Rough Week

Hello again! Ok, ok, I know. I JUST promised you all that I would write once a week and here I am ALREADY breaking my promise. Well, it has been a rough couple of weeks for us . . .

Ok, so I have to say a Happy (late) Birthday to little Drew who turned 1 on the 16th. We all went to his party (on the 15th) and hung out with all the other cute little babies that were there. (Olivia has never been around so many little ones - there were 7 babies there!) However, poor little Drew wound up getting sick just as the other guests were arriving. He wound up with a stomach bug and all but missed his first birthday party! What sucky timing that was! We did at least get to sing to him and hang out a little bit.

And NO, Olivia did not get sick from Drew . . . but I did. Yup, wound up with a fun stomach bug most of last week. Then, of course, Olivia got it from me! She still isn't quite over it and has really been struggling with it. We thought she was getting better this weekend, but then Sunday night she got really sick again. I took her to the doctor on Monday and they told me to take her off of formula for 24 hours and that should settle her stomach down. We did (and she hated it!), and she was doing better last night and this morning. So I gave her some formula this morning (which she LOVED - no more fighting bottles for this little one!) Then . . . they called us from daycare this afternoon. She had gotten really upset with stomach pains and then got sick everywhere. Poor little baby. She slept on my lap all day after that, and I managed to get some food and a bottle in her before bedtime. She has been really sleepy all day and you can just tell that she doesn't feel well. Anyway, hopefully she'll sleep well and feel better in the morning. It is going on a full week since she first got sick - it has to be over soon . . . right!?

Well, that is my excuse for not blogging sooner . . . and I'm sticking to it! :)

Anyway, Happy Valentines Day everyone! Here are some cute pictures of Olivia in her Valentine PJ's from Grandma and Papa:




Check out the "Be Mine" heart on her bum!

She did have a REALLY cute little Valentine outfit from Grandmom and Granddad on when we were going to Huntersville on Valentines Day (for Drew's party), but unfortunately, she got sick in the car all over herself and . . . well, the outfit never made it all the way there. I'll get it back on her one day soon and get a picture to show you all.

Here's a picture of Olivia with her little friend Sophia from daycare. Right now it is just the two of them since little Bryce moved to Florida.

Here's just a cute picture of Olivia under her little music table.


Ok, so for Chrismas Olivia's great-Aunt Sue got her that cool little car that you all have seen videos of her riding on. Well, the car folds up into a walker and, well, Olivia has been practicing - check her out:

Aside from her trying to learn how to walk and going all over the place, we wanted to show you a couple more videos we took of her.

Here's a video of her reading one of her books and dancing to the music a little bit. She has really enjoyed her books that play music.

I know we've shown you all several videos with her knocking down her towers, but we've noticed that she now starts squinting right before she knocks them down and it is pretty funny. Here is a video of her squinting as she gets this tower:

Learning new tricks every day!

Hello again! Ok, so, let me tell you about the last couple of weeks. So Olivia is growing and learning something new almost every day now. She is a full time cruiser now and loves to pull up on ANYTHING and cruise around the room. As long as she can reach one thing from another (i.e. a chair from the couch, or us!) she can cruise right on over to it. She is pulling up on her toys, the couch, chair, walls, us . . . anything she can get her chubby little hands on. And she is still army crawling everywhere (we're still working on crawling on her knees) SO, we had to put up some gates (i.e. a baby cage!) to contain her. She is into everything and loves playing with her toys, but especially whatever it is that we don't want her to play with! ha ha. Here is a picture of the little caged beast. Isn't she cute! (Remember, don't feed the wild animals, they may bite! :)


We had one day last week that she just kept sticking her tongue out over and over again. Every time she was concentrating on playing with her toys or trying to figure something out, there would come the little baby tongue. I managed to catch it on camera for you all to see how funny she is:


With all the REALLY nice weather we have been having, we decided to take her to the park for the first time to ride the swings while my parents were visiting this past weekend. She LOVED it! She was laughing and smiling the whole time. She also loved seeing all the other kids/babies playing around. Here are some pictures and a video of her swinging.

We also went to check out some of the other playground toys. Unfortunately it was WAY too crowded to try out the slide since I'll probably have to go down it with her - maybe next time it won't be so crowded when we go.

