Thanksgiving
We spent Thanksgiving in St. Louis. My dad actually flew to Atlanta the Friday before Thanksgiving, to help me with the drive to St. Louis (Mark flew in Wednesday night, and then Mark, Olive, and I drove home the weekend after Thanksgiving). It's usually around an 8 and 1/2 hour drive, it took us 11 hours. Olive managed to sleep for some of it, and we stopped more often than we normally would, and when we stopped we stopped for longer periods of time. We even ended up finding a nature preserve on the Kentucky/Illinois border where we stopped for an hour, and put down a tarp so Olive could crawl around.
The St. Louis visit was great. We managed to get to see a lot of people, and still have a relaxing visit. Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt Christy's was wonderful, the whole family was there and we had a great time. Then on Friday morning we had our first Christmas (we had 3 Christmases this year) which was a lot of fun.
One of the tough parts of our St. Louis trip was that Olive was not sleeping well. The day we got there her third tooth on the bottom started coming in, and I figured that was why she wasn't sleeping well. Then on Thursday night she bumped her head, and was winding up to start screaming and crying, as she threw her head back I saw something white towards the back of her mouth. After I got her calmed down I stuck my finger in her mouth and sure enough both of her top molars were coming in at the same time. So it turned out she had three teeth coming in all at the same time while we were there.
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| Olive playing with Papa when we stopped at the nature preserve. |
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| Sleeping cousins, that is Olive's cousin Quinn on the right. |
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| On Thanksgiving Day hanging out with John; Olive is actually wearing a dress! |
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| Very excited to be finally meeting TJ for the first time, or maybe she is excited for the dog... |
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| First Christmas, and first play kitchen. She loves this thing, Mark and I have memorized all the songs it sings, because she plays them over and over, and over, and over, and over, and over. |
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| Out to breakfast before we hit the road to go back to Atlanta. |
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| Bye, bye Gammie and Papa. |
At 9 months old Olive was a crawling machine. She was getting into any and everything she could get her hands on. She started "dancing" somewhere between 8 and 9 months. She would mover her body up and down when she heard music. Also, during 8 and months peek-a-boo became her favorite game to play. It was awesome for me, because any time someone would play peek-a-boo with her she would have the biggest smile on her face, so any time I wanted to take her picture I could get her to smile. Around this time she got better about her separation anxiety. She still will fuss a little bit sometimes when I am around and someone else holds her, but she gets over it a lot faster, and is happy to got to pretty much anyone.
Actually at 9 months old is when we took Olive to meet Santa. We waited in line at Lenox Mall for about an hour, and I was amazed at how happy and easy going she was about waiting. When it was her turn to go up and sit on his lap, I walked up with her in my arms. He was sitting in a big green chair, Olive looked down at him from my arms and reached her arms out to go to him. We got some great shots of her as she smiled away while she sat in his lap.
Apparently that day she was feeling extra friendly because we decided to go to California Pizza Kitchen for lunch, and as I was walking through the restaurant to take Olive to go change her diaper, a nice older lady stopped me and commented on how cute and happy Olive was. As I stood there talking to the lady, Olive reached out to her and let the lady hold her. Afterwards I thought maybe I should have stopped her, but the lady seemed nice, and Olive wanted to go to her.
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| Baby in a beer box. |
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| Naked girl! |
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| She likes being in boxes almost as much as the cats do. |
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| Star Wars hoodie with matching t-shirt underneath. It was superhero day at school, and this was what Mark and I could agree on. |
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| Playing with her toys. |
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| With her new BFF. |
We spent Christmas in Albany with Mark's family. The night before we left, we had our second Christmas with just our little three person family here in Atlanta, so we wouldn't have to take all of the presents with us when we traveled.
Christmas in Albany was great. Olive got to spend lots of time with Mark's side of the family, and she was spoiled silly with Christmas gifts. She was happily passed around from person to person, and managed to charm everyone. Hearing everyone say what a happy and easygoing baby she is was music to this Mama's ears.
Also while we were in Albany, I had my first night away from Olive. Mark surprised me for Christmas with tickets to see Book of Mormon on Broadway, reservations to dinner at Babbo, and a hotel room for the night in NYC. Finding out Christmas day, that the next night was going to be my first night away from Olive was a little overwhelming, but I knew she would be in good hands with Mark's parents and his sister. Plus Mark managed to sneak the breast pump into one of our bags when we left Atlanta, so I did not have to deal with the discomfort of not nursing for 24 hours.
