St. Patty's Parade

Saturday was Charlotte's annual St. Patrick's Day parade uptown. Ava loved it when we took her to the Thanksgiving Day parade, so we thought we'd go for round two and celebrate her and Jim's Irish bloodlines. The parade was a lot of fun. We rode the train uptown (one of Ava's favorite things to do), drank hot chocolate, and watched a lot of cool groups and floats pass by. Ava got a green beaded necklace at the parade that she wore the entire rest of the weekend. She even sleeps with it. Afterwards, we ate at a burger joint uptown before heading back home on the train. Fun times :)

Audrey had her one month appointment last week. She's in the 65th % for both height and weight and the 50th for head circumference. She weighs 9 lb 14 oz... she's packing on the pounds quickly! She already eats 5-6 ounces per feeding which we find simply astronomical! We're not sure when she's going to slow down, but we hope it's soon. Saturday night we watched the Boiler's win in the NCAA tournament at our good friends, The Cains, house. Everyone was in Purdue gear, even Ava and Baby Drew! We're going to Boiler Up together again Thursday night, although we're pretty sure that will be the end of the road for our beloved Boilers :(

Lastly, we finally got patio furniture for our screened in porch! We spent most of Sunday assembling it. Last night Jim and I tested it out with a nice cold Blue Moon in our hands. We got a huge sectional sofa and a loveseat. We also got two club chair rockers that we're going to put on our upstairs balcony. I'll post pictures of everything later this week.

Four Weeks Old

Wow, can you tell we've been busy? Audrey turns four weeks old on Thursday. I'm blown away by how fast time is moving! We're enjoying every minute with her though. She's so sweet. She's an exact replica of Ava as an infant, but somehow doesn't look "newborn". Her features are like that of a three month old. She's just perfect!
When Audrey was just over a week old I had a good photographer friend take pictures of her and Ava together. I've posted a few here; the entire collection is on our family's website (email me if you want the URL). I've also posted some pictures from our visitors.

Audrey is a killer good eater. She loves to eat and hates getting her diaper changed. She also loves being held, as any of her four grandparents can attest to (all have visited!) She has already put on a pound and a half, and is doing really well. Right now she only gets up twice a night at 2am and 4:30am. Not bad! As of yesterday, she started accompanying Mom to the gym in our neighborhood's clubhouse. The workouts are really wearing her out as she sits in her stroller watching :) Mom took her on her first run today through an adjoining neighborhood and both seemed to like that.

So visitors... we've had lots of them! We've been lucky to have all the extra hands and spend time with our loved ones. Jim's parents came, godparents Steve and Jenny, then Michelle, then Mary's parents, followed by Mary's very good friend from college, Kristin, who came for a weekend with her Audrey who is exactly one year younger than Ava. We loved having all of our company here, and Ava especially enjoyed the extra attention and opportunities to play, play, play!

Jim went back to work this week after four weeks at home, but enjoyed his time off immensely. I think it motivated him to retire early he enjoyed it so much! So now it's just Audrey and Mommy at home, but we're adjusting very well. I look forward to spending the next six weeks with her here.

Our New Addition

We are so excited to finally share our new baby, Audrey Reagan, with the world. She arrived without much fanfare (a good thing) on Thursday, February 12th at 3:34pm. Audrey weighed 7 pounds 3 oz and is 19.75" long. She has a head full of dark brown hair and has deep blue eyes. Ava is really excited to have her baby sister here, but doesn't want to hold her because she's "too big" (aka too heavy). I think Ava expected her to be as light as her baby dolls.

Delivery went really well. She was due on February 7th, so our doctor scheduled an induction on the 12th. After a nice big breakfast at IHOP, Jim and I dropped off the dogs at the kennel and headed to the hospital for our 7:30am admission. At 9am they started the petocin (to start contractions). I got my epidural right at 2pm (thank God for anesthesiologists!) and at about 3:05 we were ready to go. Roughly 30 minutes later, there she was!

So "Audrey"... it wasn't on the final three name list, was it? Here's the story: Our final three included Emma, Leah, and Reagan. Every day we had a new favorite, but at the same time none ever came out and grabbed us as "the one." Exactly one week before Audrey was born, Jim came home and said "What do you think of Audrey?" (We love "A" names, by the way.) I said "I've mentioned Audrey at least a dozen times over the last nine months and you shot it down every time." Jim, of course, had no recollection of this. :) One of my best friends from college, Kristin, also named her daughter Audrey so this was my only hesitation. I ran the idea by her just to get her input, and of course she loves the name and was cool with us both having Audrey's even though it might make for confusing conversation - LOL. Woo hoo!

So Audrey it was... her middle name is Reagan. I've always loved Reagan, and of course I'm a big fan of the President, so that was a no brainer for me. This added with the fact she was born on Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday (another great conservative President I admire) made it extra special!

