Yikes it has been a long time!

Wow, I am so bad at keeping up with this. I'll try to update as concisely as possible. Ava is a talker! She has blossomed so much in the past couple of months: she is asking questions like crazy, she is descriptive about what she wants, she barely has accidents anymore (except at friends' houses, grrr...) and she is becoming like my little friend. Lucy is developing at lightning speed. She is crawling like a little crab all over the house. Since she doesn't crawl on her knees, she uses her feet and her hands and looks like a little mollusk. So cute!! She wants to play with and be with Ava more than anyone else and won't tolerate being held for long, she just wants to be down and crawling and playing. Lucy is now in a hard plastic harness. Her right hip is at 25 degrees and is good, but her left isn't getting into place quite as easily. She has to wear it at night and nap and we aren't suppose to let her stand up, but that is really hard. Hopefully at her next appointment at the end of March, she will be all better and we can ditch the brace. We will see.
Despite our struggles and sleep deprivation (Lucy is still routinely waking up at 1 or 2 in the morning to eat) I am so thankful and grateful for my two beautiful daughters. Ava has been more interested in playing with Lucy lately and while she still doesn't like it that Lucy takes time away from her, she does give Lucy toys to play with and even said today, "I want to play with Lucy". I was so happy! Yesterday, Ava wanted to feed Lucy, so I let her. It was the most adorable thing ever! Ava actually did it and Lucy opened her mouth for the spoon. It was such a fun moment! Also a big deal for Ava, she actually played with Nala the other day. They were playing princesses and Ava let Nala put a necklace on her and they were running all over the house together playing hide and seek and talking up a storm. I was so happy to see her playing with another kid and not hiding! It took a load off of my mind that Ava doesn't have some sort of emotional issue, but she is just shy and apparently Nala knew how to get her out of her shell. Phew!
While Lucy was sleeping yesterday, Ava and Nonna and I had a grand old time. Ava got some paint on her hands and started painting the glass on the front doors, and we let her. She was so excited and creative and Nonna was laughing so hard! It was a fun afternoon. Nonna and Ava were dancing around the house like crazy together. Those two are two peas in a pod. They are so alike. Mom was telling me stories about how she was actually quite naughty in school and defiant and that she sees a lot of herself in Ava's behavior. Great. I am not excited about the teen years! Nonna also got a felt board for Ava and we set it up. Ava really liked it. There were some felt dinosaurs and Ava knew almost all of their names. I was amazed! She even knew Perisaourlophus. Amazing. Lately Ava keeps saying "I miss you" "I want you to play with me" "I want you to be with me". It just breaks my heart when she says that! I don't know if she knows what she is saying, but it just kills me every time! She really likes saying it as I am putting her to bed and when I leave for work. That is the worst. I know one day I'll long for the time that she wants to be with me and I will be competing for her attention. I am not excited about not being the center of her world anymore, but I know it will happen and there is nothing I can do about it. I am treasuring this time with her and with Lucy.
I just love my two girls. I could not be happier being their mom!

Sitting, standing, pretending, and more...

an artsy Lucy pic

Nonna and Ava reading after Ava's bath

Lucy in her Christmas dress

Nonna, Ava and Mommy at LegoLand!

Right before Lucy got her two bottom front teeth...smile!

Well, well, well...so it has been over a month since my last entry. I can only blame laziness. But despite my lack of updates, much has been happening with my two little princesses. Christmas was absolutely wonderful. We had a magical time with Nonna and Gramps and Aunt Adrienne and Uncle Joey. Lucy and ava got more presents than we could bring home (literally) and Nonna went way overboard! But we spent some quality time with everyone and relaxed together as a family, which was the most important part of course.

