Happy 6 Months Ava!

Six months ago I became a mom. I told Zèzè last night that probably next to marriage it's the biggest change a woman ever goes through in life. We love our girl so much.

Some of her favorite things...

• Eating: especially yogurt or her homemade cinnamon prune applesauce (a girl's gotta have some help now and then to keep everything running smoothly ya know)!

• Her singing battery operated annoying ball, except when the batteries get low and she can't make it sing anymore at what point she yells for me to come and assist!

• Ceiling fans: this has been a favorite from birth... Church is cool because there are so very many fans!

• Her grandma's pug dog: that little cinnamon roll tail is so fun to unwind

• Grandma's swing in the backyard

• Basically anything to do with Grandma

• Singing... Especially if it's her dad!

• Sleeping in our bed... And yes I already know it's considered a bad habit!

• Her changing table: She's so so wiggly and is always trying to roll onto her belly and how do you ever get all the snaps done up?

• Taking a bath: Yes, that includes trying to drink the water!

• Drinking out of cups: She threw what I would consider her first tantrum at a coffee shop because I wouldn't give her a taste. She's also amazingly fast at swiping food. She grabbed my cinnamon cake at our couples doctrine class the other night and boy was it hard to pry open that chubby fist!

Things she wishes didn't exist:

• Noisy blenders

• Stocking caps

• Buttons that prevent immediate nursing

• Naps

• Anything that takes mom's attention away from Her Royal Highness the Princess of the Family

I keep busy keeping house, cooking lots of Haitian food, and washing her adorable cloth diapers and hanging them on my big wooden drying rack. Because if saving trash and money is a good idea in Haiti, why not do it in USA too? Especially since you can buy a bidet sprayer to clean up the dirty diapers more easily. And who can resist a little brown baby with a lil fluffy cloth pineapple diaper bum. (I think her pineapple diaper is my fave.)

On Tuesday mornings mom keeps her while I do errands and hopefully end up with a few hours at a coffee shop to work on some websites. I'm so lucky, right?

It bothers me that I'm not keeping a baby book for Ava. But I'm already having issues with the amount of paperwork it takes to be an adult in USA and I just rebel at even filling out a calendar. Mom said that we liked to look back at all of that stuff as we got older, and I guess Ava may just be deprived.

I don't remember the date she rolled over but I remember Mom and I calling Zèzè and trying in vain to get her to do it again because she was definitely a genius baby (or so we thought) because she had just rolled from her belly to back twice and she was only a month old!

I also don't even know how to judge the day she sat up because she was constantly doing crunches and wanting to be propped up in a tripod position from about 4 months. My Haitian family said she should be sitting already and Google said 6 months so I just ended up letting her do what she wanted and somewhere along the way she stopped toppling over.

And they say you don't remember days, you remember moments. And I have a lot of stories to tell Ava.

I'll tell her how happy I was when I saw the little beating heart on the screen. And I'll tell her about when we found out she was a girl and then I called Zèzè and he said, "I have a surprise for you too!" And he told me that he had an appointment at the American embassy for a visa interview the same week she was supposed to be born.

I'll tell her about eating oatmeal pancakes with mango every morning and how when we took a trip to the beach I kept careful track of the meal schedule so I could stuff myself again. And how the one evening when I was out by myself watching the waves I had this funny feeling that something big was gonna change in our lives soon.

I'll tell her how the ladies group in Haiti came over and had a special prayer before I came back to USA and how the ladies in Louisiana had a baby shower for me and prayed for Haiti and made me feel special even tho I sat up there and cried because I missed her daddy and I was scared for his safety.

And then about the morning of the visa interview only a few days before she was born when I watched the sun come up on my mom's porch and prayed waited to hear what would happen. And six weeks later how he snuck up on me at the airport and made me scream.

And since she's a little girl, I'll tell her that having a baby will change your life but I would 100% recommend it.

So can we get by without a baby book? I'd love to know what you think.

And now I hear a little humming song starting from the crib. Ava will need to be rescued from her nap prison aka her crib soon. And I need to get busy... We're having mayi moulen and black bean sauce and I bought 2 mangos for $1 each (shudder) so she can taste a bit of Haiti on her half birthday.