Ba - ooooon!

Olivia's new word: Ba . . .ooooon (Balloon). She has been practicing it all the time since her party and has loved carrying her balloons all around the house. Check it out. You may need to turn up the volume to hear her, but she says it twice. Isn't it cute??

Olivia's 1st Birthday Party

Hello friends! Well, my little girl is now officially a one-year old! My gosh, time flies by so quickly! Well, we had her 1st birthday party on Sunday (on her actual birthday) and it went really well. We had tons of family and many friends come to celebrate with us. Some from as far away as Rhode Island (thanks for coming to *surprise* us Aunt Sue!), and we had a whole bunch of Grant's family come in all the way from Lenoir! Thanks to all that came to celebrate with us - it really meant a lot to have you there on Olivia's special day.

Well, before we get into the festivities, I have to show you all my hard work from Saturday first. I told you all that I was going to make Olivia's cake myself, right? Well, it was an all day project on Saturday and I even had some help from a couple friends and my mom (thanks Sara, Harmony and Mom - and Diane for the moral support!). It was quite an undertaking but turned out pretty awesome. Ace of Cakes has nothing on us! Check it out:


I even took a video so you can see the details up close. Check out the little critters we made to go along with our "Spring" theme of butterflies, bumble bees, grasshoppers & ladybugs.

And now, let's watch how quickly Olivia can destroy her little cake!!

Here we are singing Happy Birthday to Olivia. I managed to blow out the candle *just* before she tried to grab it. Wow, those mommy reflexes are quick!

Even Ms. Muriel and Ms. Angela stopped by to wish her a happy birthday. Look how she just lights up around Ms. Muriel!

Some one's on a sugar-high!!!

Here's Olivia playing with her cousin Karlee.

Olivia and Drew LOVED playing with the balloons. (as did all the kids!) It was fun just watching them!

After the Cake, the kids all came outside to play with the water tables. They were a big hit. The weather turned out to be beautiful. We all had a great time.

From bottom left around clockwise: Gracy, Olivia, Triston, Gracie, Drew, Sawyer (Karlee's not shown (see picture above!)

And of course, the two little buddies (Olivia and Gracie) enjoyed hanging out together.

At some point, Gracie wound up soaked (as did most of the kids) and she decided to streak the party. (Children under age should close their eyes for the next couple pictures!)

Here's Olivia in her new chair that we got her (it even has her name embroidered on it) with the teddy bear that I made her. She really loves that chair and has been in it a bunch already!

Check out the cute bow she has on! It is cousin Karlee's bow - we just wanted to see if she had enough hair to wear it and she actually did! How cute is that!

And here is cousin Drew haming it up for the camera. He LOVED being the life of the party on Sunday!

Even Nana was able to make it over for her party. Here's part of the family before they left.

Well, I think that about wraps up the first year of Miss Olivia's wonderful life. It has had it's ups and downs (mostly ups!), but every second has been action packed! Last night she was wondering around saying "ba . . .ooooon" isn't that cute! She is still learning something nearly every day and we will continue to keep you updated with all her new happenings. Until next time. Take care and keep in touch.

Love,

Mommy

Happy Birthday - Love, Daddy

Olivia,

One year ago, June 14th 2008 at 12:21pm, I was overcome with joy when you arrived. Each day I spend time with you, I am continuously amazed. You are such a wonderful, sweet, beautiful little girl, and I have cherished every moment I have spent with you during your first year. I knew life for your Mommy and I would change when you arrived, but I can’t imagine life without you now. You are truly our bundle of joy, and I want to thank you for constantly bringing a smile to my face each time I see you or think of you (or the way you squeal DA-DEEEE when I get home from work). I love you so very much!! Happy 1st Birthday, Olivia!!

Love,
Daddy

p.s. – thanks, Mommy, for letting me sneak this into the blog – love ya!

