Ava is 2 and a half

So Ava is officially a city girl now. She greets the doormen with a "hi" and a "thank you" when they open the door for her. She boards the bus and knows exactly where to sit. She patiently waits for the subway like a seasoned New Yorker. She likes to make small talk with the taxi drivers even if they are not very responsive. She pushes the elevator buttons like a pro and does not attempt to evoke our wrath by touching the "alarm" button anymore. She'll walk a couple of blocks without complaining...sometimes. Our first week in the city, she would always say "let's take a taxi" if we walked at all. So overall she is adjusting quite well.

Some of the struggles we have with her are probably just related to usual two year old sassiness. I feel like the scope of my parenting has come down to two methods: threats and bribes. We threaten her with time-outs and no treats, and bribe her with treats (her new favorites are jelly beans and chocolate 'chocayet'). Basically every meal involves bribing her with a treat if she would just finish her food. This probably sounds so mean but a while ago I would say she would have to sleep in Napoleon's cage (Napoleon is a friend's dog-not Ava's favorite dog in the world) if she didn't listen. Desperate times called for desperate measures. I've stopped doing that even if I was totally joking because I didn't want her to develop an unhealthy fear of dogs or have to go to therapy for years because I subjected her young mind to such a cruel possibility. So now the threats seem pretty harmless but I wonder how we can move away from threats and bribes in general.

Ava really is a dainty sweet little girl. She has been trying to assert her independence, but in so many ways, she is still our little baby (not for long!) She says some really funny things that I forget to write down sometimes. Here is a list of some of them:

"Are you happy?"-She asks this all day long, especially when she can tell we are losing our patience with something. Then she'll ask, "Are you upset?"

"Are you a good girl/boy? Are you a good mommy/daddy?"-She is pretty good at knowing who is a boy and who is a girl.

"Are you being funny?"-She likes to ask David this when she is on the phone with him.

"I'm hiding. Mommy, go to the couch."-If I find her trying to poop somewhere, she lets me know that she needs her privacy and I have to go somewhere else. Not sure when the whole potty training thing will happen. She thinks "potty train" is something you ride on.

"Stop bothering me!"

"Dorothy, this is how we eat a banana."-Ava loves watching Elmo's world and will randomly show Dorothy how something is done throughout the day.

Her favorite words to pronounce are "weather, another, other". She really emphasizes the "th" sound.

She has picked up the word "crap" from us and we don't know how to erase it from her vocabulary. We keep telling her that it is a bad word, but sometimes the second after we tell her to stop saying it, we say it ourselves and she'll chastise us by saying "don't say that, that is a bad word". A lot of times, I'll hear her whisper "crap" under her breath, or she will say it really slowly like "cccrrraaappp".

Ava must wonder why I'm always trying to get her to look at me with the sun in her eyes

This is a playground in Central Park that is just a few minutes away from our apartment. Actually there are a few parks really close to us. Ava roams free here.

Chasing after her is quite tiring at this point! But it is all worth it just to see her smile.

Plugging noses to get ready to go under water. The heated salt water pool in our building is awesome.

Ava really looks forward to daddy coming home from work and the whole family going for a swim. However, I may stop going because my 2 piece safari-patterned bathing suit makes me look like a mammoth jungle animal that should go into permanent hiding. I may have been indirectly charged with public indecency because all the residents got an email after I started swimming that requires all swimmers to be completely dressed in the elevators...oops.

So glad the weather is pretty good for these park outings!

We survived the first three weeks!

Another long post...no pictures because our camera is officially busted. We have the worst luck with cameras. So we've been in the city for three weeks now...and nothing catastrophic has happened yet. There have been a few meltdowns (between Ava and myself) but all in all we are doing pretty well. So here is the rundown on our life for the past little while.

