Blog apology :)

Ok, ok, so I'm really behind on blogging. In my defense I've been a little preoccupied lately. Guess what, we're moving?! Well  not yet, but we did find a house and we plan to close on April 30th. It's quite a change, because we are moving from our suburb of Sugar Land, into the Houston city limits. It will cut down on Jeff's commute by half and it's in a lovely little neighborhood that still has great schools. We feel lucky to have found a home here.

We are remodeling the kitchen along with new flooring, new doors, new lighting, a new gate, and other updates to the home. Yikes. It will be exciting but challenging and that doesn't even discuss selling our current home. Ha! Anyway, I am going to throw out a few blogs right now so I'm caught up, but hopefully I'll get back to a more regular schedule soon. For now, here's a picture of our new home...or should I say a before picture, since we plan to paint the exterior as well. Lots of changes, but change is good right? :)

Houston Zoo and Snow Day

The weather has been beautiful so we've had some fun adventures at home. First we went to the Houston zoo and saw some cool animals and played on the park playground.

Then, the very next day, we went to a local park and attended a snow day. The snow day, was basically a local event, where they shipped in man-made snow and covered large areas in a park and on a hill so our sweet Texas children who don't get snowy winters would get their very own winter wonderland. It was really neat and of course Connor loved throwing snow balls the best. Avery got to feel the snow too and taste a little. It just so happened to be 85 degrees, so the cold snow felt great.

Enjoy the pictures of our fun!

Connor being silly, running in and out of the cave. He is so imaginative lately and comes up with new "games" all the time.

Avery and Connor in the burrow/cave.

Lazy lions

Goofy Giraffe and a zebra.

Connor having fun on the animal carousel. 

While Daddy and Connor were on the carousel, Avery and I watched.

Connor had so much fun on this little playground climbing up like spider man and going down the slide. He did it over and over again until we finally had to move on.

While Connor played, Avery got to do some of her own spider man style crusin'.

Peak a boo!

Acting like prairie dogs, poking up from our burrow.

Now we're at snow day and clearly, Connor just pelted me with a cold snow ball.

As you can see, a lot of people wanted to experience real snow, even if it was just for an afternoon.

Eating snow makes you cold. Brrrr.

Can you see Connor and Jeff at the top of the sledding hill? Jeff has an orange shirt and Connor has the 17 Aggie jersey. I am bummed, because I took a video of them going down the hill, but we let Connor see the video and after it finished, he accidentally deleted it. Too bad. It was funny, because at the end, they ran smack into one of the teenage helpers. No one was hurt, so it was just really funny.

While Connor and I were back playing in the snow, Jeff took a little photo shoot of Avery.

Avery talking. Ahhh!

She definitely has a fiery personality. We could be in for some trouble with this little dickens.

Another Treadway...another set of kissable cheeks.

Daddy, I'm going to get you.

Avery checking out the snow.

Brother and sister playing together.

Now just a few extra pics. Here is sweet Avery before bath in just a diaper. Babies look so cute in just a diaper sometimes.

My sweet fashionista in a floral top, jeggings and fur lined boots. Having a girl is soooo fun.

If we're all having fun playing in the evenings we sometimes do combo baths and bedtime. I feel like they don't look anything alike in this picture. What do you think?

Double story time. So much love.

Avery Turns 9 Months

Avery turned 9 months on January 10th.  I was waiting to update everyone until I had Avery's 9 month stats from her doctor's appointment, but unfortunately she was sick at her 9 month appointment so we had to reschedule for next month. I'll send a little update then. For now though, I think she's growing well and is absolutely perfect (but I may be a little biased...hee hee). 

Speaking of growing, while she was at the doctor for being sick with an ear infection, she did get weighed and she weighed in at a comfortable 20 pounds 3 ounces. I checked a babycenter percentile calculator and they said that weight fell into the 50th to 75th percentile. We'll see at the actual appointment. 

As far as I know though, she seems to be doing great. She's eating like a champ. Now she's eating almost any and all table food. Of course we break everything up into tiny bits, but she can pretty much each anything. A normal meal will have bits of fruit, some protein, some veggies and some carbs and then also purees of fruit and veggie. She is also still nursing 4 times a day. We are weaning that down to about 2 a day though and as I type we're pretty much there, but a few weeks ago at 9 months we weren't so I don't want to jump the gun. 