Lucy is sitting more than steady and she pulled up to standing on 1/15! I was so proud of her! She rolls in her crib, even with the harness and the funniest (but saddest) thing about her right now is that she gets stuck sitting up in her crib. She just can't figure out how to lay back down when she sits up. Poor baby! Lucy is starting to figure out how to crawl, but she still mostly scoots backward. She is a bit slower at developing physically than Ava was, but she is in that harness most of the day so that impedes her I think. She has also recently discovered gravity. She gets a kick out of dropping her toys and looking for them and waiting for me to pick them up. Ava likes to pick them up for her too, she thinks it is a game, which is nice for me so I don't always have to be reaching down to do it.  Lucy is still so sweet and wonderful with the most contageous smile and giggle. She is so cuddly! But she has been more adventurous lately and loves to be on the floor to crawl and explore. Everything goes in teh mouth of course. She also got her two front teeth on the bottom a couple of weeks ago. Now she likes to chew on things with her little teeth. All she wants is to be with Ava. She loves her sister, I can see it in her face, but Ava wants to do her own thing most of the time. Although, Ava has been slightly more interested in Lucy lately. She brings her toys and calls her "my little sister monkey". Ava has intellectually been exploding. She is asking questions and her new favorite thing to say is "Is that ok?" SO CUTE!! She is just learning about voice inflection and how to end a question with an upward vocal inflection. The other day she jumped out of her bed and ran to the back door yelling "its a beautiful day, come on mommy! come on!!" She then ran out the back door and started dancing. Such a joyful child! She also has been giving tanti bacci, and licking my face because that is how Lucy gives bacci, then saying that I am gross because she licked me. Ava loves to dance! She does her "circle dance"and runs around picking up her feet and jumping. We took her to a ballet class and mom got her ballet shoes, they are so cute! She liked watching the class, but she was scared to participate with the other little girls. She does like to do ballet with me though, which I am ecstatic about, since I want her to be a little ballerina. Last week, poor Lucy had to be taken to Childrens for an ear infection (she is ok now) and in the meantime, I took Ava to the park. We had a fabulous time! She didn't even want to go on the play structures at all. She wanted to go down to the stage and dance! There were some other older little girls dancing on the stage and she loved watching them. She got up on the stage with them and just watched, awestruck. It was adorable! We played in the "fairy princess house"which is a woody area of the park and had magic wands. This past weekend, we went to the park again, just Ava and me. This time, Ava said she was Abby Caddaby and I was Gonigin. She kept calling me Gonigin and made me call her Abby. We went exploring the "jungle" and the fairy princess house again and she kept giving me new wands. She learned how to roll down a hill and we explored the canyon. The whole time she was Abby. She was in absolute heaven! I was amazed by her creativity and ability to pretend and create fantasy worlds on her own. She reminded me of me when I was little and all I needed was a stick and a cape and I was in worlds of my own imagination for hours. That is so healthy for her. Just to play and be creative, developing her sense of self. She is the most incredible little person I have ever met.

Christmas preparations galore!

It is inching closer and closer to Christmas and I know it will be here soon. I still want to do so much! Make more cookies, go to the Holiday of Lights, take the girls to see Santa (even if Ava is afraid!), go to the Nighttime Zoo festivities...there just isn't enough time! Ava and my mom made some ornaments for the tree and Ava and I painted them, they turned out really cute. She doesn't have the attention span at this point to finish a project so I usually end up finishing it, along with cleaning up a huge mess. But that's ok, at least she is exposed to different activities and to art. Thanks mostly to my mom. She brings over her "lesson plans" and has so many ideas of what to do with Ava to help develop artistic creativity. Ava is in a huge puzzle phase right now. She loves doing puzzles and she is good at it! She can do a 23 piece puzzle all by herself and does a Sesame Street puzzle book with 5 different puzzles in it over and over again. Ava continues to say the most incredible things! Of course as I am writing I can't think of anything specific, but she really knows exactly what is going on. My favorite parts of my day are when I go to get her out of bed and lay down next to her and she just starts talking up a storm about her dreams or what she wants to do or what we did yesterday. (basically all things happened "yesterday" even if it was a few days or a week ago). It is such a magical time of day for her when everything is fresh and she says "Good Morning Mommy!!". Then I get her dressed and sometimes it all falls apart and she gets in a mood or sometimes her good mood when she wakes up carries through the morning.  But before she gets out of bed, she is just so lovable. My other favorite time of day is when I walk in the door after coming home from school. She runs to me with urgent news about what she is doing with Jeanette. She is so excited about is and she yells "HI MOMMY!" and gives me a huge hug. It is the best!
Lucy is now sitting stable, so that is encouraging. She still needs a pillow behind her, but overall, she is pretty stable. She wants to crawl so badly! She just can't seem to prop herself up. If she is laying down, she is like an upside-down potato bug, she can't right herself. She gets so mad when she wants something and can't reach it. It must be very frustrating not to be able to move forward to get what you want. She puts EVERYTHING in her mouth with so much enthusiasm, it is incredible! She is extremely driven to get what she wants! She is as passionate as Ava is, but where Ava is thoughtful, Lucy is impulsive. It is so interesting to see their differences, even though Lucy is so young, there is little that is similar between them, apart from their appearance. They truly look alike, but Lucy seems younger than Ava was at this age. Ava seemed more grown up, even back then. Lucy is much more of a cuddler, a baby-baby. Ava was more on top of her game at that age. I remember driving up to Passover in Newport Beach with Ava in the backseat and Ava basically demanded that I read her the Farm book over and over and over. She got upset whenever I stopped reading it. When I read to Lucy, she just lunges toward the book with her entire being and wants to eat it. She loves pictures in books and is excited when I read to her, but it is hard when she just wants the book in her mouth. It is especially frustrating to Ava when I attempt to read to the two of them together. I get Ava's point of view that Lucy wants everything she sees...she does!
I love my two wonderful girls so much and am excited everyday as they grow and change. A big part of me doesn't want them to grow any bigger. I just want them to stay like this forever. But I am also thrilled when they reach new milestones in their development. Parenting is a complete and total paradox! And I love it.