Happy Birthday - Love Mommy

Olivia,

Happy 1st Birthday, Sweet pea! I cannot believe it has been an entire year since you came into this world. I can still remember when I was pregnant and wondering what you would be like when you were born - how you would act as you grew up, or how you would look. Well, I can tell you that you have far exceeded anything my imagination could come up with. You have amazed me since the first time I laid eyes on you (maybe even before that – maybe at the first kick in my tummy!). You are the most beautiful little girl and you have such a great personality that has been developing in you. You have always had a strong will, but you have developed such a sweetness (you give the best hugs!) and a great sense of humor. I just love spending time with you to see what you’ll do next. This past year has been such a ride, at times we weren’t sure what was going to happen next or if we wanted to speed up or slow down, but every second has been worth treasuring.

You are now at such a fun age to watch as you are figuring out the world. You seem to learn something new every time I turn around! It is so much fun to share these moments with you and cheer you on from the sidelines. You have been a wonderful daughter and I am so lucky to have been blessed with you in my life. I cannot wait to see what you are going to do next.

I Love you so much!

Mommy

Tragedy Stikes Close to Home!

Hello again! For those of you who haven't heard, or are unaware of how close to home this is for us- we had a horrible tragedy stike across the street from our neighborhood yesterday. We live right across the street from the Con Agra food company that had an explosion on Tuesday around 11am. There were more than 40 people sent to the hospital, many with serious burns and other injuries and 3 people missing initially. Today they found all 3 of them, unfortunately they did not make it. The roof of the building had collapsed in several places and they had been caught under it. They have had our main road closed off since it happened and we have had to be let through the barricades just to get to our neighborhood for the last couple days. I cannot believe this has happened in our little town and sooo very close to home. I want to send out a prayer to the families of those who lost a loved one in that terrible accident and those that were injured and/or forever affected by it. (For those that want to know what has been going on, you can click on the link above or go to http://www.wral.com/ and search for the latest update on it.)

Aside from the shock of this happening across the street from us, I have been preparing for Olivia's 1st birthday party we are having this weekend. We will be having quite a bit of family coming into town, and many of Olivia's little friends come to it - so the shin-dig will be much larger than I had originally thought - but the more, the merrier to share this happy occasion. I am planning on making the cake myself (the trial run I did a couple weeks ago came out really well!) so, I'll be working on that Saturday, as well as preparing all the other goodies for the party. I will definitely make sure many pictures and videos (especially of Olivia eating her birthday cake!!) are taken and posted for you all to see!

Here's a couple pics and videos from today to hold you over until then. Olivia just decided that she wanted to push around her little tadpole doll for quite a while in her little stroller. Take a look:

51 Weeks Old . . . Already

Hello friends and family! I want to thank all of you loyal blog readers out there for checking in on us from time to time to see how we are doing. This has been a fun way to let you all know what is going on in our lives, keep a journal for little Olivia to see when she grows up, and for me to vent my frustrations and worries, share my excitement, happiness and joy and a wonderful way to get some great feedback and support from you guys to help us out along the way with advice, support and just general encouragement in the amazement of raising little Olivia. I cannot believe that she is already almost one! Can you believe it! It seems like just a short time ago we were bringing her home from the hospital:

Look how small she was!! It is truly amazing how much she has grown and thrived throughout this past year. And what a year it has been. We have had our ups and downs. There have been highs we cannot even explain (the highest being at the very first sight of her!), and scary moments when we were worried about her health or how to care for her, and, of course, frustrating moments when we just weren't sure what to do! But all in all, it has been just wonderful to have such a special little girl in our lives. She is truly amazing and it seems like she is learning something new almost every day now!

Here are some of the new things that she has learned:

• She can imitate a bunny by scrunching up her nose and making sniffing sounds (very cute)


• She very randomly said "night night" to me as I was putting her to bed one night this past week - now she says it almost every night! (we always say it to her, now she says it back!)