Avery is sleeping through the night, however she still seems to get irritated by teething and will wake up from her naps or at night without warning. Oh goody. She's sweet, but she sure doesn't seem to like to sleep consistently. An "ideal" day would have her waking up around 6 or 6:30, taking a nap at 9:30 or 10am, sleeping until 12pm and then going down for another nap at 3 or 3:30, sleeping until 5 and going to sleep for the night around 8pm. This happens occasionally, and usually her morning nap is better than her afternoon nap, but when she does take a good afternoon nap (2 hours or more) it's awesome.  

She is still a sweet girl and her fussiest time seems to be right before dinner unfortunately as I'm trying to scramble everyone's meals together, but other than that, she is rarely fussy. The other day at the grocery store, she had just had lunch, after a great nap and was the most smiley baby I had ever seen. She was hamming it up and smiling and waving at everyone. It was adorable. While she doesn't seem to have separation or stranger anxiety (except for Santa), she isn't always handing out the smiles to everyone. She can sometimes just be super mellow and just sit quietly in a stroller observing life around her. 

Avery has starting wracking up tricks these days and it seems to be fast and furious. She started crawling just before she turned 9 months, but now it's more like a sprint crawl than just a slow meandering crawl. 

She's got some strong will too. For example, she seems hell bent on crawling into our bathrooms and pulling up on the toilet seats (gross I know). I have to be eagle eyed to keep her away and have gone so far as when Connor goes potty, I have to shut the door so she won't come in and crawl around the toilet. Anyway, the other day, she was crawling in the hall towards the bathroom and I said, "Avery, no sweetie. You can't crawl around the bathroom." She looked up at me and literally starting crawling faster than I had ever seen her crawl to the open bathroom door. She was trying to make a run for it. That little dickens!! I grabbed her of course, but it was really funny. She's already a little sassy. Oh no. 

She also is cruising so well now. She can make laps around our coffee table and pull up on just about anything, including a flat wall. We haven't seen her take any steps just yet (well maybe one or two here or there), but she's getting more and more confident every day. She is also doing pretty well with push toys, which I remember Connor struggling with even after he learned to walk since they move pretty fast especially on a hard wood floor. Oh goodness. 

She still doesn't have any words, but she likes to screech and she'll say "Ma, ma, ma" or "Da, da, da." I don't think she is meaning to speak to one of us though. Man, at dinner, when she's not getting fed her baby food fast enough, she'll screech so loud. Connor often says, "Avery stop" which just adds to the volume. Anyone want to come over for dinner? Ha!

One of her cutest skills these days is waving. If you wave at her or say, "hi Avery" or "bye Avery" she'll wave. Man is it cute. She mimics movements too. If you put your hands up and down she may try it or one day I was putting my head to the side and she would do it too and laugh. 

Well here are some recent pics of our 9 month old baby girl and some recent videos. Enjoy!

Sweet Avery at 9 months old!

I'm sassy and sweet.

I'm cute, but boy do I drool. I'm a shark with 8 teeth! 4 on the top and 4 on the bottom.

I can crawl and get my sign now. This is fun. Destruction, here I come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtIuullV5ww&feature=share&list=UU7PBoSNM5PePPzZTaIocn2Q
This video is from the first day she learned to crawl. Man, to see how fast she goes now is amazing. She started crawling on December 27th. Jeff had guessed she crawl before the end of 2012 and man, she just made it. Ha!

http://youtu.be/H0viFwAEe_I
Avery waving and cruising. 

 http://youtu.be/_NCbsOm_TlU
Avery walking with a push toy. In this video she isn't walking very straight, but normally she's pretty good with one of these things. 

Christmas Part 3 - Bryan College Station (BCS)

After our relaxing week at home, we headed off to Bryan College Station to spend time with my family. We call it Tivo Christmas, because we celebrate on our own time as if we had just recorded it on our Tivo and then celebrated later.

In attendance was my whole family: My parents, my sister Erin, my brother-in-law Arthur, their kids Martin (7), Winnie (5), and Libby (3), my sister Julie, my brother-in-law Brian, and their kids John (7) and Dixon (4 months). That makes 7 kids and 8 adults. Let's just say, when we're all together, it's pretty chaotic, but it's also like a party all the time.

Our third day was "Christmas" Day. We work it out so the kids open their presents in the morning and us adults open our presents in the evening after the kids get put to bed. It makes it super fun, because we can let loose and see what everyone got, without keeping an eye on the young and impatient kids. The kids and the adults had a great Christmas.