December Nights and February 1st

Yummy milk! 

I am so cute in my harness-free outfit!

Ava and teh Nativity Scene: "Talk them!!"

In front of the Balboa Park fountain

Mommy and Lucy at December Nights!

End of the night, Ava doesn't want to leave

Ava and daddy exploring how gravity works at the Reuben Fleet Space Center

We had a wonderful time at December Nights last night! Ava loved the nativity scenes, especially that I narrated and made all of the figures "talk them". She had gingerbread men (just the feet) and got to play at the science museum in the kids zone. She had an absolute ball! She loved all of the lights and running down the Prado. She was afraid of Santa...very afraid! She was last year too. She hasn't quite made the connection between presents and Santa yet. Once she does, I'm sure her fear will go away. She did like seeing the flying Rudolph and reindeer though. Lucy was a trooper, she was pretty good, but started to lose it at the end of the night around 7, so we called left. Ava protested vehemently, saying she wanted to stay.
As far as Lucy's development goes, we went to see Dr. Pring and good news overall: her left hip has corrected to 28 degrees, but her right hip is still at 31 degrees with no improvement. Dr. Pring is optimistic that she will correct with no problem, although I am nervous. If it isn't working, we are going to try a different type of brace and the next step is surgery. Again, Dr. P doesn't think that is likely. We have another appointment on February 1st to check again. I am just praying that both are corrected even more, hopefully at or below 25 degrees. She is now wearing the harness 18 hours per day so at least she can wear normal baby clothes for part of the day. It is the little things sometimes. On a bright note, Lucy is sitting up like a champ, she still falls over sideways occasionally and arches back, but overall, she is doing really well with that milestone.
We are off from school for Christmas break in 2 weeks..yay for being teachers :-) (at least there is that perk!)

Baby Phillipe (sniffle sniffle!)

Wow, I haven't updated in a while! We have been so busy with Thanksgiving and spending quality family time :-) We had a fabulous week off from work this week we did so many things: zoo, Children's Museum, tree decorating, baking pies, visiting friends and just being lazy at home.  I'll start with an Ava update. She is just too much!! We had a great day at the zoo, but she lost it when I didn't want to carry her anymore and she screamed for (no joke) an hour straight. She finally crashed in her car seat. That is one strong willed child! She loved the CHildrens' Museum, as usual! So much fun. She loves the Rain House. She could play in that thing for hours, just running around and jumping on the foam cut outs. Ava "helped" me bake pies for Thanksgiving. She always wants to lick the batter but since I used eggs this time, she didn't understand why she couldn't have any. But she is just so intelligent. Such a fast little learner! She can put together puzzles with just a little help from me. She really works on them intensely and tries out different pieces in different places until she gets it right. She also talks to herself when she does it. So cute! She has also taken to reciting the "Gabriella Song" book to me. Yes, she has it nearly memorized and says complex sentences like: "She heard the rhythm of the tethered boats thumping against the canal walls 'bump de bump bump' and echoing down the paved allyways and between the high buildings she could her her mother's call 'Gabriella, gabriella, Amore mio come home!'"Yes, she says that whole sentence. No, I don't think she understands it, but she knows it! Today she "adopted" a baby and named it Baby Phillipe and she feeds it a "milk bobby" and gets more milk for it from the "oven". She rocks it and feeds it the bottle. She keeps telling me that I am Ava and she is mommy. Sh wants to switch places with me and wants to be like me. So cute! In her bath tonight, she threw her usual tantrum about having her hair washed but this time instead of just screaming she yelled, "I'm so mad!!!! I'm SO MAAAADDDD!!!" I could barely contain my laughter! She was so darn cute and so intent on how she felt! I felt the same way when she said, "I'm a little bit jealous" when I was holding Lucy yesterday. She put her head down on my lap and it was so cute and sad at the same time. She makes me sad when she says "I don't want you to go!" before I leave for work and even when I tuck her in. Even though I know she is fine, I hate it that I can't be with her every minute. She won't want me around like this forever.

Poor little Lucy has been sick lately. She is so congested! Poor baby! But she has been eating a lot more in the past few days. Her menu now includes sweet potatoes, peas, carrots and bananas. She will eat an entire container (or two!) per sitting. Wow! She is also sitting up much better. She isn't stable yet, but she is doing much better at sitting for a longer period of time without arching back or tipping over the side. She also loves it when I sing to her. She especially likes Bon Jovi, Livin on a Prayer. Awesome.