• She has learned how to say "more" this week. (to add to the other words she knows already: momma (though she almost never says that anymore!), dadda, daddy (which she says ALL the time, especially when asked to say "mamma" - then she laughs! hmph!), ball, kitty, no no, ow (like when you get hurt - though she just says that randomly to get attention). (she has also just generally started repeating what we say a lot! - time to watch what we are saying . . . )


• We also swear that she said "thank you" to Grant the other night. She wasn't feeling well (see later on in this post) so Grant put a cool washcloth on the back of her neck and she looked up at him and said "thank you" clear as a bell. We both looked shocked and Grant was just like "you're wel . . .come . . ." It was really strange. But we always say thank you to her and they do the same at daycare, so maybe she understands more than we think she does!


• She definitely understands her "ball" now and will most times go get it on command - or at the very least look around for it and point it out to you. She also knows which toy is her pony and her turtle (from the aquarium).


• She can sign for her milk (we've been doing the baby sign language with her and she learned how to sign back milk about a month ago)


• She can now almost run and even catch her balance mid-fall so that she doesn't fall much at all anymore. She can even lean over and pick things off the ground in the middle of the room without falling over.


• You all witnessed her climbing OVER the couch! She climbs on EVERYTHING now!

Ok, so now that I have reminisced a bit and caught you up on her in a more general way, let me catch you up on this past week. So you know that she had Hand, Foot & Mouth about a week or so ago, right? Well, she got over that last weekend and seemed to get back to normal for a bit the beginning of this past week. Then on Wednesday when I picked her up from daycare she felt a bit warm. I got her home and took her temp . . . 102.4 . . . uh-oh, not again! Ugh! Well, it climbed up to about 103.5 that night and I gave her the usual Tylenol and whatnot hoping that it was just a crazy high teething temp or something. Well, by the morning, it was back down to around 101 and my neighbor (daycare) said that I could still bring her over and head off to work (since I had missed most of the previous week with the Hand, Foot & Mouth stuff) to at least get a little work done. She said that she would keep an eye on her and that if it got worse or seemed like something more than teething, she'd call.

Well, by lunchtime, she called! Yeah, 102.5 temp again and not eating. ugh! I wasn't in the office when she called, so I had to head back, get my stuff to bring home to work from there and head out. By the time I was heading home, she called again and said it was getting even worse and she was burning up. When I got there, she was just laying there in Ms. Muriel's lap and looked pitiful! She had a 103.5 temp again and wouldn't eat or do anything. I brought her home, called her pediatrician and they said that a high temp is ok as long as she seems like she is fighting it ok. They said it was probably a secondary virus from being sick the week before and it should pass, but if I felt she wasn't fighting it well, I could bring her in. I did manage to get her to drink her bottle - so I figured she was doing somewhat ok. Later on her temp climbed up to 104.9!!!!! I put her in a cool bath to get the temp down and that seemed to help a lot. She was actually playing after that and even ate a little dinner. She went to bed in pretty decent shape.

A couple hours later, she woke up screaming - she was shivering, trembling and in awful shape. It was really hard to watch her hurting so bad. We just had to hold her and try to soothe her back to sleep as best we could. We figured that her fever was finally breaking. But in the morning, her temp was still over 103! So, off to the doctor's office we went (this was Friday). Well, they checked her out and everything seemed normal. Her throat was a little red, which they thought was probably left over from last week, but decided to do a strep test again - just in case. However, the doctor was pretty sure it would be negative as it is extremely rare for kids under 2 to get strep (but if they do, it is almost always a secondary infection - which this was!). He said it was most likely a UTI - and it was standard in little girls to do a catheter UTI urine test for high fevers lasting longer than 3 days with no other outward signs - and that the test was very painful and traumatic for the babies. Well, the strep test had already made her throw up and upset her pretty bad - so I was pretty upset with the news of that!

