Baby's First Chrismas!

Hello everyone! Well, baby had her first Christmas and although it was rough on all of us to travel around so much, we had a wonderful time and Santa managed to find Olivia wherever we went! We started out our holiday with my family coming up to our house to spend Christmas eve and Christmas morning with us so Olivia could have her first Christmas in her own home. Here we all are sitting down to dinner on Christmas eve (except me since I'm taking the picture):

Well, Santa definately found our house alright and spoiled Olivia pretty good for her first Christmas. Here's the tree stocked with presents after Santa came (of course, 90% of it is for Olivia!):

Here I am helping Olivia open her stocking - a nice fun pooh-bear ball . . .

Opening some presents - here's her drum (see the video down below):

Can you all find the baby in all this wrapping paper? She had quite a good time playing around in all that paper.

Here she is in her Christmas dress (with Uncle Sean) getting ready to hit the road to go to a family get-together with part of Grant's family. We hit the road around 1pm to head to Mooresboro to see some of Grant's family. Then headed back up to Lenoir that evening.

Aren't her little shoes cute? That's the first time she's worn shoes and they were so cute on her.

Santa seemed to find Olivia at Grant's parent's house, too. We opened presents there the morning after Christmas. Can you tell that "Santa" had a LOT of fun "making" toys for the new babies!?!?! You can barely even see Olivia behind that pile of goodies!

Here's cousin Drew getting into the Christmas spirit!

Here's the mess we made at Grandmom and Granddad's house:

"Thanks Nana for showing me how to work my new top."

After we opened presents at Grandmom and Granddad's and hung out with everyone for the day, we went down to Grandma and Papa's house in Huntersville that night. Then on Sunday we drove back up to Lenoir for another family get-together. Here's Olivia hanging out with her cousin Karlee:

Here's cousin Drew hanging out with Cousin Triston:

Mommy and baby:

We *tried* to get a good family photo and this was the best one I had. Everyone is at least looking at the camera (except the babies) and is looking pretty decent (except Sasha - sorry Sasha!).

Left to right. Front: Becca with Drew, Sherry with Olivia, Nana, Sasha with Triston, Paula with Sawyer. Back: John, Chad, Mike, Grant, Alan, Jason with Karlee, Tyler with Gracie.

All the babies were worn out by the end of the day. It's been a LONG week for everyone.

Here's one of Olivia's other Christmas outfits. Look at the little Mrs. Claus!

Well we had a great time seeing everyone on our travels and Olivia definately got spoiled by everyone! (Especially the grandparents!) All in all baby's first Chrismas was wonderful and a lot of fun. However, we were very happy to be home again. Olivia had a lot of fun, but did not sleep well at all away from home. She missed her crib and so did we as we stayed up with her and tried to calm her down at 3am. Our first night back she slept almost 12 hours - that was great!

Here are some pictures of her playing with some of her new toys. The first picture and video is of her playing with her new car that Aunt Sue got her. She loves when daddy pushes her around in it. Thanks, Aunt Sue!

Here's Olivia showing off her new Red Sox hat that Papa got her. (and of course, she's wearing her Wolfpack shirt to pull for our guys in the bowl game . . . too bad it didn't help!)

Here's Olivia playing with her new drum. She's already gotten the hang of it:

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas too. Please have a wonderful New Year and be safe as you welcome in 2009!

6 Months Old . . .

Can you all believe that Olivia is already 6 months old?? We can't! She's becoming more and more mobile every day! She's not crawling on her hands and knees yet, but she's getting pretty good at "army" crawling. Here's a little video of her from a couple days ago of her "crawling" around and trying to get into mischief:

Aside from her becomming quite mobile these days (yup time to baby-proof), we've just been hanging out with her and enjoying seeing her learn something new almost every day. She's been a joy lately and we are just smitten with her! She did have her 6-month doctor's appointment this past Friday - here are the latest stats:

Weight: 16 lbs 14 oz (75%)

Height: 26 3/4 inches (80%)

Head Circumference: 17 1/4 inches (80%)

So you see that she is growing like a weed! She has been doing so much better with her food since we've been doing the reflux medicine. AND she just LOVES her solids! See this picture:

