carseat and the new size she's in has to stay in the car. So when I go into the store she has to sit up now in the front of the cart! It's sad though because I liked being able to carry her in and out of the car in her carseat for those times she fell asleep. My babies never last long in those baby seats! They always meet the size limit before the age limit!

Clothes: She is in 12m right now but getting close to 18! I had a ton of summery clothes that are 12m but unfortunately it is still cold out! So we are doing a lot of layering. It needs to get warm out!

Now onto the birthday boy!!

Gabe has been getting really into legos since last Summer. He moved into his own bedroom a couple months ago and has been asking for it to be a Lego room for a while. So on the night before his birthday, I had him and Caleb stay at grandma and grandpa Rhodes' house while I totally redid his room. I painted one wall to look like a whole wall made ot of Legos, which took FOREVER and a lot of painters tape. Josh also made him a lamp that looks like a giant lego and we got him a lego clock and some other fun stuff. When he got home after his party he was pretty surprised! We also had a new bike for him in there.

So his actual birthday party was at the Vivint Office downtown. It's a big open space with air hockey, foosball, a big kitchen area, etc. Our friends still work for Vivint (the Summer sales company that Josh used to work for) so they let us use it. It went really well. He had invited every boy in his class, which was only 7 boys (its mostly girls) and then also a couple of boys from our neighborhood so there were about 8 boys that came total, including Gabe and Caleb. We had a Lego City themed party where we played Pin the Nose on the Lego face (we made this face out of legos and put it on the wall), had a pinata shaped like a firetruck, and had a Lego creation contest where they got to build for a little while. Then we also had pizza and cake. Josh has a coworker whose wife makes these amazing cakes and she made Gabe's birthday cake. He had requested a "Lego firetruck" cake and she did an amazing job! I didn't even want to cut into it! 

It's hard to believe our little 3 pound baby was born 7 years ago and now he's a big kid! He works so hard in first grade, especially on reading, and he's gotten a lot better since the school year started. He loves reminding Caleb that he is older and likes to be the one to tell Caleb how to play and what they should do. Caleb is usually pretty good at listening to him but every now and then he decides to beat on him. Since Caleb is now the same weight at Gabe (60 pounds) its getting to be a pretty even fight.
Gabe still loves to snuggle though when Josh is gone to work and we often watch movies in my bed at night until he falls asleep. He's growing up so fast but he's still a little boy in some ways! :)

Avery's (delayed) 7 month post! And some other stuff...

This is a very late seven month post, seeing as how she was seven months on February 18th. Oops. Unfortunately, she spent a good portion of the month of February sick. She started off with what we though was just a cold and cough because Caleb had the same cough first, but then one night when she had a fever of 103.5 and was seeming really out of it, we decided to take her to Community Care. They told us she had RSV and sent us home with a nebulizer to do breathing treatments every four hours and some other medicine. First they gave us an antibiotic, but then when we took her to our regular doctor two days later, he said the antibiotic wasn't really needed (and it was making her sick) so he gave us a different steroid medicine to try and clear up her cobweby sounding lungs. After about a week she seemed a lot better and within about two weeks she seemed pretty much over it. We are just glad to have out smiley girl back!

Gabe and Caleb are both enjoying school and they had this special Dr. Seuss week this last week of February. There was one day that Gabe dressed up like Thing 1 from Cat in the Hat. They did a lot of fun activities every day and finished out the week by eating green eggs and ham.

Also, I have a funny Gabe story. So Gabe was asking me about what my favorite birthday I ever had was and I was telling him about my 11th birthday when my mom surprised me a with a limo. Then I was telling him what the inside of a limo looks like and that they have a window that rolls up so you can either see the driver or not. Gabe asked, "Why would you want the driver not to be able to see you?" and I said, "Maybe you just want privacy." And he goes, "Maybe if you need to change you clothes or something?" and I say, "Or if you are on a date with a girl and you want to kiss her and you don't want the driver to see." And he says to me in a serious voice, "That's a little inappropriate to be talking to a kid about." It just made me laugh out loud. I think it was because the voice he said it in still sounds so little, like, "That's a little inap-wo-pw-iate to be talking to a kid about," but yet he was lecturing me. haha.

Otherwise, we have just been busy getting out house organized. We got some new living room furniture with our tax return and finally sold our craigslist couches! (For $50 more than we paid for them 5 years ago! haha! My dad would be proud.) I have been stressing about every little decision, which is of course driving Josh crazy. I also have been still couponing, which Josh likes because it saves a lot of money! I really like it too. It's fun finding good deals.

That's about all for now!

Here's some pictures!