We came home on Saturday to a very excited big sister. Life has been very good thus far. Ava is excited to see her baby sister every day when she wakes up and again when she comes home from school. She runs to her, kisses her on the head, and says "I miss you baby sister." It just melts our hearts. We are the luckiest parents in the whole wide world!

Cupcakes!

Ok, so Ava's gotten a little too demanding recently wanting to watch her new favorite show from Noggin' called "Pinky Dinky Doo" so we're actively luring her away from that thought with other activities. A few nights ago we decided to make cupcakes. She loves to get up on her step stool and help! She poured the ingredients in the bowl, handed me eggs to crack, and even learned how to properly lick batter when you're done mixing it :)

She calls these "happy birthday cakes". Anything with "cake" or "candles" means "birthday" to her. She's quite the little lady these days. She's having a hard time sharing at school lately, but other than that is still as sweet as ever. She's really into singing, and her current favorite is Old MacDonald. He always has a cow, pig, and duck in her version. She also really likes to dance and showed her entire Sunday School class her moves yesterday. Quite impressive!

The weather was 70 all weekend so we spent much of it outdoors at the neighborhood park and in our driveway with her Cozy Coupe. We also had our painter come in and paint our entire kitchen/family room a nice taupe color called Camelback. It is SO much better than the eggshell that was driving us crazy. We also got our office painted the same color blue we had in the last house. Jim really liked it, so we kept it.

In other news, Baby Vaca will be induced and hopefully born this Thursday, February 12th. Woo hoo!

New House Pics!

So I finally got around to taking pictures of our new house and posting on the family website. There were 76 of them, so I won't post them all here, but I will share with you the two projects we (Jim) finished recently which are the girls' rooms!

The entire house pretty much needs painted to get rid of the disgusting eggshell the previous owners thought would be a good idea to paint it before selling, so we focused on the girls' rooms first. Ava got pink because it's her absolute favorite color. Baby Vaca got yellow so that if we adopt a boy down the road we don't have to repaint it :)

I love both of their rooms. Jim did an awesome job on both of their accent walls. I think he even impressed himself with his handywork. Ava got beadboard with a nice sturdy shelf at the top which I have yet to fill/decorate with everything I want. Her entire bedroom suite was found on Craig's List. Only the tall lamp and shade were bought new. Gotta love a savvy mom!

The baby's room has a really cool paneled-look accent wall that Jim did too. Our good friends the Moores did this in their baby's room and we basically copied it. Josh helped us a lot with the do's/don'ts of the project and made a few trips over to the house to provide advice as Jim navigated the puzzle. It turned out really well I must say! We reused all of Ava's baby furniture, and my splurge was the new pink dresser you see to the left of the window. I got it for like 65% off catalog price, so that was great too. All of her bedding I found on Craig's List. Can you tell I'm an addict?

Next projects will include painting the girls' bathroom, the guest bedroom, and the family room and kitchen downstairs. Maternity leave will be fun!

Snow Day!

So this is what a snow day looks like in Charlotte. We got a whopping 2" overnight and it's still snowing this morning! It happens literally once every two years, and the entire city shuts down like it's the "Blizzard of the Century". It's really quite comical for all we northerners.

Anyway, I'm more than happy to have an excuse to take the day off (all schools and daycares are closed) so we're going to enjoy it. We've already been outside for Round 1 in the snow. Ava wanted to make a snowman, but it's too fluffy. We walked all around the park across the street from us, said hello to the bear and lion statues, then came back inside for breakfast. Fun day ahead!

Ava in the park in front of our house


Smile!




The dogs wanting to come out and play!


This is the view from our sidewalk.


Ava saying "hi" to Mocha and Bogey upon return.


Ava running home for Cheerios!

Here are some pictures from our "Round 2" in the snow at the kids' park. We spent our time swinging and then making and throwing snowballs which Ava loved!

January Fun

Ok, so I've been slacking in the blog department. We haven't been too busy, but have been active. Mostly, we've been preparing for baby. Her nursery is finally done. I still need to take pictures and post. Ava's room is next; we already painted it, but are now adding beadboard and shelving to the big wall. Always a project going on at the Vaca house...

As you can see from the pictures, Ava is a full fledged kiddo these days. She loves to play, jump, read, and sing. We took her to Monkey Joe's for the first time (a jumpy/bouncy indoor park) and she LOVED it. Jim got to go through some of the bigger bouncies with her which she adored. These pics are from the "under 3 feet tall" only bouncies though. She loves to bounce. We should have named her Tigger.

She's also loving dressing up as always. The last two Sundays I had to take her picture she was so darn cute. The first turned into a full-on photo shoot. I busted out my backgrounds and everything! I'm sure some of you will get print versions of these sooner or later.

On other fronts, Baby Vaca continues to do well. We are 3.5 weeks from her due date now. No signs of any complications or anything, so that is good. We're taking Ava on a tour of the maternity wing next week so she can understand what's going on when we go again in a few weeks. That should be fun. I think she'll really enjoy seeing all the babies!