ava's reaction.

as i said before we wanted to document ava's reaction to the news of a new little sister. as you might imagine we did not know what we were going to get. but we did see a little reaction and you can watch it HERE.

in case you missed it she said she will teach the baby to play guitar and color. sounds good to us.

 * * *

i have not mentioned this before on the blog...mostly because i know there can be a range of opinions when it comes to pacifiers and bottles. i have learned a few things since becoming a mother and one of them is...do what you need to do to get your child to sleep.

thus we have the bottle.

when ava was 7 months old and i had to stop nursing because of chemo we switched real quick to formula and bottles. then around september ava decided to wake up real early (5am or so) very unchractersitic of her and i made a little mistake. i started making her a bottle and giving it to her in her bed. it soothed and she feel back asleep until around 9am. dream. after a week or so i asked my mom about this and she informed me that it was not good for her to fall asleep with milk in her mouth. so we decide to stop. after 1.5 hours of crying and unable to fall asleep without a bottle we started giving her a clean, empty bottle when she went to sleep. basically to soothe her like a pacficer but it was a bottle. i set goals. after chemo we will get rid of it. after nyc trip we will get rid of it. then we moved so i could not disrupt sleep during a big life change. then i got pregnant and was so sick i needed her to sleep well during naps and through the night. ava is an incredible sleeper. we are so thankful. needless to say i have been making excuses for bascially 2 years as to why i could not take this bottle away from her. it comforted her. she loves it. why take that away?

however, randomly a month ago i told her that if she gave her bottle to the baby she could go pick out her very own lipstick. she did not love the idea. so yesterday i tried again after she has bitten through the nipple. ha. i just laughed. i am so immature. i explained that we were done and we had no more bottles...she quickly said, "i bite it. give it to the baby and i can get lipstick." so we did. after about an hour of crying she slept for the first time since she was 7 months old without her bottle. i did not cave. i stayed strong and she did it. seriously people this was a huge milestone for our family and it was about a bottle. but if you have tried to get your kid off a pacifier than you get how huge this is.

as soon as she woke up (she slept fine but not as long as usual) she said, "lipstick!" off we went. she naturally chose bright bright pink. always a classy choice. she was yelling, "woo hoo!!" all through rite aid.

night time was a bit tougher. she cried and tossed and turned for about 2.5 hours. when i checked her monitor at 11pm and she was still moving around my heart sank. i felt so guilty. it's just a bottle? i should go give it back to her...but after a few minutes she fell asleep and slept until 8am. we have officially moved past sleeping with a bottle. victory.

this weekend we are headed back to chesapeake for leslie and coleman's wedding. we are so excited. justin is marrying them. i am the maid or matron but i like maid better of honor. ava is the flower girl and we are honored to all be apart of this huge day. more to come on the wedding next week. we will be on instagram documenting the weekend. my username is: libbyryder

the bridal party is getting ready in oxford shirts...thus we needed a mini one for ava.

enjoy your thursday. it is almost friday.