Penny - 1 Month old

One month old

Penny's "poop" face

smiles  :)

kisses

Ava trying to feed Penny  :/

Ava found that Penny likes to suck on her finger

Penny was a month old last Sunday, so here are some pics to update you.  Penny has been a fun addition to our family, I am proud to call her mine.  She can hold up her head pretty well now, and is just starting to smile at me.  Unlike Ava she doesn’t really appreciate being swaddled, and sleeping on her back doesn’t really do it for her, she prefers her side  ;)  and sleeping without mommy is nothing to be desired, which you can imagine makes it hard for a mama to get any sleep.  She also tends to not want to go to bed until late, and is pretty fussy the entire evening, if I wasn’t ok with pacifiers before, I’m more than okay with them now… they are my new best friends! 

The day Del and Arielle left, Ava got sick and had a fever for 4 days straight, nothing really came of it.  I don’t know what the deal was, but when she actually started feeling better, she was acting out like crazy, being rebellious towards us to the core!  She’s been screaming constantly, yelling “NO!” at us, throwing fits like she had never done before, this lasted a few days before she really broke of it, and we are still working on her.  Even though it was really draining for TJ and I emotionally we tried to be as consistent as we could in disciplining her in order to get over this hump and her not gain any ground on us.  She is still testing us, and having a hard time getting along with other kids, but I think she is really improving in her behavior, TJ and I need prayer though as we want to do the right thing with Ava and deal with her correctly.  There are definitely a few things that Ava has had to deal with though, first it was a new baby in the house taking attention away from her in combination with a family staying with us.  Ava then got used to my brother’s family being here, but then they left :(.  The day they left she came down with a fever AND I had to figure out how to take care of two little ones.  So… I am not ignorant to the transition she is going through, and am trying to be sensitive to that, but at the same time she needs consistency and thrives off knowing where the boundaries are, then she can act on that. 

Anyway… Ava really does love Penny, when she cries Ava tries to console her, she talks in a high voice to Penny saying “HHhhiiiiiiii!!!”, she loves to hold her and give her an innumerable amount of kisses a day.  She enjoys throwing away diapers, she grabs the diaper and says “trash… trash” and proceeds to throw it in the trash.

 Ava was holding Penny yesterday and actually pretended to feed her, and since then has been religious about feeding her own babies  :).  Ava, just in the past couple of weeks has really increased her vocabulary, she has started shooting out all kinds of words I never knew she knew.  She has also started putting two words together, for example “nighnight mommy”  “help please” “obey mommy and daddy” “choo choo train”  and many more, basically whatever 2 words she knows, she can put them together. 

That’s all the news for now… :)