Avery is Home and We are Loving Life

Woooweee it's been a while since I posted. Sorry about that.

Avery came home on June 19th and we were very very excited. Troy was on midnight shift the day that she came home. He had worked from midnight to 8 and got home around 930, with intentions to sleep for a few hours before we picked up Avery and my stepdad from the airport. But then my brother called (he was on TDY to Nellis for a deployment training) and asked if we could go to lunch. And Troy was too excited to sleep. So to help pass the time until reunion time, we spent a few hours with Tyler.

Then it was time to go to the airport. Troy made Avery a sign. Yes. Troy did. I had nothing to do with this. At all. I think that other people thought that we were welcoming home a deployed soldier or something. Nope, just our 2 year old. And there is Tyler photobombing. Typical. And Troy's eyes are a little scary. Sorry about the poor quality iphone photos.

This is my first hug with Avery. She came down the escalator sitting between my stepdad's legs on one of the steps. She stood up right at the bottom and jumped into my arms, IMMEDIATELY talking and talking and talking. About what? I'm not really sure. Just long winded babbling with an understandable word every 15 words or so.

We took a family picture in baggage claim too. Troy insisted her sign be included.

We have been spending lots of time at the pool. Sometimes at the YMCA (it's a little crowded there some days), some days we went to our youth pastors house who has a pool, and another day we went to my friend's neighborhood pool (MUCH less crowded). Avery has one of those puddle jumper life vests and is getting more confident in the water. We've been reading a lot and Troy and Avery do puzzles a lot. We've had a couple play dates and I don't think Avery remembers her friends initially, but seems to warm up to people quickly, so yay!

Troy took a bunch of leave when Avery came home and he got to spend almost 2 weeks home with her, which was amazing. I worked for about half of that. Speaking of which, I worked a 40 hour work week last week. It's the FIRST TIME I've done that since before Avery was born. I was feeling pretty awesome about it. Troy was making me go to bed at 830 every night, which was annoying at the time, but a good choice.

I'm glad Avery decided not to squirt her mom, holding the iphone...



Avery has been GREAT in her big girl bed. She hasn't gotten out once. She goes right to bed at night and sits in bed yelling for us in the morning until we come get her. A couple people have asked how the edge of the bed "noodle technique" is working and so far, so good. She hasn't rolled out of bed in the middle of the night. My only complaint is the the noodle will slide off the edge and get caught in the elastic of the fitted sheet so you have to push it back up onto the edge of the mattress. But other than that, it seems to work well and is certainly cheaper than buying a rail. Win-win.

Seriously, I just want to watch her sleep stalker style. She's just so cute.

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

I MADE IT!!! I read somewhere that most blogs only have a 3 month life! I BEAT THE ODDS! It's hard to believe it, but one year ago today, while living in a hotel temporary living facility (TLF) in Alamogordo, New Mexico, this blog was born! My, how things can change in a year.

Baby Girl looked like this:

And we lived in this:

I can't believe that was a year ago...it seems like it was just yesterday!

Here are some statistics for you about the past year:

- BarnesDailyCircus has been googled 295 times (lets be real, 293 of those were probably my Mom)

- The very first blog I wrote had 18 page views. OH that is so low. Most of the blogs I write now average about 200 page views. Which is still nothing to write home about, but hey! Growth is growth!

- My very first commenter was Bethany Russell. One of my co-workers from Dover. HI BETHANY!

- My top 3 read blogs were:

1. Some nightstands that I re-did. The post was added to a home redesign blog and gets frequently clicked on from their site.

2. Where we announced we were having triplets.

3. Where we found out that one of the babies had anencephaly.

- This little blog won an award!!

- Most of the readers have been from the United States, but there are readers world wide. Who are you? Speak up! This is the list of top 10 countries reading.

United States - 19547
Russia - 596
Canada - 465
United Kingdom - 325
Germany - 284
France - 64
Japan - 63
Philippines - 56
Australia - 52
South Africa - 46

- Most people are reading from a PC! I don't know why this surprised me, but it did.

- I did a total of 156 posts over the past year. Holy cow. That's more than I expected when I started this blog. Especially since during the past few months, I've only been averaging about a post a week. So I was super good about posting in the beginning. No surprise there though. Avery was napping 2x a day and we lived in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere. I am definitely going to try an blog 3x a week. Don't hold me to that.