We checked into our apartment (it does feel like we moved into a hotel a little bit) and waited for the arrival of our new mattress set. We were so excited to have a new mattress set since the one we had in Charlotte was over ten years old that were handed down to us from David's parents. So besides the mattress set and the wire frame that came with it, we had no other furniture. We decided to go the super ghetto route and not even have a real bed frame because we thought there would be absolutely no room in our bedroom for a large bedroom set. Ava slept on the blow up mattress in her room but ended up in our bed eventually every night.

The next day (February 16), David started work. He has to get into work at 6:30am. Ava and I sat around twiddling our thumbs, not knowing what to do exactly. Our furniture was not going to arrive for another two days. The weather was abominable and I wasn't familiar with anything to go anywhere. It took me three weeks to realize that across the street from where we live are "projects". Talk about clueless. So we live in a brand new building that is still under construction in some areas. There is a beautiful indoor pool, a small gym, a lounge area, and a children's playroom. I think the amenities are quite nice. We live next to Whole Foods, TJ Maxx, and Michael's. As for our apartment, it is 810 square feet, with 2 bathrooms and 2 bedrooms. Who would've thought that our 1700 square foot house in Charlotte would seem like a palace? The big selling point for our apartment is the washer and dryer in our apartment. This is a rarity I've been told. Hey people out there, don't take your house for granted!!!!

We had four nice guys from church and David's sister Julie, her husband Andrew, and little Grant come help and unload our moving truck. This is the amazing thing about our church. You can move anywhere and not know anyone but once you get in contact with the right person, people are willing to help you move! David was (and is still) gimpy so he couldn't do any moving. Once all of the boxes were unloaded, our apartment looked super small and I was very overwhelmed. Two weeks after our shipment arrived, everything was out of boxes but the apartment was a hazardous obstacle course. Piles of clothing, toys, and pointless junk were everywhere. I'm looking around at our apartment today and it definitely looks a lot better, but there are some things we just don't have room for (like David's childhood mementos, his golf clubs, our China set, and our Christmas decorations). Our new small couch arrived the day after our shipment, so it was nice to finally have a comfortable place to sit down.

Ava was happy to see her crib, but she didn't sleep very well. She had gotten used to sleeping with us so we are thankful for our King-sized bed to accommodate all three of us. It has really been an adjustment period for all of us. David gets home from work by 6:30pm, which is fabulous. We are so grateful for his new job, since he was laid off for over four months before starting this new one. However, we have gotten so used to him being at home all day every day, that it is really hard to not have him at home. Being my large and lazy pregnant self, it is hard to entertain Ava. Everyday for the past three weeks, I take her down to the playroom and hope that some other child will join her in the fun. She doesn't like the playroom much when no other children are there.

Most of the days over the past three weeks had temperature in the 30s. I just did not feel like venturing out much. I don't really have warm winter clothes that even fit me at this point. Although I am pretty proud of myself for the places that I have been to already. The library is a 5 minute walk from our apartment so we've been there for storytime. It is hard to want to go out because I am just so ill-equipped. I have learned that our $15 junky umbrella stroller is not cutting it. I have never seen so many fancy strollers in my life. I've heard people say "well, this is my "car", so I need to buy a good stroller." You really do need a good stroller because my junky stroller can barely maneuver around the dog poop, spit, slushy snow and general nastiness on the sidewalk. I may need to invest in a Phil and Ted's double stroller soon.

There were a few more traumatic things I had to deal with, like finding an obstetrician. Nobody would take me because I was too far along. I was starting to get really frustrated and anxious because I was already 35 weeks along by the time I was calling around for a doctor. The fact that all the midwives and doctors were rejecting me felt like the city was rejecting me, which is totally ridiculous, but it just felt horrible. Finally, I did find a doctor and all is well. Selling our Camry (we sold our Subaru Outback in Charlotte) was quite frustrating too. Let's just say it involved someone who wanted to buy our car on Craigslist saying we were unethical because we backed out of the sale at the last minute. We sold it for the exact same price to the Toyota dealer. For some reason, dealing with a dealership rather than a private buyer made us more comfortable, even if we didn't make any extra money! I hated the fact that someone on Craigslist was really mad at us. I'm just sensitive about being called unethical.

