Look who's talking!

Averie has been a rather talkative baby lately. We won't subject everyone to the less than ladylike sounds she also makes, LOL. In between the occasional crying and fussing, here is some of the soundtrack of our life over the past couple weeks.

(P.S. Sorry if the videos are really grainy/pixelated. They look fine on the computer until I export them to Quicktime to upload to the blog. So I'm not sure if they'll look fine or not on here - they were done on an HD camcorder so I don't know what the deal is.)

Sleep sounds:


Talking to her favorite person in the mirror (I promise she's happy even though it may sound like screeching, LOL):


Until now, a lot of Averie's giggles were "silent" in that she would get a grin a mile wide but no sound actually came out. We finally caught a real "out loud" giggle on tape - it's my favorite video (and quite possibly the best sound in the world):

Swagbucks

My cousin asked me a little while ago about Swagbucks (love you, Liz!) and since I recently exchanged my bucks, I thought I'd share. Swagbucks is basically just a search engine that uses Google to get its search results so I use it instead of Google for all my searches. I don't get a buck every time but I get at least a couple a day. I earned a bunch of Swagbucks in a short time by completing a couple special offers through their website (one was an auto insurance quote since we were shopping anyway, two others were free trials that I cancelled/will cancel before anything is charged). You can also earn them by shopping on websites you'd buy from anyway but just clicking through Swagbucks instead (for example, I just bought some clothes from Children's Place for Averie and earned a buck for every $5 I spent there by going to Children's Place's website through Swagbucks first).

I earned 225 Swagbucks in just a couple months and over the weekend, I redeemed them for $25 worth of Amazon gift cards (which is why I only have 1 buck now). I'm hoping to accumulate a bunch more over the year and be able to use all those Amazon cards for Christmas this year.

So that's it, basically. If you want to sign up, it's totally 100% free. If you click on Sign Up through the little widget at the top of my blog, then I also get a buck each time you get one for searching. The site itself does not send spam or sell your e-mail address but I did create a free junk e-mail address that I can use for the special offer related e-mail.

Couponing!

So I had my first really, super awesome deal on some groceries today. I'd say we regularly save as much as we spend on groceries since we started couponing but today was the first time that our savings far outweighed the spent amount.

Macey's was having a big sale on General Mills items and I had some coupons to go along with it. We were there on Saturday and had picked up a few items on the sale, but I wanted to go back and stock up some more before the sale ended tonight.

We bought all of this for $19.43. And, drum roll please, we saved $51.22! OVER 70% SAVINGS!
That's 12 boxes of cereal (not the teeny boxes either), 2 packages of cookie dough (mmmm, coooookies...) and 4 bags of Chex Mix (that only cost 18 cents!).

I doubt we'll be able to get deals like this on a regular basis - it really was like the perfect storm of multiple coupons being out at the same time, from multiple places (so I could use all of them in the same transaction) combined with an already great sale. At least we shouldn't need cereal for the rest of the year :).

3 Months!

Averie is 3 months old today! I can't believe how fast time has gone and how fast she is growing up. She is such a joy to have in our lives and one of her big toothless grins is enough to make even the worst day better.

I don't know how much she weighs since we don't have a scale but I did try to measure her. With all her wiggling, it was a little tough but I'm going to say about 25 inches. She's wearing size 1 diapers - I'm sure she's getting close to the weight limit (14 lbs) but because of her length, she's still pretty thin and they fit perfectly. Most of her 0-3 clothes are still pretty roomy around the waist too, even though she should be moving into 3-6 month clothes now. I bought her entire summer wardrobe on clearance last year and I'm hoping she starts thickening out a little bit so they will fit!

She is still sleeping through the night - about 8 1/2 to 9 hours at a stretch. She is breastfed but Chris likes to feed her too so I will pump so he can give her a bottle. When she takes a bottle, she will drink up to 6 ounces in a sitting.

Her hair just keeps getting longer and thicker and luckily it doesn't look like it is going to fall out. She does have the common bald spot in the back but that's about it. She still has red hair - not sure if that will eventually turn brown or not. Eye color still isn't defined yet either.

Here are a few pictures that we've taken over the last couple weeks.

Love this smile!

Averie loves her little seahorse, that we've named Sheldon (after the seahorse in Finding Nemo), and goes to sleep with him every night. She sleeps on this pillow to help with her reflux. It's basically a Boppy but has a little piece that attaches to the sides with Velcro to keep her from sliding off.

There is a big possibility that Averie's first tooth is starting to come in - she's got a couple bumps on her gums and her cheek has been a little swollen and red. She's also started chewing on her pacifier and will cram a fist in her mouth at every available opportunity.

Averie has a really good grip - she's always liked to hold onto fingers - but now will hold things (like a rattle) in her hands for a short period of time.

She was sleeping on our bed and flipped the bib over her face to keep the light out. If we pulled it away from her face, she flipped it right back!

And a couple from today, at 3 months old:

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated my 26th birthday this past weekend (actual birthday was on Monday). On Sunday, we went to my parents' house for dinner, some gift opening and a birthday cheesecake, courtesy of my dad. My parents gave me some gift cards to restaurants and the movies so we can enjoy a date night (which I'm sure is also an ulterior motive for them to get to babysit Averie). Chris gave me a couple of DVDs and some new tennis shoes since I trashed mine in the rain last year. And Averie "gave" me the baby carrier I've had my eye on. How kind of her to gift me with something that benefits her too! :)

On Monday, Chris took some vacation time and I got to sleep in. We spent quite a bit of the day just running errands but since those are things I usually do alone, it was nice to have some company. Mostly, I just enjoyed spending the day with my husband. Between his work and school and me going to school, we don't get much time together. That night, we dropped Averie off at Grandma and Grandpa's and went to dinner. We went to a restaurant in Sandy called Tiburon where Chris had elk, and I had a kobe beef steak. Everything was so delicious and it was a great end to the day.
I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful family and I am looking forward to spending many more birthdays with them!