I Heart Pickles

So in the past few days, Lucy has discovered that if she drops a toy, it goes away and if she cries about it, it magically comes back. In actuality, she is training me to pick up her toys for her. I remember when Ava was in this phase, it was so frustrating! Lucy is just perplexed about where her toys go when she opens her hand. It is pretty funny. Lucy still isn't sitting yet. I am getting a little worried, but I bet it has to do with her harness. She is also totally obsessed with putting things in her mouth, she would rather fall over and keep whatever it is in her mouth than put her hand down to catch herself. She is a pretty happy baby right now, except for her teething. I have been giving her pickles to gnaw on, and she loves those, so that helps. I was looking at Ava's baby milestone stuff and she was already crawling and pushing herself up to sitting at this time. But, every baby is different I suppose.
Ava seems to have grown up a bit in the last week, it is the weirdest thing! She has few potty accidents, she is talking even more (if that's possible), and she actually kissed Lucy's head yesterday! I was so elated about that one! Ava relates complex ideas to me and answers questions with detailed answers. She sings songs on her own and makes keen observations. She is a bright, wonderful little person who amazes me each day. Today, when I asked her what she was doing, she said, "I'm making a game. You play by standing on one foot and I am balancing. It is a tiny game." Wow. She blows me away! With this new found independence, she is asserting herself vocally and not just throwing tantrums to get her way, that is the best part! However, she is articulate enough to start to negotiate for what she wants. Yesterday I told her it was time for a bath she said, "No, I want a few more minutes, I;m still playing!" Well, she told me, didn't she?! I was so stunned, I actually caved and she played for another half hour. Yesterday I also took her to Parkway Plaza and she got a little fairy doll (who she promptly named Phillip) and we went on the carousel. She always wants to sit on the bench. Funny. We also went into Victoria Secret since I wanted to pick up some perfume and we had not gone 3 steps into the store when Ava said, "These are lots of of soaps for mommy to wash the body in the bath for mommy to wash herself!" Wow! How the heck did she know that? She held my hand the whole time and walked like the big girl she is becoming. She is so fun to talk to. I love how her little mind works! She has started to call Lucy her, "little sister monkey" I think because Lucy lays down on the rainforest play mat and Ava knows that monkeys live in the rainforest. I can only assume that is why, there may be an entirely different reason. Ava has also discovered "snow shoe" where she sits on my foot and hugs my leg and I walk around while she chants "snow shoe" over and over. My dad did that same thing with my brother and I every day when he got home from work. I am happy to carry that tradition on. I just love watching how my girls are growing everyday!

Baboons and Bacci

Today we had a marvelous day at the zoo. It was a late morning for us with the time change, Lucy had a restless night, so she and I slept in until 8:00am while Jeremy got Ava up. By the time we got to the zoo, it was about 11:00am, but it was a leisurely morning. We went on our usual route around the zoo, starting with the monkey trail, winding through the canopies, down to the hippos and up the eagle trail to Elephant Odyssey. Ava ran a lot of the way with Jeremy, it was so cute! Lucy sat up in the stroller and was so alert, looking around and taking it all in. The elephants were working with their trainers, so that was fun to see too, of course, Ava could care less...she just wanted to run! We got Ava some "tube guys" from the gift shop, we got the Down Under Toob with Australian animals and she couldn't be happier. After the zoo, we had some lunch at the Prado. Delicious as usual.
Lucy napped when we got home and Ava played in the sandbox. When Lucy woke up, Ava gave her a baccio! I was so excited! I couldn't believe my eyes, Ava actually let Lucy give her a kiss! Lucy gives those wonderful baby big mouth kisses and just loves to give them over and over again on our cheeks. She is just the sweetest, most adorable baby ever!! Then Ava let her give her kisses two more times! And she gave her toys too! (well, she chucked toys at Lucy's head, but I'll take it).

mmmm! Rice and carrots!

I love to eat!

hanging out in the stroller

The zoo is fun!

I swear I'm not tired yet!

Lucy is now eating 2 meals a day. In addition to her bottles, she has 2 big bowls of rice cereal with carrot. She gets so excited for her "meals" it is too cute! She opens her mouth so wide, and she is getting better at swallowing and not just pushing the food out. She sits up well enough in her high chair now which makes feedings so much easier. She is also rolling back to front now without the harness on. That is such a relief since she stopped rolling when she got the harness on a month ago, but now she is rolling like a champ!

Lucy and the lion (look carefully in the background)

daddy and Ava running down the trail

In potty news, Ava had her first accident free day since her early potty days! Yes! Oh, and my new favorite Ava sentence for this week that she likes to say over and over, "My name is Skippy Jon Jones but I pretend to be a Chihuaua but I'm really a Siamese Cat!" That and the fact that now she in introducing herself as "Ricky Racoon" her "alter-ego".

Anyway, we had a great day!