There's a lot more to say but I'll post more later...

Let's go to New York City!

House getting packed up...hard to say goodbye to our life in Charlotte

Sorry this is a long post but I'm trying to document this momentous occasion. David got a job offer with Credit Suisse on Jan. 21, and the next day we hopped in our car and drove up to New York to find an apartment. It took us 12 hours to get to David's brother's house in Pound Ridge, New York. We crept into their basement a little past 1am and settled in for the night. The next few days we drove into the city and frantically looked for apartments. We met brokers who would show us the apartments and also attended open houses. For a split second I considered the fifth story brownstone apartment that had no elevator and no washer and dryer in the building. And then I came to my senses and realized I would die carrying a stroller, a baby and making sure Ava made it up the stairs (not to mention I would probably go into labor early if I had to climb those stairs all the time). Brownstones definitely have their charm, but it just wouldn't work for us.

We finally settled on a brand new building in the Upper West Side that we felt pretty good about. I'll blog more about our apartment later. All I will say is that we are still reeling from sticker shock. We headed back to Charlotte a week later. The drive back was pretty scary because we hit the snow storm that started in Raleigh. A little bit of slipping and sliding in our car really freaked us out but we made it home safely.

Once we got home, it was time to get ready to move. We really only had two weeks to get everything together before David had to start his job. During this time, our house went under contract and was scheduled to close on February 24. We are pretty amazed at how the timing worked out. We had our house on the market for 6 months before we even got an offer, and the offer came through right when we needed it. We are so blessed.

We quickly listed most of our furniture on Craig's List because we thought most of our old furniture wouldn't fit in our new apartment. We may have been a little over-zealous with selling stuff, but we pretty much sold everything we wanted to sell. Ava was constantly asking, "Where is our couch? Where is the TV? Where is the bed?"

While we were getting ready to head up to NYC, Ava kept saying, "Let's go to New York City!" We assured her that we were going to get there soon enough...I booked our moving company through ABF Upack. They provide the trailer and drive it up to the destination, but you have to do everything else. Of course we couldn't foresee this, but David hurt his back the night before the trailer was supposed to arrive! His back had been bothering him since we drove up to NYC to look for apartments, and the constant bending over and other activities just kept aggravating his back. The final straw was a 3 pound mail sorter that he bent down to pick up. David pretty much fell to the ground and was stuck there for about 12 hours.

We had some angels come to our rescue and help us pack up and get our trailer loaded. David and I were both pretty useless so without these wonderful friends to help us, we would have been in big trouble! We really didn't have too much stuff since we sold a lot of it, but it still seemed like a lot of work to get everything packed up. The trailer was picked up and we spent our last night in Charlotte with the Saunders since we had nothing left in our house.

The next day we set off for NYC and prayed that David's back wouldn't cause too much of an issue on the road. By the time we reached Baltimore, we had to stop for the night because David's back hurt too much. We had a nice night at the Hyatt and then headed out to NYC the next morning after the continental breakfast (I really love continental breakfasts...or really anything buffet style that won't stop me from eating 5 plates of food). David had to take a drug test by 3pm before he started his new job on February 16. We barely made it to the building on time. We were concerned that the cocktail of drugs he got at the doctor for his back would raise some red flags, but he took the test after he showed them the prescriptions.

David could barely move after the drug test so we hurried to the Hyatt in NYC and settled in for the night. We spent the next two nights back in Pound Ridge with David's brother and moved into our new apartment on Monday. More on that in the next post...

Christmas in Arizona!

I had to get this post in before February...that's tomorrow! So much has happened in our lives this past month that I need to get on the ball with posting.