So, other than cruising around, Olivia has become quite the little conversationalist! She has really started just jibber-jabbering away all the time. She'll go on forever once she gets started. This is a video from Saturday night after we got back from the park of her just talking away. She must have done this for almost an hour straight! You can also see how hard it is becoming to hold her still. She just wants to climb and play all the time now.

AND, she has finally learned how to wave. We've been working on waving and clapping with her for a long time now. Still no luck with the clapping, but she started waving this past week. She has even waved goodbye to the daycare ladies a couple of times now. She mostly just waves at random things, but here is a video of her waving at her daddy (who is off to the left). We like to call this VIGOROUS waving - she really get into it! ha ha

Here are some other cute pictures of her just hanging out the other night playing with her toys.

Check out her new super-cool sneakers that we got her!

Remember the videos of her knocking down the towers?? Well, I decided to take it to the next level and make her work for it. Yup, she still doesn't like any towers to be standing in HER house no matter how hard they are to knock down! Check it out:

We are working with her to use a sippy cup and drink some juice now. She hasn't really liked any of the juice so far (too tart, I think). But because she is teething, I think she gave it a better chance this time since the cold juice felt good on her teeth.

Here's just a random picture I took of us together the other night:

And, on top of all of that cool stuff that she is up to lately, her 2nd bottom tooth decided to join the first one and now they are both coming in. I don't even need to draw a circle on this picture to show you guys! It is soo cute because you can see them whenever she smiles now. (ignore the crusty nose, she has another cold!)

Aren't they so cute! I just love her new little teeth. They are both coming in crooked, but they are just adorable. The only problem is, they are REALLY bothering her. She is in full blown teething now and it sucks! She is pretty cranky a lot in the evenings now and the medicine only helps a little. We're trying cold teethers, too, but they only help temporarily until she gets frustrated and throws them. Poor baby, I wish it didn't hurt so bad!

Anyway, aside from the teething pain and the new cold she is getting over, we have had a very fun couple of weeks with her. And we just love seeing her learn new things all the time. We just hope she doesn't grow up too fast!

Olivia's Artwork

Hello again! Wow, look at me - TWO blogs in one day! Anyway, here is all the wonderful artwork that Olivia has done since Christmas. Isn't she sooo talented?? :)

Here's what she made for Christmas:

With pom-poms and googly-eyes!

She even used some glitter!

Here she did some coloring - she did pretty well staying in the lines, even (though I'm not sure how much help she got!):

(1/05/09)

(1/05/09)

(1/07/09)

Here's her first watercolor!

And here's the pretty valentines she made for us this past week:

This is a card:

(Front of Card)



(Inside of Card) - Isn't she sweet! :)

I just think it is so fun that they like to do artwork with the kids at daycare. They try to do something at least once a month and for each holiday! They are so good with her and just adore her. We have been so fortunate to have them looking after her AND to be soooo close - I mean, you can't get any closer than right next door! Right now there is only her and one other full time girl (Sophia) who is 16 months old. There is one part time little boy (Gabriel) who is 15 months old, too. Her little boyfriend, Bryce, moved back to florida :( They are looking for a couple more kids to come there, so she'll get some more little friends soon. But she gets so much attention that she is just spoiled rotten - and we are SO greatful! Thanks Ms. Angela and Ms. Muriel!

Pictures

Hello all! Ok, so I've become a bad blogger! I admit it! I have some excuses that I could give you all (like working a LOT lately), but you guys don't care, you just want to see more of Olivia and see what she's been up to! I'm going to try to blog at least once a week from now on. . . I promise! Ok, well, to hold you over until I have more time to blog about all the fun stuff Olivia is getting in to, I realized that I never did post the fun pictures we had taken of her right before Christmas at Lundies Photography (I have to reference them in order to post their pictures - copyright and all . . .) The pictures came out really good and we are very happy with them. Here they are (ok, so they are 2 months old now, but still very cute!) We had a "wardrobe" change in the middle so we could have "Christmas" pictures AND "6-month" pictures. (These were taken on December 6th - so she wasn't quite 6 months old yet)

Look at the big girl standing up before 6 months!

This is my favorite! I love the close-up of her!

Isn't this so cute with her sitting in the drum! Very seasonal!

When I get home today, I'll try to upload my pictures from my camera so I can blog about those and I also have a bunch of artwork to show you all that she's done at daycare (going all the way back to Christmas!)