A Vegas Toddler

Over President's Day weekend we went to Las Vegas to visit Mark's parents. It ended up being exactly what we needed, a weekend away from our overly busy lives. Olive had a great time being showered with attention from Grandma, Grandpa, Paboo, Aunt Mary Ellen, cousin Taylor, and Cee Lo.

The first day we were there we went to visit the new house Bill and Teddie just bought. It is gorgeous, and I can't wait to go back once they are moved in and the weather is warmer to have Olive swim in the pool. She had a great time chasing golf balls around on the putting green.

After visiting the new house we went to the Hoover Dam. Unfortunately Olive was suffering from some jet lag combined with a little virus, and she fussed the whole time. We joked that if she ever wants to visit the Hoover Dam when she gets older we are going to tell her that she is not allowed to go, since clearly she hates the Hoover Dam.

Olive was a little sick our first couple of days. She just didn't seem to be feeling very good, and after her fussy Hoover Dam trip she took a long afternoon nap that turned into a long night's sleep. She was running a bit of a fever too. Luckily it only lasted around 24 hours, and she was back to her energetic self.

On Sunday we went down and walked the strip we were trying to show Olive some animals, but it turns out the MGM is moving the lions off site, and we were too late to see the animals at Sigfried and Roys. We did see a duck swimming in a fountain. I think Olive still had fun riding in the stroller and seeing all the people, and big buildings.

And then as we were getting ready to board our flight back to Atlanta there was Cee Lo Green on our flight. As we walked past him when we were boarding he said, "Hi Baby!" to Olive. So now they are BFF's.

Someone was not feeling well.  Luckily Granpa was there to snuggle with her.

First bubble bath, she wasn't sure what to do with the bubbles, so she started eating them.

Spending time outside with Grandma in the beautiful Vegas weather.

Drinking some water with her Paboo.

I wonder if she gets free meals?

She finally got to meet Aunt Mary Ellen.

She loves her Paboo.

First try with Birthday cake.  She wasn't sure what to do with it, and then each time she put it in her mouth she spit it out.

Bye bye Vegas.

11 months old on Valentine's Day

Small disclaimer: I

wrote this post yesterday, but did not have time to finish it. I don,t feel like going through and changing all the " todays" to yesterdays.
I can't believe Olive is 11 months old today. Time really does fly by. I was talking to one of the other moms at daycare today, her daughter is three months old. The woman was standing there holding this tiny 3 month old in her arms (literally tiny, the baby weighs as much at 3 months as Olive did when she was born) and I couldn't help but think about what a difference 8 months makes. She is the mother of this tiny baby, and I don't have a little baby anymore, I have a toddler.

I really do have a toddler. Before having a baby I thought of toddlers as older babies, but at Olive,s daycare they identify toddlers as babies that are just starting to walk or, "toddle.". If by definition a toddler is one who riddles, then Olive is a toddler. Two weeks ago Olive started to purposely stand on her own. Not just let go of whatever she was holding onto and balancing for a second or two; but going from sitting to standing without holding on to anything. The standing led directly to a couple of steps here and there. Now she can go about 10+ steps before she falls down. I of course love watching her walk. She walks with her hands in the air as if to say, " look no hands!".It is adorable.

Another recent development is her pointing. She is able to point her index finger at things, mostly she likes to point at the pages in books when we read each night at bedtime. She is also doing more babbling, doorways she is more of a talker than others. She also finally figured out how to tilt a bottle or cup when she is drinking out of it so she doesn't, have to be laying down to drink.

One of the biggest developments recently is her personality. She is such a ham, she loves active silly to get your attention and make you laugh. She is also a complete daredevil, climbing on and off of everything she can. She loves to shriek and growl, and thinks it is extra funny if you growl back at her. I am loving this stage of her development so much; I wish I could freeze time so we could stay here awhile.

Catch Up, and 10 MONTHS OLD!!!

I can't believe the last time I posted it was Halloween!  This post will be a lot of catch a multi-part post with lots of holiday catch up, and of course a 10 month update.

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.

Olive playing with Papa when we stopped at the nature preserve.

Sleeping cousins, that is Olive's cousin Quinn on the right.

On Thanksgiving Day hanging out with John; Olive is actually wearing a dress!

Very excited to be finally meeting TJ for the first time, or maybe she is excited for the dog...

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.

Out to breakfast before we hit the road to go back to Atlanta.

Bye, bye Gammie and Papa.

9 months old
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.      

Baby in a beer box.

Naked girl!

She likes being in boxes almost as much as the cats do.

 

Star Wars hoodie with matching t-shirt underneath.  It was superhero day at school, and this was what Mark and I could agree on.

Playing with her toys.

With her new BFF.

Christmas
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.

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.

Christmas morning with cousin Brandon.

Christmas dinner, cheerios, cheese, and broccoli with kale puree.

Fun times with cousins!

Four generations, Paboo, Grandma, Dada, and Olive.

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.

Showing off those teeth while she is tickled by Mommy.

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.

    

Baby's first Halloween

Yesterday was Olive's first Halloween. I went back and forth between feeling like we should make a big deal out of Halloween, and feeling like we should just be low key. On the one hand she is 7 months old, she doesn't have a clue, and we could have gotten away without celebrating at all. On the other hand, it's her first Halloween, and maybe we should have made a really big deal out of it, gone to the pumpkin patch, carved pumpkins with her, taken her to Halloween event(s) over the weekend. Instead, we found a happy medium; we got her a curious George monkey costume from Once Upon a Child for $5 (score!) and went to the Patrick/Emmert Halloween Party.

