The ransom has been paid, we have the missing pictures

I have uploaded the rest of the pictures to Flickr.com . These are my favorites.

Busy Times

010100030, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. Things have been pretty crazily busy with the start of school. I uploaded some pictures to Flickr.com the other day, but didn't get around to telling anyone on here that they were up. Above is an example of one of them that I uploaded and there are a few more that should be new to you. There may be more coming shortly because I thought I uploaded more than are showing up. We'll see. Hopefully I can get some new stories up for you guys soon!

Garage Sale-ing

Warning: If you've had it UP TO HERE with Ava's poop stories you might just want to skip over this one as there will be multiple references to smelly, slimy, multicolored, chunky yet still loose, wretched, completely awful butt productions. Now that I'm free from potentially grossing anyone out, let me get started.

Picture this.... It's Saturday morning. All of us were up early enough that we could leave the house , newspaper garage sale section in hand, by 8 AM (for those of you that don't have a strange compulsion to owning other people's things that they can't even stand to own anymore, this is the customary garage sale opening time). We were set. We had a plan of attack. We weren't going to bother going to garage sale listings one by one. No, we didn't have time for that for we had what I will refer to as "the motherload". There were at least a dozen Neighborhood Garage Sales in our general area! For us, this is like Christmas in June. I didn't check, but I'm sure our hearts were beating a little faster as we started up the car and pulled out of the driveway. Deals would be our drug and we had $35 burning a hole in our pockets. You will understand later when I tell you what we purchased.

For now though, lets get to what you've all been waiting for.... yet another of Ava's Antics. As a little background info, I'll tell you that Ava was screaming her head off on Friday night for what reason we were not sure. She has been dealing with constipation lately, so its possible she was constipated. She was having these gurgling noises in her belly long after feeding, so its possible she had gas. It's also possible she was mad because she still wasn't feeling 100% with respect to her cold and was attempting to hit her previous high note from when she was in a more healthy condition. Regardless, it was clear that she was in pain and, as you can imagine, this was hard for Doni and I to have to experience. We started doing everything we could. First, we gave her some Mylicon for her gas issues. Next, we gave her a glycerin suppository laxative to clear out any fecaliths (literally means "poop stones"; an exaggeration, but gets the point across). To make sure we were really covering all the bases we also gave her a small dose of an oral laxative. A short time and a little sleeping incline arrangement later and Ava was out like a light. This girl was TIRED. She hadn't been sleeping well for the previous several days and she ended up sleeping straight through from 11PM Friday till 7AM Saturday. Doni did feed her around 5AM-ish, but Ava slept the entire time she was drinking. While Ava had made a little mess in her diaper Saturday morning, it was nothing like what we were expecting after a suppository and laxative. She had only pooped a little bit! What's the deal with that? So anyway, that's the background and let's get back to garage sale-ing.....

We had made it through our first neighborhood and were just finishing up our second neighborhood when we smelled something that wasn't quite right emanating from the back seat. If Sparky had been in the car we may have dismissed it as one of his farts because this dog's farts can smell like a skunks spray. However, since we do not take our dogs garage sale-ing, the smell had to have been emanating from our precious little child's rear end. We knew what we had to do, so I got Ava out of her carseat while Doni laid out a portable changing pad and got the diaper and wipes ready. Despite our supplies, we were nowhere near ready for the onslaught of feces that was in our near future.

Doni laid Ava down, unsnapped her onesie, and undid Ava's diaper. Let me start out by saying that Huggies makes a very fine product in that their diaper held everything that Ava had put out up until this point. This stuff was EVERYWHERE! It was all over her butt, on the upper-inside of her legs, all over her frontal area, and all up in her business! Let me remind you that Ava is laying on a small, portable changing pad on the backseat of our car. Doni starts pulling and using wipes like there's a fire in Ava's diaper and Doni's trying to put it out by smothering it. This is by no means a criticism because this piece of work obviously needed its fair share of wipes. In fact, if I had been the lucky one changing Ava I probably would have borrowed someone's hose and sprayed her down instead of wasting the entire tree of wipes that I would have used.