We went over to see her friend Gracie on her 6-month birthday. They exchanged their presents that they got each other. Olivia got Gracie a fun spinning top that makes cool animal sounds and Gracie go Olivia some fun balls with animals in them and an NC State football jersey onsie (Gracie must have bought it when mommy wasn't looking!) Here are some pictures from them hanging out:

Here are some other pictures we took of her on her 6-month birthday:

Guess she's had enough:

And here are just some other pictures we thought were cute of her:

Well, that's about all that's going on here. Just trying to get our act together for Christmas. We are fortunate enough to have my family (mom, dad and brother) come to Raleigh for Christmas so that Olivia can spend Christmas morning in her own house to open her toys. Then we'll be leaving town that afternoon for a family get-together in Mooresboro, NC with some of Grant's family. Then we'll be off to Lenoir to see Grant's parents for Christmas night. Then back down to Huntersville to spend a little more time with my family and then back up to Lenoir for another family get-together on Sunday with some more of Grant's family. Yup, we'll be touring NC for the holiday and doing a little bouncing back and forth. Hopefully Olivia (and us) will be able to tolerate all the driving and time away from home. But we've just got to go to show off this little one to everyone this year for her 1st Christmas. It is going to be lots of fun to share Christmas with her and santa might just spoil her rotten!

Watch out world, here comes Olivia!

Hello all! Well, a couple of fun things have happened over this last week. First of all, we got to hang out with Aaron and Pam Hipp when they were in town last week from California (one of Grant's friends from high school and one of our groomsmen). We went out to dinner with them and Emily McGuire (not sure of her new last name) and her husband, Andy, last Wednesday.
.
Here we all are eating dinner:


Here's Aaron and Pam with Olivia:

We had a great time hanging out with them. It is always fun to see them - we just wish they lived closer so we could see them more often! (hint hint!)
.

Ok, so the other night when we were playing with Olivia on her blanket, she just started army-crawling away to get to one of her toys! Wow! We were pretty shocked and immediately grabbed the camera to get a video of it to show you all. She's getting mobile - I guess this is our cue to start baby-proofing our house. That little girl can be pretty determined when she wants something - so much so, that she is going to find a way to get there. It used to be log rolling, and now it's army crawling. Who knows what tomorrow will bring! How fun!
.

Here she is - just as determined as ever - watch her go!

Ok, so we are REALLY behind in both our christmas shopping and our christmas card writing. Ugh! It just seems like we can never get any time to do anything these days! We went out and did a little shopping tonight for the kids in our life. At least we're making a little progress!

.

Here is also just a cute picture I took of Olivia tonight and a little video of daddy playing with Olivia the other night. She's gotten to be so happy and giggly lately - we are loving it!

She just adores her daddy:

Ok, well that's about all that's going on here lately. Just trying to get my project finished at work and trying to get our christmas decorations put up. Seems like there is never enough time in the day. Anyway, I hope you all are doing well and we'll keep you all informed of how Olivia is doing with her "crawling."

Thanksgiving Fun!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great thanksgiving holiday! We enjoyed ourselves. I haven't blogged in a while so I have lots to share. First of all, let me share a little video with you of miss Olivia *eating* her peaches this past week. It is pretty pitiful. She was wide awake and eating away one second, then . . .

Here is Olivia with her new little NC State hat - go wolfpack!!!

We finally got the little one to start giggling again (thank goodness!) and here is a little video of her giggling at Grant. He is running up to her, then running away - she loves it:

Ok, so Grant had to work the day after thanksgiving (BOOOO!) so we couldn't leave town until the weekend. Well, Grant's co-worker (and friend), Olivier also had to work. So he and his wife, Sam, invited us over to their house for thanksgiving dinner. We had a lot of fun and Sam cooked a great dinner. Unfortunately, us girls lost to the boys playing Catch Phrase (don't worry, we'll get them next time!). Here's Olivier and Sam hanging out with Olivia (Yeah, I know - confused yet??)

Here's the little one eating her version of thanksgiving dinner - yummy Hawaiian delight (basically pineapple and bananas mixed together).


Then I let Olivia try some of the REAL thanksgiving foods (sweet potato casserole and mashed potatoes and gravy). She wasn't a big fan of any of it!

Here's just a cute picture of Olivia in one of her cute bath towels.




