Aven is 2 months old! Blessing pictures and other fun pictures!

My sweet Aven Grey is 2 months old!! I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by! Since I last posted we had her baby blessing. It was the sweetest experience! Jon gave the most beautiful blessing, and the spirit was so strong. The circle of men surrounding my little girl was so big they almost couldn't reach her! I was absolutely overwhelmed by the sight of my baby surrounded by a group of strong men who honor their priesthood and love her so much - she is such a lucky little girl, and I am one lucky Mama! After the blessing we had a little lunch that Aven's G.G. Patti was nice enough to host at her house! It was so fun to be able to spend time together and eat good food and take pictures! We rarely get to have both sides of the family together at one time, so this really was a treat for us! So, my blog is having some technical issues lately, so I am going to tell you a few things about the blessing pictures up here since I can't post between pictures..... Aven's dress was made by her G.G. Patti 26 years ago! It is the same blessing dress that I wore. Jon's dad, his sister Shaunalee and her family, Uncle David and Denise, and his cousin Michael and his family are missing from the big family picture. Our ward started at 9am and the Taylor Stake Conference started at 10am - and Jon's dad is in the Stake Presidency. So he rushed out of his morning meetings, barely made it in time for the blessing, and rushed back to Stake Conference where he had to give a talk!! We really appreciated all of the running around he and the rest of the family did for us. We had family drive up from the valley, from Cottonwood and all the way in from Nevada!! In other, 2 month kind of news, Aven is just getting so big!! I'm not sure how much she weighs now (our scale broke and she doesn't go to the doctor for another week) but she is wearing size 3 month clothes and we had to stop putting her to sleep in the little bassinet attachment of her pack'n'play because she was too tall, her poor little legs had to be bent! I had to put away some of her clothes that are way too small, and I almost cried because she will never be that small again! At the same time, I am so happy that she is gaining weight and growing up healthy and strong! Here are some other fun facts about my sweet little one: **She can't take baths in the sink anymore - too big!! **She loves to snuggle! It is my absolute favorite thing in the whole world! She puts her head in your neck and wraps her arms around. It absolutely melts my heart! **She wakes up every 2 hours at night to eat, but is pretty good about going right back to sleep. I am getting better at functioning on less sleep, though I'm not sure my brain will ever go back to the way it used to be! **She still has a bunch of dark hair and her eyebrows are starting to come in dark. Her eye color keeps switching on us though. One minute they will be dark brown, the next they will be blue, and the next they will be green! I guess we will just have to keep waiting! **We have a play mat that goes on the floor and she is actually starting to pay attention to the toys (she used to just look right past them), and she is working on touching them!! Yesterday she started hitting one of her toys and then she looked at the toy and her arm like she was trying to figure out what happened...and she did it again! It was so exciting to watch her learning! **On that same note, she is starting to enjoy reading time a lot more. She actually looks at the pictures and seems to be listening. This morning she was practicing with her arms and hitting the pictures! **Her legs are so strong! She is able to hold herself up when you stand her on your lap, and she even bounces herself! As soon as she has better balance (and some more length to her) I will have to pull out her bouncy seat - I have a feeling it is going to be a hit! **Her neck is really strong too! She is holding her head up really well and she doesn't "forget" that she is holding her head up as often. **Sometimes in the afternoon I set her in the swing and turn on a children's show for her (so I can try to get dinner made) and she is really learning to enjoy the bright colors and the music. Her favorites are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Blue's Clues. **She loves to dance! We turn on Disney music or nursery rhyme music and then I sway her arms back and forth or make her legs dance and she gets to excited!! **When I sing to her, she watches my mouth and tries to move her mouth the same way. Sometimes she even makes noises! I think she is a beautiful singer already! **There was a fundraising banquet for the Chamber of Commerce that Aven's G.G. was putting on. The theme was Beauty and the Beast and she asked me to dress up as Belle and sing a song as part of the evening's entertainment. Every time I tried to practice my song ("A Change in Me" from the broadway show) Aven screamed! It got the point where just the introduction made her get fussy! I don't know why she hated that song so much - we sing other Disney songs that sound similar all the time! Luckily, she was just fine during the actual performance. Silly girl! **I have a rule that Aven is not allowed to sleep in our bed until after 5am. But, when she wakes up around 5-5:30 I put her in bed with us. We love this part of the morning! Jon especially loves it since he is at work all day long, and when he comes home there is stuff to do - dinner, etc... so this is our quiet family time. She usually snuggles right up to Jon's chest or he puts her right on his chest, and she sleeps so peacefully until his alarm goes of at 6:30am. I love watching the two of them. They look exactly alike when they are sleeping! **I think I should just mention here what an incredible Daddy Jon is! He is just so natural at it, and Aven is such a Daddy's girl! She loves it when he comes home and there are times when she will cry and cry and the only one who can make her better is her Daddy. I have to share a sweet little story about this: Jon wrote a song, long before I met him, for his future child. It is the sweetest little lullaby you have ever heard! Anyways, he would play his guitar and sing it to my belly while I was pregnant (and of course I cried every time!). Well, the other night she was especially fussy. She has been having allergies and been really stuffy. So he pulled out his guitar and started gently playing and singing her song. She almost immediately stopped crying and soon she fell fast asleep. I know that she remembered that song and her daddy's voice! Of course, this made me cry...again.... **She is smiling so much! It's hard to get many pictures of it because as soon as she sees my phone, she gets distracted and stops smiling, but I have been able to catch it a few times. I love making her smile and I love hearing her giggle! Sometimes she will giggle in her sleep and she grins so big! I wonder what good things she is dreaming about. There are a million more things I could tell you! I love watching her grow and learn and develop her own personality! Every day I just love her more and more and I love being able to stay at home with her. I am so grateful to Jon for working so hard so that I can stay home with her. It is the best job I could have ever asked for!

