I'm Boycotting Christmas...

At least until December.

You see, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, hands down.  It's an entire holiday based around hanging out with the people you love, eating delicious food, and watching football.  There are no presents to stress over.  It's always on a weekday, so you are guaranteed a day off (umm, unless your not, sorry, in which case let me know next year and I'll bring you a plate!). 

This year we have so much to be thankful for, that it just seemed wrong to jump into all things Christmas the very next day.  Seriously, I tried to listen to Christmas music, and it just didn't work.  So, for the next 3 days I'll be basking in the buttery glow of a heightened sense of gratitude, leftovers and fall colors. 

Our Thanksgiving day was fantastic.  We started out at my parents' house with tons of relatives and food and ended up at Sam's parents' house where Avery got to meet her Aunt Linda, Uncle Doyle, and Greatgrandpa Forbes for the first time.  Magic.  Well, almost magic. 

We had such a cute little "I'm Stuffed" Thanksgiving outfit for Avery to wear.  She managed to have a blowout in it approximately 5 minutes after getting to my parents' house, so no pictures in that. 

In case you weren't keeping track, that now makes the count:
Avery - 139 Alison's attempts to dress her daughter in adorable outfits for special occasions - 0. 

Luckily, there was enough cuteness going around to overcome the lack of fall themed fashion.

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving!  Have you succumbed to the Christmas craziness yet? 

Three Months

Oh, Avery.  How did you ever get so big that we are counting your age in months and not weeks?  You are three months old now, and looking at you I no longer see a squishy faced newborn.  Instead, I see an actual almost-person human being!  Magic.

You didn't have a doctor's appointment this month, but we're guessing you're around 14lbs and 24.5inches. 

This month your personality exploded, and it turns out you are super smiley, laid back, curious, with a little dash of diva thrown in (you have perfected the "seriously-move-faster-you-guessed-wrong-on-what-I-want-dance-faster-monkey" scream cry). 

You are also super duper into grabbing at things in your activity jungle.

And looking at yourself in the mirror.

 "Does this onesie make me look fat?"

And stuffing your hands as far into your mouth as possible.

"Wanna see me shove this all the way in ma mouth?"

You have so much to say.  We hear a running stream of babble when you are awake.  Someday it will make sense.  I'm afraid you will be saying, "Why did you force me to watch the Twilight movies?  Those were awful."

I never knew it was possible for someone to smile with their entire body.  But when you do, it absolutely makes my day. 

You're a morning person.  Where the crap did you get that?

Mostly, you sleep through the nights, but lately you've been waking up around 4:30am for a quick snack.  I treasure the alone time with you, but wouldn't mind if you wanted to make it say, 10:00pm instead, k?

We finally put away all of your 0-3 month clothing.  Sometimes I get so sad knowing that you will never fit into them again, and I want you to just slow down and stay a cuddly little baby.  But it's so amazing to watch you learn to do new things.  One day you couldn't grab the monkey off of your jungle, and the next day we had to put it back up every few minutes.  I know these next few months will bring rapid growth and development, and we are just going to try and soak it all in.

You are still the best thing we have ever done.  Love you to the moon and back.

Catch Up

Things have been nuts lately.  But mostly nuts in a good way, so yay for that.

Here's what we've been up to:

Avery took her first road trip in October when we went down to Austin for a wedding.  She was great in the car, as usual.  I was also nervous about her sleeping in a strange crib without her mobile, but she did great with that as well and slept soundly through the night. 

On Saturday Avery had her first trip to Zilker Park.  This is where I hung out a lot as a baby, so it's kind of awesome that we got to continue this tradition with her.  We had a quick picnic and then just laid around soaking in the perfect day for awhile.

On of my college roommates and her husband kept Avery while Sam and I were at the wedding.  The wedding was a blast.  We got to see two of my all time favorite people get married, and celebrate with friends we had not seen in far too long.  We laughed, we cried, we had a beer chugging contest in the photo booth.  Pretty perfect.  Except that we took like zero pictures.  Fail.  Oh well, congratulations to Sarah & Aaron!



As mentioned before, we also swung by the pumpkin patch.  Avery was in no mood for pictures, or maybe she's just finally able to express her displeasure when her parents make her do stupid crap like this:

It was super cute when the parents of a very tiny baby did it.  Swears.

Most exciting, though, is that Sam's grandparents have been in town this week to meet Avery.  Love love love these three:

Sam and I really look up to Milton & Miriam and the way they have lived their life and marriage.  Watching them with Avery has been such a huge blessing and we are so glad they could come.

I'm also challenging myself to blog twice a week for the rest of November.  There is so much happening right now, and I know that I will totally kick myself if I don't get at least some of it down.  So until next time, know that we love you all!