So thank you everyone. This past year has been a craaaaazy year and I know it's going to keep going full speed ahead. Come along, won't you?

Avery's *NEW* Big Girl Room!!

Avery comes home on Wednesday. YAY! Troy is laughing at me because I have been nesting in preparation for her homecoming. Her room is done, the house is sparkling, the nursery is starting to look like an actual room, and I'm buying her some clothes and toys. Which I haven't done in almost 3 months.

I have been slooooowly collecting things for Avery's big girl room. Like, over 6 months. When she left for my parents house in April, she was still sleeping in her crib and very happy in there. No attempts to climb out or anything. However, I started buying things for her big girl room transition in January. I was very excited...I don't really know why. This is an overview of her room:

We decided to transition her now for several reasons.

1. With the babies coming, we want her to see a tangible difference between what babies do (sleep in cribs) and what big girls do (sleep in big girl beds).

2. I didn't want to be dealing with new babies and also trying to keep her in her room/bed without her getting out.

3. Her crib was a drop arm crib (OH THE HORROR!) and I was always fearful of her trying to climb out and somehow getting crushed or hurt if the side dropped down with her in "mid climb."

4. Her crib was not a transition to a toddler bed crib. Even on the lowest setting, her crib mattress was super high so we needed to buy her a new bed whenever she transitioned out of it. I'd rather have time to shop around for one and get a good deal than feel panicked and buy one on impulse.

I started shopping for a bed on craigslist in November? I'm talking early. We wanted to find something that was a good deal and would also transition well to her being a teenager. I don't want to keep buying and buying. For example, crib ->toddler bed -> another bed. So we just went for it.

We decided on a day bed for several reasons.

1. It is a twin bed, so it's good/not too huge for a kid.

2. It has a pull out/pop up trundle underneath so she can have sleepovers and the other kid has a bed.

3. If we have family visiting with kids, no matter what the gender, they can sleep there too.

4. If we have adults who need to sleep there, it's 2 beds OR it pops up and turns into a king size bed which is good for adults or multiple kid sleepover situations.

With those things in mind, I set out for something on craiglist. I looked at IKEA, but I really wanted quality wood that would last, so all the pressed board crap was out. It took me about 2.5 months of daily checking before this beauty came up. I paid $280 and it included the all wood day bed frame, metal pop up trundle bed and the 2 mattresses, which are BRAND NEW! And now covered with a pee protector since baby girl is still working on the potty training thing. The edge of the mattress also looks huge because we are trying that Pinterest trick, where you put a noodle underneath the edge of a fitted sheet to keep the kid from rolling out of bed in the middle of the night.

The dresser I snagged in March for $50 off Craigslist and that sucker is HEAVY and QUALITY wood. Troy said that when he went to go pick it up, he felt guilty. The quality of the dresser and mirror is AMAZING and he felt like he should have offered more money. I was like "ARE YOU CRAZY!?!?! YOU GRAB IT AND RUN!" The wood of both the dresser and bed match super well. Troy still needs to hang the mirror. We need to get the hardware for the back. That will happen when my stepdad is here next week for sure. Troy won't let me lift anything over a gallon of milk and it's pretty annoying. So no holding up 40lb mirrors. I like that it's a classic shape.

I got the cube self at IKEA with the plastic cubes for toy and book storage. The lamp is from Target and the duck was a gift from my stepmom. My grandfather makes homemade wooden toys and he made the phone. Avery loves phones. So she has a play phone in her room :)

All of the paintings on the walls are Natalie originals from those group painting classes.

Aunt Taylor saw this laundry basket at HomeGoods while she was visiting and decided that her niece HAD to have it for her room. I love it. It has a draw string on the inside, so it'll be good for traveling in the car also. Toss snacks, toys, books, diapers or whatever in there, close it up and toss it in the car. It's awesome.

I bought 5 dresses for $7 from our online community yard sale thingy on facebook too. Apparently, with Avery getting a hang of this potty training thing, she is refusing to wear pants. Dresses only. So I figured I'd stock up. It was exciting, especially since they were all name brand dresses from H&M, Gap, and Gymboree. SCORE! I feel ABSOLUTELY NO guilt about buying Avery clothes because I know we are going to have 2 more girls to wear them. Muahahaha. Imagine me doing my evil laugh and tapping the ends of my fingers together.