We went to Grant's parents house for Saturday night to do thanksgiving with them. Here is Nana holding Olivia. Olivia was just fascinated by the little leaves on Nana's shirt. She kept trying to pick them off of it!

Olivia had so much fun hanging out with her cousin, Drew. Here are the little ones playing together. Drew's cheesin' for the camera - what a cheeseball! :)

Here they are playing together with Olivia's Excersaucer that we borrowed from my friend (Thanks Cat!).

The funniest thing happened when we put the 2 babies together to play. Olivia started laughing at Drew, which made him laugh and before we new it, they were just cracking each other up! It was so funny! (See the (Bald) resemblance??) Check it out:

Olivia also got to spend a little time with Sharon when she came over to see the babies.

Olivia is also developing more talents lately. She is getting to be a pro at holding her balance while propped up on something - all by herself. Here's a picture and a video to show you. She is getting so big and we are surprised at all the new things she is learning every day.

Yeah, I know - I did it again - The video is sideways . . .

Other than that, we are just starting to work with Olivia with the baby sign language. My mom had gotten us a book when I was still pregnant and after hearing that baby Gracie is starting to catch on to it, it has inspired me to start working with Olivia. They say that it is good to start working with them between 6 and 8 months and since we think she's so smart (no bias there! ha ha), I'm already starting her on it.

So, that's about all that going on around here. Until next time - take care and we'll write again soon.

Babies . . .Babies. . . and more Babies!!

Hello again! Well, Olivia turned 5 months old this past friday! Can you believe it! Anyway, Grant and I took some time off to have a long weekend to maybe go up to the mountains, but the weather was pretty bad so we decided to go up to Lenoir to surprise his family for his cousin's 3rd birthday party. It was really fun to see everyone again - there were 4 babies born on that side of the family just this year! Here are all the babies:
.

Left to Right: Paula holding Gracie (2) and Sawyer (10 months); Sasha holding Karlee (12 weeks); Becca holding Drew (9 months), Me holding Olivia (5 months) and Jason in the back holding Triston (3) the birthday boy!

Here's Becca and I with the baby cousins, Drew and Olivia:

.

And Nana with Olivia:
.
We had a lot of fun hanging out with everyone, but unfortunately, I think Olivia must have gotten a cold from one of her cousins because she has turned up sick. Poor little thing has a runny nose and the sneezies - her first cold! Oh- well, babies will be babies and share their germs with each other. No big deal, she'll be fine. She still acts just as happy as always, just with a runny nose now.

Here are a couple of funny pics of Olivia. Grant was playing with her on her little blanket before we left town Saturday morning and all of a sudden Olivia just fell asleep mid-play. How funny!
.

We also did quite a bit of shopping this weekend. We had a big coupon for gap this weekend and did some shopping for us, and a lot for baby - we couldn't help ourselves! Here she is in her new baby gap sweater. Isn't it adorable:
.

She looks like a little elf with that hood! Such a fashion-ista!

We also took some cute videos of Olivia that we wanted to show you all. The first is of baby beating up her daddy. It is pretty funny - she is really letting him have it.
.

Here is a video we took tonight of her playing and having a good old time. She's so happy and smiley these days. It is getting more and more fun with her.
.

This last video is an update for you all to see her progress with sitting. She has been working on sitting and has been pretty good about staying up if you put her in position by using her hands to support herself. But this video shows that she can now start to not have to use her hands to support herself and still stay sitting for a bit. She still falls over here and there, but she is making great progress.
.

We also went over to Randy and Sara's (though Sara wasn't home) to visit with them Friday night after our shopping spree, to hang out for a bit. I had a great time hanging out with the girls (Gracie and Olivia). They are getting to where they can interact more and more and Olivia is starting to catch up to Gracie in size, too! Gracie is sooo mobile now, she crawls and cruises everywhere and can stand up in the middle of the room for quite a while.

Well, I got Randy to take a couple pictures of me holding the girls. This first one came out pretty cute and they were doing really well:

.Then . . . Olivia scratched Gracie . . . Gracie started crying . . . then Olivia started crying because Gracie was crying . . . oh my goodness!!!

.

Well, that's about all for now. I hope you enjoyed the new pictures and videos of the little one. I can't believe she is already 5 months old! Wow, time does fly! Until next time, have fun!