2 and a half!!

Umm how has it been 6 months since my big girl's birthday?!

This age is the best! She's a full-on miniature person with her own thoughts and agenda.In fact one of her favorite things to a say is' "Just a minute, I'm busy!" Or "Wait a second. I've got cool stuff to do!" 

She is still the smartest little person that I've ever seen and blows our minds daily with the stuff she says and does. She is becoming so independent and can play by herself for long periods of time, but still cries for Mommy's every now and then, and I just eat it up. I know she'll only cry for me and want to hold my hand everywhere, for a little while longer. 

Some of Avery's favorite things at 2 1/2 are: 

School! Avery LOVES her teachers and school friends, and learns so much. She just goes twice a week, but we have all been so happy with the program. It's been so great for her! She will be so sad once summer is here. 

Dance class! It took her a few weeks  to warm up when we first started her, but she's a star in her class now. She pays such close attention and soaks up everything. Of course it makes her Mama very happy to see her enjoying it so much. I may or may not have cried watching her practice her recital dance last weekend. 

Anything PINK! She'll tell you anytime she sees something pink, that it's her favorite color. If you tell her your favorite color she'll remember it always and point out everything in your favorite hue too. 

Music! This girl loves to listen to the radio. She prefers "chuntree" and "wock n woll" songs the best. She also knows at least 15 children's songs that she performs on loop. Her favorites are twinkle twinkle, wheels on the bus, BINGO, and the ABCs. My favorite has to be the song she made up the other day; to the tune of Frere Jacques she sang, "Where is mommy? Where is mommy? Her's at work. Her's at work. Where is mommy? Where is mommy? Here she comes. Coming soon." She also still frequently jams to jingle bells, in April. :-)

Playing "tichen" and helping us cook real food too. She also loves playing baby dolls, dollhouse, instruments, cars, hide and seek, I spy, Candyland, "chetch me" (tag), games on the ipad and running outside. She loves puzzles, books, blocks and play-doh too. 

Picking out clothes- she wants a say in what she's wearing these days and is most particular about her panties for the day and her shoes. She is also practicing dressing herself, and can do it alone with lots of coaching and patience.  

Watching TV-Bubble Guppies is still her most favorite show, but she also loves Mickey, Dora and Friends, Paw Patrol, Daniel Tiger, and Super Why. She also loves movies now and some of her current favorites are Cinderella, The Land Before Time, Finding Nemo, and Frozen. 

Avery's current favorite foods are anything involving cheese, carbs, fruit or sugar. She loves Mac and Cheese, pasta, grilled cheese, pizza, cheeseburgers, yogurt, waffles, berries, plums, cookies, and lollipops. She was also recently introduced to lemonade and loves it! 

Avery is so excited to become a big sister! She says she can't wait to snuggle him, which she will get to do in just a couple more days!! I cannot wait to see how much she is going to love him. 

Some things Avery doesn't like at 2 1/2:

bugs, vegetables, her carseat, missing mommy in the mornings, being told no, heights, loud noises, being messy, and 

when daddy can't come to dance class! 

The funniest things she's said lately:

While Jon is yelling at cars in traffic, "Daddy are you disappointed?"

"Guess what? Babies don't have fingernails." 

As soon as we get home in the afternoon, "You gonna change into your comfy pants, Mama?"

After getting upset on the playscape at Chic fila and I ask her what's the matter,

"Those big kids were frustrated with me and pushed me betause I am small."

"You know what I'm gonna call Jonah when he gets here? I'm gonna call him, hey little fella!" 

On seeing the pack n play in our room, "Oh! You put my playpen in here so I can get in there and snuggle him!"

While playing I spy she says,

"What you spy something, Mama/Daddy?"

I could go on and on. I feel like this kid could have her own reality show with the amount of funny stuff she does and says. It's so crazy to hear her use big words like "disappointed" and "frustrated" in the correct context. She also says "y'all" and it's the cutest ever!

Some things we are working on at home are dressing herself, drinking out of regular cups without lids, less potty accidents, and learning the days of the week and months of the year. She knows her birthday is in October and talks about  it almost every day. 

Pregnancy update:

Baby brother can come any minute now! I've been having irregular contractions the past few days and am scheduled to be induced on Tuesday morning!! 

