8 weeks?!

Ava is 8 weeks today. 8 WEEKS! I cannot believe how incredibly fast time has gone. Obviously I've been busy since this is the first real update blog post I've done haha. It's funny what constitutes as 'busy' now-a-days though. A 'busy' day is feeding Ava, changing Ava, watching Ava, playing with Ava, saying hi to Chad, feeding Ava, changing Ava...you get the picture haha
So what all has happened the past 8 weeks? LOTS!
Ava left the hospital at 7lbs 12oz...she is now 11lbs 6oz! She is also 22.75inches long. She is in the 95% for height and the 90% for weight! Oink Oink! She is a great eater obviously. She has gone through a couple growth spurts and talk about time consuming. At around 2-3 weeks she started eating every hour and a half. She had another spurt last week and was eating every 2 hours. The average is about every 3 hours and night time feedings are stretching out more and more yay!! Just in the past couple weeks she has started sleeping more and more at night. They go back and forth but last night she slept 5 HOURS STRAIGHT! I never thought I would be so excited for so little sleep - which now isn't little, its HUGE. If we can keep that up my overall morale/mood/behavior/etc will increase drastically! She's had several 4 hour nights too so even that is OK. So when I say this here is our 'routine' right now (we are working on getting an actual routine down, just haven't had anything in stone yet). Usually put her down around 10 or 11 because she is so awake later on in the night. Sometimes 12 is honestly when she actually ends up falling asleep because of eating or other stuff. SO then she sleeps for her 3/4/5 hour stretch right off the bat and wakes up to eat. After that feeding then she usually wakes up every 2-3 hours. Not another big stretch. SO here's what I'm hoping...either the 'long' stretch keeps getting longer from 5 to 6 to maybe 7 hours? and there's our night OR she keeps the 5 hour stretch but then sleeps another long stretch afterward. We will see what she decides to do :)
The first several weeks we had BIG trouble with sleeping but then we figured out a couple tricks and now she does much better. She also received a giraffe (shocking) that plays 4 different sounds for whatever 'mood' you are looking for - Play, Calm, Relax, and Sleep. The sleep mood is basically white noise so I turn that on most of the time for her to fall asleep to - she seems to love it. Also, she's in her pack and play right now (unless its a rough night then she is with Chad or me haha) and it has a vibrate mode that I turn on sometimes too that just lulls (is that how you spell that word? I don't think I've ever had to spell it out before...weird...) her right to sleep.
During the day she still sleeps a TON but is having more and more awake time which I am loving. She has just recently started smiling too. Well, REAL smiling that is. She smiled since day 1 with gas and whatever else but the REAL smiles have started now. It's hilarious because when you start trying to actually MAKE her smile she gets this grumpy face, then she will smile and coo and 'laugh', then back to grumpy face haha. I cannot express how much joy that little smile gives me though. Sweet girl.
She LOVES her mobile in her crib. She is now smiling at that too haha Whats hilarious about it is this: there are 5 animals on the mobile. An elephant, lion, giraffe, tiger, and monkey. I was watching her the other day and she was looking around at all of them but then as soon as a certain one came into view she would watch it go alllll the way around until it left her sight then look around randomly again. Guess which animal it was....yep, the GIRAFFE! Thank goodness, huh? She'd be pretty disappointed if she just LOVED lions and had to put up with giraffe everywhere. Whew.
Ava also is in love with .... ceiling fans. No that's not a typo, ceiling fans. She will stare forever at our living room fan. Talk about cheap entertainment!
Lets see, she has moved up into the 0-3 month outfits and let me tell you, the day we had to retire our first newborn outfit I teared up. She's in the size 1 diapers too - no more newborn. Sad. But I'm glad she's growing good. But sad for those little outfits. I have to go through them and store them in the attic for whoever else might come along one day :)
She is AWESOME at lifting her head up. She has never had a problem with it. Day 1 she lifted it up. Genius :) She is pushing up with her arms now though and just looks like such a big girl when she does! She's also tracking rattles and fingers and such with her eyes, but has been doing that since 2 weeks old. 6 weeks is when they are suppose to perfect it - looks like we are ahead of the curve already YESS!
Pacifiers - yes. I don't know what we would do without them honestly. She's a little sucker! ha. As soon as those hit her mouth she is content again.
Boppy - awesome. If you know anyone who is pregnant, this is a great gift. I use it every single day, multiple times a day.
haha
Carseat - mostly good. When she was younger she would fall asleep almost as soon as we strapped her in, but lately its been more up and down. Overall the car experience is a good one though.
Tappy Tunes - amazing. What is this, you ask? An app on the iPhone. There are about 80 songs and you can either 'tap' them out with your finger to the tune or whatever song you are on OR (what we do) you can push play and then click the repeat button and the song plays while pictures pop up with every note. Ava loves it and it is GREAT on trips to Memphis!
Chad - indescribable. Having Chad home has been such a huge blessing. He is the best Dad and has been since day 1! He changes most diapers with no complaining, gives baths, changes clothes, cleans up spit up, helps in the middle of the night, he does it all ladies and gentlemen! I cannot begin to thank him enough for everything he's done. (If you are reading this, you are THE BEST!)

I believe that pretty much sums up all the big points so far. WHEW I'M CAUGHT UP!! Now it can be day to day things and funny stories and exactly what I PLANNED on this blog being HOORAY!