We had our first really cold snap and the highs were in the low 50's every day, but it was also pretty gray and a little windy, so playing outside wasn't all that much fun. The clutch move however, was the fact that my parents heated their entire pool. This was awesome, because even in the cold temps, the kids could get their energy out and have a blast in the pool. They even got to swim in the rain one night.

Even without the pool though, it's so fun to see the cousins play and get along so well. They are so cute together. The little 3 year olds, Connor and Libby are adorable. They seem to speak the same 3 year old language and love playing make believe games. I caught them pretending to be baby hamsters at one point. Of course Connor idolizes his oldest cousin Martin (7 1/2). He follows him around and is always asking where he is. Both me and my sister Erin are so happy to see our kids so close. 

Despite the crowd, we were tried to keep the gathering as low key as possible. We only cooked one night, but even that was easy, because we all just chose a heavy hors d'oeuvres to prepare on New Years Eve. We got a babysitter one night and went out to dinner and had drinks, and the other nights we ordered take-out. It was great and gave us our entire day and evening to just have fun instead of slaving away cooking and cleaning in the kitchen.

As always, we burned the candle at both ends, staying up really late (around 2am each night) and getting up early with the kids, but it was worth it. We had a blast. Here are lots of pictures from our third and final Christmas in Bryan. 

Just settling in. Avery shows off her standing and cruising skills.

Dixon had just woken up from a nap, so he was pretty mellow and relaxed laying on Grandpa's tummy.

Now there's a happy guy.

This year, the kids were all about games on their phone.

Avery was naughty and climbed up on the bar. Oh please let this be the last time that happens. Hee hee. For real though, she looked cute on the bar and Grandma and Grandpa couldn't resist a photo shoot.

They couldn't resist sweet kisses either.

Dinner time for the cousins was always an adventure.

The whole crew was present, so Jeff quickly got out the camera and took a snapshot. What a fun bunch.

Swimming during winter time. Gotta love it.

The cute baby cousins, Avery (8 mos.) and Dixon (4 mos.).

Some Grandpa bonding time.

Older cousins Winnie and John were so sweet and gentle with Avery. You could tell they enjoyed taking care of her.

Sweet tenderness from cousin John.

The big kids.

Santa, aka Grandpa, came for a visit on Tivo Christmas Eve. All the kids were excited even though the bigger kids knew it was Grandpa.

Dixon was a little stunned.

Avery once again was completely distraught. Can you tell she was just crying?

We decided to have the kids decorate Christmas cookies for Santa. We let them decorate one and eat one.

Our cookies for Santa.

Connor showing off his singing reindeer hat.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Christmas Day, Connor got eye black in his stocking. He was so excited.

Grandpa and his Christmas baby Avery.

Singing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus.

Connor got a framed picture of Johnny Manzel. He was beaming.

Look it's Batman. We have played Batman and Lizard man (the bad guy of Spider Man...go figure) a lot at home.

Sometimes the box is the best part.

Adult Christmas and we had to take our annual Father/Daughters picture after we got our gift from our Dad.

Brian made these shirts for all the guys for our annual Son In Law of the Year (SILOTY) competition. It always ends in the tie.

Even though it was rainy, it didn't stop the kids from having a blast while doing their annual candy cane hunt.

Grandma helping Connor and Libby find candy canes. It is really funny, because even candy canes that look so obvious to us are "hard" to find for the three year olds.

Happy candy cane hunters.

Mommies with the newest babies. You'll be hunting for candy canes next year little ones.

Adult supervision while the kids swim on a rainy night.

Avery makes a great life guard.

New Years Eve, Avery got to wear the crown from one of our poppers. "What's up Avery?"

Even though it was really cold, the kids happily sat through a mini fireworks display.

The kids even got to help.

Grandpa and ALL 7 grandkids.

Luckily, it had been a long week for everyone, so even the kids were being a little lazy on New Years Day. Thank goodness, since all the adults were pooped from our celebrating the night before. Here Libby and Connor snuggle with Aunt Erin.

Daddy getting snuggles from Connor and...

snuggles from Avery.

No more mellow Avery, here is our happy girl.

A perfect day to watch football. Michigan lost, but it was still a good day.

One last time to play with the boxes before we headed back to Sugar Land. What a fun trip.