I really do feel like pregnancy is so beautiful..until the last month of it. Then I'm all swollen and stretchmarky and sweaty and waddley and crampy and over it. Knowing this is very likely my last few days to be pregnant, ever, I am trying to enjoy all the rolls and kicks and punches to the bladder, because I know I'll eventually miss it, but gosh I'm uncomfortable. 

I've gained about 26 lbs total, which is 9 lbs less than I did with Avery but I never lost the last 7 with her, so I'm almost exactly the same weight I was at her birth. However, the way I am carrying him so much lower, I've gotten a ton more stretchmarks this time and they are super  itchy. I'm glad I'm not as swollen as I was with her though! And the heartburn isn't nearly as severe so I'm really a lot less uncomfortable than I was at the end of my last pregnancy, but still so ready to trade it all in for sleepless nights and spit up in my hair! 

2 more days until we meet our little fella! 

Easter and updates

Our last holiday as a family of 3 was so good! We usually go my Mema's for Easter, but since we lost being off Good Friday to the ice/snow days earlier this year it was only a regular weekend. Being nearly 9 months pregnant I didn't want to deal with a one night road trip, since I'm getting pretty uncomfortable. We stayed in town and had an awesome weekend!

I was pretty bummed dance was closed, because we didn't get to go last week due to Avery being sick. We decided to go to an Easter event at the church where Avery attends Mother's Day out instead though. They were supposed to be having all these events, but it ended up being kind of a bust for us. They had a helicopter egg drop which was pretty neat, but they didn't have nearly enough eggs for all the kiddos. We were sprinting through the crowd and came up with one complete egg which had gum inside so she couldn't even have it. I nearly cried for Avery, but she was a trooper and started collecting half egg pieces that were left over and even found a stray tootsie roll, and she was thrilled.

As we were leaving they had some inflatables in the parking lot that she really wanted to do, but they were for older kids, like obstacle courses and getting really crowded, so we decided to leave and at that point Avery was heartbroken. She wanted to go bounce so bad but just didn't understand that they weren't regular bounce houses. So we decided to make it up to her by making it a special day at the mall. 

We let her ride all the little quarter machines, ate pretzels, rode the carousel and finally got to try out Build-a-bear!  She was in heaven picking out clothes and accessories for her new pink bear, whom she named Fella. It was fun for all of us! We finished off last night by dying eggs and stuffing plastic ones with lots of candy. She loved our special day so much and totally forgot about the disappointment from earlier.

These two are everything! 

This morning Avery woke up to her Easter basket full of goodies from the Easter Bunny. Then we hunted our dyed eggs inside since it was raining. We had lunch with the Mercers and she got to hunt tons of eggs all over Aunt Jamie's house. She got so spoiled from Mimi and all her aunts with so many goodies that she didn't know what to do with! We then stopped by one more egg hunt with the Senato cousins before heading home. It was finally dry enough to hunt outside and Avery found a ton of eggs! She had a blast!!

Bubble guppies and Paw Patrol are her favorites right now!

She needed 2 baskets for all these eggs!

I will be 36 weeks pregnant on Tuesday, and am still feeling pretty good despite being quite large. I am up 24 lbs and am trying to enjoy all these baby movements, but I am about ready to have my body back to myself again. I am longing to wear clothes that feel big and baggy on me. I want be able to get up and down off the floor to play with Avery, in one breath. 

The last couple of weeks have been crazy with Avery getting croup, then feeling mostly better so we took a trip to the zoo, but then the croup turning into walking pneumonia in her right lung and she got on her first ever round of antibiotics. She still has a bit of a cough but is much better now! Thank God. 

Brave girl at the doctor!

 Then I had my last (probably ever) sonogram and got to see Mr. Jonah which made me super excited to meet him at the end of the month!! He's already around 5lbs 13oz and getting bigger every day. I'm betting he'll be 7.5 lbs by birth. 

I only have 3 weeks of work left and am so ready to be done! It is very bittersweet though, because as of Friday, I turned in my resignation for next school year. I have longed to be a stay at home momma for 2 and a half years, and the opportunity has finally come. I couldn't be more excited and feel so blessed to have the most supportive husband on this adventure! I'm nervous about such a big life change, but I know it's where I'm meant to be. The classroom will always be there, if and when I am ready to go back to teaching, but my babies will only be babies for such a short time.