So here I was nearly in tears at at the doctors office, trying to get myself under control, help Olivia out (also dealing with some work stuff on the side, and keeping Grant in the loop over the phone) and the nurses came in to do the catheter, then the doctor stuck his head in and told them to hold off for a couple minutes to wait for the strep test to come back . . . just in case . . . fingers crossed . . . praying . . . thankfully - it came back positive. Now normally I would not be thankful for a positive strep test in an 11 month old, but in this case, to save her from going through the catheterization, I was very thankful! So, off to the pharmacy for some antibiotics.

Yeah, it was quite a stressful morning and she is finally starting to do better, but still is quite cranky and not eating well. But her fever is finally gone (as of last night) - so that is at least a little bit of good news. So, in thinking about the short 1-year life that she has had and all the time that she has been sick, she is going to be a tank when she is older - her immune system is going to be awesome, I mean, it has already been exposed to so much stuff and built all kinds of antibodies! Just look at her history:

Now we just need to get her healthy in time for her Birthday Party next weekend! Yeah! :)

Ok, so that's what's been going on here. So here are some fun pictures of the little one. Here she is in a very cute little sun dress that my friends (Heather, Cat and Melissa) got her for my baby shower that I have been waiting for her to grow into. Isn't it soooo cute!!!??!??!

Just doing a little housework . . or yard work . . . or house yard work (mowing the carpet) in her evening gown!

She's at it again!

Look at that face!
Our friends Jennifer and Reese came to visit us on Saturday (fortunately she had already been on her antibiotics for more than 24 hours and the doc said that she wasn't contagious after that! - And I had lysol-ed the ENTIRE house before they showed up!). Aren't they cute!

And here's little Olivia from this afternoon giving Daddy his physical.

And, of course, the obligatory cute picture pose:

Ok. Well, that's about all for now (as if that wasn't enough!) I'm out of breath and this is just typing! The only other thing I would like to do is wish a very big CONGRATULATIONS to Cynthia and Jason Spruill on the arrival of the twin baby girls! They welcomed Evelyn Louise (2 lbs 8 oz) and Jessica Catherine (2 lbs 2 oz) into their family Thursday night at 11:26 pm and 11:27 pm, respectively. Both girls are doing very well.

Last Swim Class

Hello again! Well, we had Olivia's last swim class on Friday evening and she has now officially graduated from the Parent and Tot Swim Program! Yeah! We really enjoyed the class and got to meet a lot of other really nice parents and little ones. We may even be setting up a play date with our little friends Mason and Logan in the near future! Here are some fun pictures and videos that Grant took of our last class (and yes, he was able to come and see his little fishy enjoy the water!).



Here's Olivia practicing her swimming by reaching for her little ducky:

Kicky-Kick!

Watch how she has learned how to crawl along the edge of the pool (monkey-monkey) and climb out. Then you'll get to see how she can go UNDER WATER!!! She doesn't mind going under at all! This was a great class for her to take as a baby. The only ones that had any issues going under were the older ones (2-3 year old kids), the babies didn't know to be scared yet, so it is a great time to teach them how to go under. If you watch her in some of the other videos, she even knows how to close her eyes and mouth just in time! :)

This is what they call "pass the baby" where I pass Olivia to the teacher, Jaime, and she passes her back letting Olivia kick and swim a little. She even goes under water a bit. Watch:

And here's just a sweet picture from when we got home!

Ok, so other than that, we had our trip out to Ocean City, MD this weekend for our friend's wedding. Although it was a long drive and we are exhausted today - we had a great time seeing everyone again! There were quite a few of Grant's classmates there and it was fun catching up. We may even have a couple of them over this weekend to grill out!

Grandmom and Granddad also enjoyed hanging out with the little pumpkin - although they looked pretty tired when we got back, too! I think Olivia must have worn them out! :) It was a nice weekend, but it was REALLY nice to sleep in our own bed and get lots of hugs and kisses from our little one when we got back!