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!