Real Life: Swollen Feet, Tantrums & Halloween

Sometimes when we blog or do other forms of social media we only mention the good parts of our lives and it makes it look like we have picture perfect lives. I don't write about early mornings getting up to work, Brent doing homework, Ava's tantrums, etc. But that really is how most of our life looks like.

The last couple of weeks have been extra hard here at our house.
I hit 36 weeks and all of a sudden felt sore and miserable and couldn't sleep anymore.
Brent got really sick and it turned into bronchitis.
Ava kept on her monster streak of the terrible twos tantrums.
Work for me got extra busy and stressful, driving me to tears on more than one occasion.
Ava woke up around 4 am quite a few mornings, turning us all into zombies.
Brent got exhausted trying to be the only level-headed person in the house with two crazy emotional girls.

We'll stop there, but as you can see, it's been rough. We've still had some good moments mixed in with the bad.

We invited Ava's best friend Lilian over to play one day. Ava was so excited and has been talking about it since. A video (there are lots of videos this week, so you'll want to be on a computer since these don't show up on phones or iPads).

Ava loves to sing "Baby Mine" from Dumbo. Brent has sung it to her since she was a newborn.

Ava always tries to beat me to my office in hopes that she can sit in there while I work. When I come out of the room from working she'll be so excited and say, "mommy all done work?" It breaks my heart when I'm just coming out for a bathroom break and tell her, not yet. Here's a video of when she beat me to my chair and she thought it was pretty funny.

One day I had to work when I had Ava and Brent was at class. She was unsupervised for a while watching a show (I hate doing that). I came out to find she had been sitting in the drawer in the coffee table. I don't know how it didn't break. Also she had colored in the drawer but luckily it was special markers that only color on certain paper.

My feet started getting really swollen every day, especially if I forgot to elevate while working. Luckily it's been warm here because the only shoes I can get on are some flip flops, which leave dents in my feet. Yes, I have cankles.

One day I painted my nails and Ava was so excited for me to do hers. She felt so pretty in her Minnie dress up. Here she is doing her hair in the mirror:

On Sunday my roommate Tara and her husband came to dinner! They live in Fort Worth and it was so fun to see them. We watched some Disney shorts after dinner. Tara is due about 2 months after me.

I let Ava play in the backyard and we were only outside for a few minutes when I got attacked by ants :( for some reason they only like me, and have never bitten Brent or Ava!

The ant bites feel sort of like mosquito bites and they did not help me with my sleeping the next few nights!

A creative picture I took:

Ava was a good girl at the grocery store so I bought this for a prize for her lunch. For some reason I feel much better about feeding her Mac n cheese if it's organic :)

On Wednesday our ward had a trunk or treat. It was my first one to go to. Ava threw a major tantrum before going because she did NOT want to wear a long sleeve shirt under her dress. It was a pretty sad little fight but she needed it on since it was chilly at night. Once we got there though she had a really fun time getting candy. She was very timid and just held open her bag and waited for them to put a piece of candy in.

A few hours before, I looked ideas up on pinterest and saw this for a pregnant belly. I showed it to Brent and he executed the plan perfectly :)

It was just Ava and I since Brent went to a movie with a friend. Ava reached up to hold my hand after each stop of getting candy.

On Thursday two girls in my ward threw me a baby shower with a "Lil Pumpkin" theme. It was so cute and nice of them! I got some great things for our little boy and had a fun time with my friends. 

During my shower Brent took Ava on a daddy-daughter date and they were both excited to get fries and a shake.

On Saturday, Halloween, we had a busy day. First Brent went to clean the church. I came late and wasn't too much help, but it's a good thing I went because besides one bishopric member, we were the only ones there. 

After that we had library time. Our library does such a good job and had a fun spooky library time and then trick or treating around the library for the kids. 

Ava always loves the music during library time. Notice in this video the mini pirate to the left of Ava. He was killing me the whole time, this little midget pirate.

A video from trick or treating (now she's getting a little less timid):

Brent and I were talking to our friends and lost Ava for a minute at the library. We found her doing a puppet show with another girl.

After library time we had a birthday party for friends we have met at the library. Ava had so much fun playing with their toys! She also got to decorate Halloween cookies and we had a good time getting to know cool people around here.

We came home and had naps and dinner, and then it was time for Trick or Treating! Ava had yet another tantrum about getting in her costume, this time about which shoes she wanted to wear. We decided to not fight her about the shirt and just bring a sweater and she'd put it on when she got cold. We think she was crying because she wanted to wear her plastic high heels. 

She was being so dramatic about it, I finally told Brent to take a video because maybe some day we will think it's funny.

Sleeping Beauty, sleeping??? No, it's a tantrum.

More tantrum outside. She pulled the crown down over her eyes to "hide" herself.

Things started looking up.

I got my costume on and went around most of the time with them, although I was having slight contractions all day so I was a little slow keeping up.  In the end, she really loved Trick or Treating and actually said, "trick, treat" at the doors. She kept asking for "one ma" house and "odder-one house." Brent was happy with the amount of candy she got, although it is way too much!!! Also, gestational diabetes on Halloween = not fair.  

We are on the countdown now for baby boy's arrival: 10 days!