In Ava's typical pooping technique, she waited for her bottom to be cleaned before adding a little more to the brew. It was like a game of ping-pong the way that Doni would wipe, then Ava would poop some more, Doni would wipe, Ava would poop some more. It went back and forth like this several times. In the excitement of it all Ava got a little zealous and ended up getting poop not only in her diaper, but also on her onesie, changing pad, and a dab on the back seat of the car. This car is barely a month old and here she is pooping on it. When she gets older we're going to have to ingrain into her the value of a dollar. Being the prepared parents that we were, we had a small plastic bag that we could put the messy onesie, dirty diaper, and 20-some wipes into. However, not being forewarned that Ava was going to add yet another experience we will later look back on and laugh at, we had not brought a change of clothes for Ava. And, wouldn't you believe it, none of our garage sale stops had been selling any baby clothes. We had to interrupt our garage sale-ing with a brief trip to Target. With the purchase of a onesie, a pacifier (which we had also brilliantly left at home), and some more wipes for our rapidly diminishing supply, we were on our way.

It turned out to be a pretty productive day with some great deals. Here are some examples:

• 1 Microwave (for a friend of ours) = $10
• 1 toy for Ava with balls that makes noise = $2
• 3 brand new (tags still on) outfits for Ava = total of $8
• Multiple books = $0.25-0.50 a piece
• 1 8 ft heavy duty rope w/ latch on one end = $0.75

With deals like these, how could we allow ourselves to stay home on a Saturday morning?

Sniffle

The last few days have been quite an experience. Ava hasn't been feeling that well. Pretty quickly she went from her beautiful and healthy self to her beautiful and sickly self. She was having trouble breathing through her nose due to congestion, which complicated her bottle-feeding. Also, the area around her eyes were red and you could tell she was VERY tired. She probably also had a sore throat because both Doni and I have been dealing with the same thing we have had them. By Wednesday Ava had gotten to the point where she needed to be seen by a doctor. Her doctor seemed pretty concerned, so he ordered a chest X-ray and a culture from her nasal passages. Thankfully, her chest X-ray was clear and the culture was negative for his main concern (RSV: Respiratory Syncytial Virus).

Good news: Ava only has a really bad cold
Bad News: She has a really bad cold

The past few nights Ava hasn't been sleeping very well. Since I have been going to school during the day and having to get up early, Doni has selflessly been getting up with Ava most times during the night. As I said, Ava hasn't been sleeping well and has been resisting lying down in her crib. I got extremely lucky with my schedule and unexpectedly have a four day weekend (Friday-Monday). Since Doni hasn't been getting much sleep at night, I got up with Ava every time last night so that Doni could have a solid night's sleep. Let me revise that, I stayed up with Ava last night. I would get her to fall asleep, go to bed myself, and minutes later she would start crying. Since this wasn't really allowing Doni the sleep that she desperately needed, I camped out in the rocking chair in Ava's room. Eventually I ended up holding Ava most of the night as we slept in the recliner. It's not the best sleep I've ever had, but Ava seemed to sleep a lot better in my arms than in her crib.

Mercifully, we all seem to be through the worst of this cold. We are still having some remnants of it, but hopefully by the time I go back to school on Tuesday we'll all be back to our healthy selves.

Milwaukee: Tuesday, June 6th

On Tuesday of our trip in Milwaukee we went to the Milwaukee County Zoo. The weather forecast said that there were going to be some rainshowers starting about 3 in the afternoon. We got there pretty early so we would have a chance to see everything we were interested in before the skies pulled a spitake. We soon discovered that not only do Indiana meteorologists have no idea what is going on, but its more of a nationwide ignorance among meteorologists. It started raining minutes before we pulled into the parking lot.

A quick stop to the gift shop and $6 spent on rain slickers later, we were off! Despite being a "county" zoo, it was pretty impressive. Doni even said it was better than the Indianapolis Zoo, but I have never been so I wouldn't know. All in all, the rain didn't persist for more than an hour or so so we had a good time oogling the caged beasts. The hippos in the picture below practically ran to their pile of hay when they were let out from their inside enclosure. Picture a hippo running.... now picture me wetting myself because he was coming my direction.


After the zoo we went to the second happiest place in the world...... The Jelly Belly Tour! We were assuming it was an actual plant where they manufactuered the Jelly Bellies, but boy were we disappointed. The whole building was nothing but a warehouse that served as a distribution center and a gift shop. However, they did have a train that drove you around the outskirts of the warehouse to different stations where they showed videos from the factory where they actually made the Jelly Bellies. Way to add insult to injury. I have to give them credit though.... they made up for their lack of substance with some quality free samples.

Toot toot!

While we were on the tour we took an unauthorized picture. If you look closely you can see some of the awe-inspiring racks where they store box upon box of the delicious gooey confections. That big blue blob nearly obstructing my face is Ava's carrier.


The last picture is obviously a portrait of the Statue of Liberty. Less obvious is the fact that it is made entirely of Jelly Bellies. I never knew art was so delicious.