We were in Arizona for about three and a half weeks during the Christmas break. It was such a great time with my family. We spent about a week in Phoenix with my sister Michelle and her hubby Terry, then we all headed down to Tucson. It was fabulous to get Mom's home-cooked meals and for Ava to really connect with my family. Every morning, Ah Ma (that's what Ava calls my mom) would take her on a walk around the lake and eat breakfast with her. It was great waking up in the morning to homemade soy milk. Pretty much the conversations I had with my mom were dominated by me asking, "What's for lunch? What about dinner? Can you cook this?" What can I say, I'm pregnant (large and in charge).

Ava loved feeding the ducks at the Tucson zoo

Little play area at the zoo

Victor's birthday dinner at Red Lobster-Ava is pretending to pick her nose in the picture. Thanks for teaching her that, Michelle!

At a park near Ah Ma's house

Ava is the best stocking stuffer ever

Ava slept with Auntie Michelle sometimes. They are sharing a sweet moment together here. Ava was usually too excited to fall asleep. I had to go in and lay down the law sometimes.

Ava showing off her Christmas gifts

It's hard to see in the pic, but she is wearing her new princess clip-on earrings. She is such a girlie girl.

Ava loved exploring Madera Canyon. Check out Ah Ma in her thuggish hoodie. Ah Gong (that's my dad) looks like he is headed to the trucker's convention.

Ava trying to reign in Cocoa. Ava liked to boss Cocoa around. "Cocoa, eat your bone right now! Cocoa, go downstairs right now!"

Ava liked playing Guitar Hero with Uncle Victor

Incubation

For some unknown reason, I have failed to mention on this blog that there is currently a baby girl incubating in my womb. Well, I know the reason...it's my old friend "laziness". If this is any indication of how neglectful I will be at documenting baby number two's life, then I need to repent.

I kept a fairly faithful journal of my pregnancy woes when I was pregnant with Ava. All I did was gripe and bemoan my suffering. Maybe that's another reason why I haven't said anything about this pregnancy. I only wanted to exude motherly love this time around, and not constantly complain about morning sickness and other pregnancy ailments. And believe me, I got 'em! But right now things are looking pretty good. I am already 23 weeks along! I'm not too large...YET, although the other night after pigging out on fondue I started sporting the beginning stages of a waddle.We are so excited about this new addition to our family. I want to make it clear that silence on this blog does not equal lack of excitement. It is merely an exhibition of my lack of commitment to this blog, which really is a shame.

I don't think Ava fully grasps that there will be a baby sister to steal her limelight in a little while, but she is able to point out "baby sister in mommy's tummy". Now I have two girls kicking me (one in the womb) and the other in my bed at night. I'm really exaggerating about Ava kicking me at night since she is actually sleeping well these days, but the tide may turn!

Here is my 23rd week of unsexyness in its full glory

Little Miss Sassy

Ava is a really sweet cuddly girl and just a ton of fun to be around. But she's started picking up some interesting sayings. Of course I can only blame myself, since she is around me all day long. Her new sassy sayings:

"I hate it (pronounced "hain it")"

"Be quiet, mommy"

"Don't touch me hair"

"Go away!"

"Crazy mommy" (I think David taught her this one)

"Listen to me!"

She says some really funny things like:

"How's it going? Great!"

"I like it. Yummy ginger" (she doesn't like ginger and laughs hysterically when she says this)

"I'm hiding!" (she says this when she is pooping and wants to be left alone to do her business in the closet or behind the curtain)

"Come here, Canka!" (we don't know who Canka is and we usually hear her shouting this when she is in her crib)

If we say something that she thinks is incorrect she'll be sure to correct us by saying "No, no, no, no, no, it's _____". She likes to crack jokes like say "A cat says yee-yaw. Oh sorry, mommy, a donkey says yee-yaw".

Here are pictures of the hooligan after drinking chocolate milk. She loves to stare at her milk mustache in the mirror.

Quick Pics

Bowling a strike with Daddy

Ava had the most fun handing out candy

Ava & Chase pallin' around at the ward Trunk or Treat

Ava was a cat for Hallowe'en

Ava 'hanging' around at MyGym