Happy 15 month birthday Ava (one hour early)!

Ava and I have officially been home for an entire year! Besides one night in the hospital and few other nights here and there, we have been HOME! How GREAT is our God!

We are also going on vacation next week for the first time since Ava’s been born. At least this is the first vacation where doctors, hospitals, and sickness are not involved (God willing!). We are so excited!

Ava is loving summer and we are loving it too! Ava is changing so much lately. She now weighs over 16 pounds (yes, you read correctly) and is getting tall and looking more and more like a toddler. She’s learning the ‘Itsy Bitsy spider’ and can now get down from sitting all by herself (without falling backwards). I don’t think she will ever crawl (even though she could if she wanted to), keeping her hands free is just too important to her. Honestly, it’s just fine with me that she’s not walking or crawling. She gets around just fine and I get to have a ‘baby’ for that much longer. She’s still content sitting and playing on my lap (most of the time) and I love that. She has about 10 teeth and we are looking forward to her eye-teeth coming in all the way. Poor thing has been teething for about 3 months straight.

She’s taking little baby steps in her eating. She took a couple tastes of chocolate pudding the other day voluntarily and when I say tastes, that means she got a little on the inside of her lips and swallowed it without gagging or throwing up. Yep, it’s a slow process and the steps are small, but we get excited over EVERY one!

Thank you for your continued prayer and encouragement!

Rejoicing day by day!