Aven is 5 weeks old and a little photo shoot!

My little Aven is already 5 weeks old! I can't believe it! It seems like we just brought her home from the hospital! Now she is 8 pounds 9 ounces and a whole 22 inches long! I am really happy that she is growing because she was having a hard time eating at first, so it is a big relief for me. I just grow more and more in love with this beautiful girl every day! Here are a few fun things about her: ***Aven still has a ton of dark hair, especially in the back! It is even long enough that it hangs over her ears - and I love it! I wanted her to have hair so badly! ***She loves to stretch. It is so cute to watch when she throws her arms over her head, her hands in little fists, and she arches her back. Her face gets all scrunched up and she pulls her legs up to her chest. She does it all day and it is the best! ***She sleeps with her arms up over her head, or, if you are holding her, she sleeps with one hand tucked under her chin like she is posing for a picture! ***She has been able to roll onto her side since she was born, but she is much stronger about it now, and she has even, accidentally rolled all the way over a couple of times. ***At first she hated getting a bath, but now she loves it! We wash her down and then sometimes we let her sit in there for a few more minutes just because she smiles and acts so happy in the warm water! ***She sleeps with her eyes open. You will notice it in the pictures below. ***She loves looking in the mirror. We got her a play mat, and it has a few hanging toys for her to look at, and it has one mirror toy - she doesn't like the other toys that much yet, but she sure loves looking at that mirror! So we got a mirror to hang on the back seat of the car so I can see her from the driver's seat, and it does double duty because it makes her so happy to look at herself while we drive! ***Aven loves to listen to music - especially the Disney music channel on Pandora. We play that and I move her arms and legs around like she is dancing and she just smiles the whole time! ***She also loves it when we sing primary songs together. ***She is starting to figure out her voice. She's makes noises that sound almost like she is starting to cry, but she is happy as can be. She does it when she is playing with her toys, or when we turn on the music. ***She is doing a lot better about eating! She had a hard time at first - we had to stay an extra day in the hospital because she wouldn't eat, and then it was a fight for a long time. Then she would eat just fine on the right side, but wouldn't eat at all on the left, so I had to pump. Now she eats on both sides just fine. I just have to figure out how to feed her modestly now. The whole "under a blanket" thing is still a little rough....but I am figuring it out. ***We just recently got a swing from my Aunt Shakira and she loves it!! This is great for me because now I can set her in it to make dinner or clean up a little bit (or blog...) and I can see her and she is content. ***We still can't decide what color her eyes are going to be. Sometimes they look completely brown with no traces of blue at all, and sometimes they look blue with no traces of brown! Since I have brown eyes and Jon has blue eyes, it could go either way.... ***Did I mention her dimple in my last post? Well, she has the sweetest dimple! Of course I kiss it only a million times a day! Well, I could probably go on and on and on about all of the adorable little things that she does, but I will leave it at that for now. I just can't express how much I love this sweet little girl! She is the center of our entire lives and I wouldn't have it any other way!!! Here are some pictures of her! We did a little amateur photo shoot and my sister took the pictures! I think they turned out great! Jon is going to photoshop the backgrounds so it doesn't look like we did them in our dining room, but I couldn't wait until he was finished to share them - and some of the pictures are just some snapshots that I am in love with!! Well, she woke up from her nap so I better wrap this up!!!