It was hard to be away from Olive for that long, and I was ecstatic to see her when we got back, but it was definitely worth it, and Mark and I had great time. Book of Mormon was excellent, dinner was delicious, and my first uninterrupted night of sleep in a year felt fantastic.
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| Sleeping on the airplane on the way to Albany. It was her third time flying and of her six flights, only 2 have been sort of bad. On the way home from Albany I ended up feeding her all the cheerios she could eat to keep her for crying. |
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| Christmas morning with cousin Brandon. |
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| Christmas dinner, cheerios, cheese, and broccoli with kale puree. |
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| Fun times with cousins! |
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| Four generations, Paboo, Grandma, Dada, and Olive. |
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| Our little family on Christmas night. |
10 months
Olive turned ten months old yesterday and I really can't believe how quickly time goes. I feel like we are on a crash course with her first birthday, and I am trying to slam on the brakes. It's all going by way too fast. At her 9 month well visit Olive was 29 inches long and a little over 18lbs. She is long and lean, and it makes her look older, because she is built more like a toddler than a chubby baby. She is walking around holding on to things, and hasn't really attempted to take any steps on her own yet. But she love walking around if someone is holding her hands. She can climb up and down the stairs now, and since she figured out how to climb down the stairs by swinging one of her legs down until her foot touches the stair below it, and then swinging the other leg down she is now convinced that is the way to get off of anything, no matter how high it is, and almost fell off the bed twice yesterday. I had a nice 3 or so week reprieve where she had figured out not to crawl head first off of the bed, but now I have to worry about her falling off again now that she thinks she can climb down.
She is very inquisitive, she likes to climb on things and inspect things. I put her first pair of feety pjs with the non skid feet bottoms on her the other day, and she sat looking and touching the bottom of the feet for a good five minutes. Just checking them out. She likes to investigate things on her own. She got tons of new toys for Christmas, and when she would first get the toy she wouldn't be that interested in it, but once we got home, and she could pull out the toys on her own and play with them without anyone showing her what each toy does and how to do it; then she would play with it and figure it out for herself.
She is "talking" more. She says Dada, Mama, Hi/Hey (it's basically an h sound), Gaga, Baba, Papa, and sometimes Ka (which I think is cat). Usually she just babbles all those sounds, but occasionally she seems to truly identify me as Mama, and Mark as Dada.
She is a dancing fool. At first she would just kind of bounce up and down, but now if she is standing up holding on to something she will full on shake her butt. If she is sitting down she twists from side to side. The best part is she will pick out music from random places. Like when we were in NY and went out to dinner at Cheesecake Factory, it was loud, and you could barely hear the music, and all of a sudden she started dancing in her high chair. Or when she is playing in the living room and we have the TV on and a commercial will start singing (her favorite is the new Pizza Hut one) or the theme song for TV show will start playing (she likes Big Bang Theory) she will stop what she is doing and start dancing.
She is happy most of the time. Smiling and laughing a lot. I love her laugh. It is this perfect baby giggle, and when she does it she opens her mouth so you can see 8 of her teeth.
Her fourth tooth on the bottom finally came in around Christmas and she now has 10 teeth. She is eating more finger foods, and especially likes eating off of my plate. She gets very angry if I don't share with her. I'm trying to get her to understand how to take bites of things rather than shove everything in her mouth. Mark still makes all her baby food and he is figuring out healthy transitional foods for her.
She continues to put everything in her mouth, and likes to chew on all sorts of things. She really likes the bottom of water bottles, and cardboard for chewing.
She is so much fun to be with that going back to work after Winter Break was very difficult for me. I think it might have even been harder, then when she started daycare. I love being around her so much at this age, and getting to feel like I am really interacting with her. Nights when I have to work late I miss her like crazy. There is no better feeling in the world than when I get home from work, scoop her up in my arms and she hugs on me and loves on me.
Like I said, it is all going by too fast, and if I could freeze time and we could spend a year with her at this stage I would. I am already counting down the days until summer break when I can spend every day with her.
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| Showing off those teeth while she is tickled by Mommy. |
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| Sleeping on Grandma, Olive got her first flu bug a week ago, and then passed it on to Mark and me; we were lucky Grandma and Grandpa were in town to help out. |