Our last stop on Tuesday was an outlet mall where we got plenty of good deals. Wednesday morning we ate breakfast and headed home. It was nice to get out of the house for a few days and it made a great first family vacation.

Milwaukee: Monday, June 5th

Since this may be the last time for a while that we could take a little vacation, Doni and I decided to take a trip to somewhere both of us had never been, but wasn't too far away. After a little research, we decided on Milwaukee. Since Doni's family lives at about a halfway point, we were also able to leave our dogs at her father's house while we were gone. I doubt Sparky and Sassy even missed us because they love his large, fenced-in yard.

We left for Milwaukee from Chesterton, IN with about a three hour drive. If it weren't for Chicago traffic we could have probably been there in less than two hours. I'm convinced Chicago has instituted a new law where any road that has more than two lanes is required to constantly have massive construction projects taking place.

Our first stop after dropping our things off at the hotel was Miller Brewing Company. This may be surprising to those of you that know that neither Doni or I drink. However, our love for the TV shows where they show you how things are made (see How It's Made) overrides our lack of interest in brewski. It was interesting, but we didn't get to see as much as we had hoped. They did share some interesting facts with us about their factory though.

This single brewing facility:

• produces 500,000 cases of beer DAILY

• has a warehouse (the size of 5 football fields where they stack the cases 20 ft deep) which they completely fill and empty........... DAILY

We were also taken into the underground, hand-dug tunnels where the beer would be kept packed in ice and sawdust to keep it cool. Lastly, we were offered 3 glasses of our choice of beers to sample...... I had Coke, Doni had Sprite, and, all I'm going to say is, ...... Ava got a little tipsy.

After the 1/4-1/2 mile walk back to our car (which Doni and I figured was to allow some time to sober up) we went to a mall downtown. It's a lot like Circle Centre, but is a lot bigger. Weirdly, their mall was only open until 7 pm. Do people not shop in Milwaukee outside of normal business hours? I can only assume so.

On the bright side, we were able to get back to our hotel long before the pool closed. Since Ava was showing no signs of giving in to her normal sleep schedule, we took her for her first swimming experience (outside the womb). The water could have been a little warmer, but once she got used to it she seemed somewhat content. We did find out something about Ava that was new to me though: Ava floats! No, we didn't throw her in the deep end and see her pop back out of the water like a buoy. I did place my hand under her head and let the rest of her body bob to the surface. I guess a possible explanation could be that she had lots of gas. She farts often enough.....

More on the rest of the trip later.

Ok, we just maxed out the cute-o-meter

Ok, we just maxed out the cute-o-meter, originally uploaded by Ava's Antics.

When Doni put this outfit on Ava, I thought "She looks like such a big girl!" It's amazing how fast she's growing. Just look at some of her pictures from the hospital and see for yourself. It's already been 6 1/2 weeks! Still, its kind of hard to remember what our lives were like before she was here. She has become such an integral part of our family that without her in the picture it just doesn't seem right.

Today we took her to her first movie, which thankfully she slept through. By the time the movie started the theater had filled up to where probably 95% of the seats were taken. I had been hoping that there wouldn't be that many people there so we could just hide out with Ava in the corner. We were in the corner, but by no means were we isolated from the other movie-goers. Ava slept through the first couple hours of the movie and only started waking up (getting hungry) with 1/2 hour of the movie left. I took her down close to the entrance of the theater in case she decided to get vocal. She continued sleeping while drinking most of her bottle so I could watch the end of the movie. How nice of her.

By the way, there are lots of new photos on the Flickr.com website.

The lion was no match for Ava

Ava taming the lion at our recent trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.

It'll be a few days

I won't be able to post for a few days because we're taking a mini-vacation to Milwaukee. Now I have good news and bad news.....

Bad news: We forgot a camera
Good news: We bought a one-time use camera for our trip

When we get back hopefully we'll have lots of pictures.

Whoa

As you can see from the above chart, Ava is growing faster than a weed. We went to her doctor's for her one month well-baby check-up this afternoon. Now, I was surprised when she added 15% to her body weight in one week. We figured she was just making up for lost time since she had only gained one ounce in the previous week. Little did we know, this was the start of a trend! Ava is now 10 pounds 4 ounces! Ba-Dang! Granted, it had been two weeks since she was last weighed, which works out to about 13% increase in body weight per week, but still. She added 25% of her previous body weight in two weeks! Not only that, but she also is up to 21 inches in length from 20 1/2 inches two weeks ago. Also, her head circumference has increased from 14 1/2 inches to 15 1/2 inches.

In case you're wondering, yes, we are in talks with Hollywood producers concerning the upcoming remake of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.