The Patrick/Emmert Halloween Party is thrown by the family I used to nanny for here in Atlanta. I began working with them when their oldest, Grace had just turned 3; now Grace is 12. It's amazing how time flies.

Anyway, every year they throw this great, very family friendly Halloween Party on Halloween. It's from 5-6:30; the last time I went it consisted of George, grilling hot dogs, and people bringing side dishes to share. Now it consists of George making pulled pork, sausage, brisket, and a bunch of other meats I don't remember (meat is still not my strong suit). Plus sides, and all kinds of cookies, and cupcakes. We brought Mark's famous mac & cheese to share. The food was delicious, and it was lots of fun seeing people and kids I hadn't seen in a couple of years.  And of course Olive got to take part in her first Halloween parade, when all the kids march around the cul de sac in their costumes.  Olive managed to enthrall the cutest little boy with down syndrome, and he held her hand as we marched.

We were actually running late yesterday. Mark got stuck at work later than usual, so I had to pick the baby, and my students were all kinds of nutty yesterday (probably due the excitement of Halloween), and of course we got stuck in traffic on the way there.  We finally arrived around 5:45, Olive was immediately confiscated from me by George, and she was completely happy to be passed around from person to person.  We received several compliments about what a happy baby she is.  Which is funny to me, not because she was such an unhappy baby before, but in last couple of months she has just become so congenial.  She smiles at people a lot and just in general seems to be happy a much larger percent of the time than she as before.

Overall, I would say Olive's first Halloween was a booming success.  Even though Mark and I had both had stressful days, it was the perfect laid back way to celebrate Halloween; without feeling overwhelmed.

Hanging out with Grace before she put her costume on.

Happy with Anna the Bee.

Enjoying her banana with Daddy.

Back home early enough to take a bath and still have some play time before bed.

 

Sometimes the little things, are the big things.

I kind of missed writing a 7 month post.  I had begun writing a post a couple of weeks before she turned seven months, but then I never finished it, and then she turned 7 months, and now here we are.  This is going to have parts of that unpublished post, along with some current updates.

At 6 and a half months Olive started crawling.  We were preparing our house to get a bunch of furniture from Mark's parents (they sold their Big Canoe house, and so now we get to have "grown-up" furniture) so the downstairs was pretty much empty.  We were using beach chairs to sit in the living room, and the dining room was completely empty when one night I was doing dishes in the kitchen and Mark called for me to come in the living room.  There she was slowly, and deliberately crawling.

It was of course very exciting.  She had been almost crawling for a couple of weeks.  She could get up on all fours, and sometimes she would even have one crawl which consisted of moving one hand and knee forward, but then she would get stuck and couldn't figure out that she needed to move the second half of her body.  Or sometimes she would do her inchworm crawl.  She was getting pretty good at manuevering herself around without actually crawling, and then one day she put it all together, and now she is a crawling machine.

It was interesting though, because the same weekend she began crawling she had two much smaller milestones, but in someways they were a lot more excited than her crawling.  The first one, was when I went to take her from Mark one night.  She was sitting in his lap, on the couch, and I reached down to get her, and she reached her arms up to me.  I know reaching her arms up doesn't seem like that big of a deal, but she had never done it before, never even come close to doing it before.  I think that is what made it so cool, it was completely spontaneous, and here she was performing this action that all little kids do, only she couldn't do it a week ago. 

The other milestone was when I went to get her out of her bed when she woke up from a nap and there she was sitting up.  She had been doing a pretty solid job of sitting up for awhile, but had never gone from laying down to sitting up on her own.  It came as such a shock to me, I couldn't believe it; there she was sitting up and she had gotten that way all on her own!

I know it seems silly that sitting up and lifting her arms up would feel like a bigger deal to me than crawling, but I think it is because I could see the crawling coming.  It evolved over time, and was pretty clear that it was coming; the other two things just happened all of a sudden.  The fact that they were surprises made them extra special.

Of course that was weeks ago, and now we have moved on to even more surprise milestones like when she started clapping the other day.  A big thank you to daycare for that one, because we definitely had not been doing any clapping with her at home.  She seems to almost wave sometimes too, and I'm pretty sure daycare is teaching her that as well.  Now that she is crawling she crawls to anything (coffee table, couch, ottoman, chair, dvd case) she can pull herself up on so she can stand.  She has always loved standing, and now she often times pulls up on the coffee table, and will drum her hands on it for several minutes.  At first she did not realize she could not stand on her own, and if there was something on the table she wanted she would try to hold it with both hands, and then fall over backwards.  But now she knows to hold on, or she "tripods" herself and leans her chest against the table so she can use both hands at the same time.

She has started saying "da da" a lot.  It does not seem to have one specific meaning for her, but instead it means everything.  Sometimes she will look straight at you, and very clearly say, "da da."  Like she is sure she must be communicating something with you. 

She is a very happy 7 month old, and has even started sleeping a little better, which makes for much happier parents as well.

Getting fed by Grandpa, this is when we didn't have any furniture in our living room.

Happy to be with her Papa.

Waiting for lunch.

Gammie and Papa came to visit.

Finally got to meet Uncle Kelly.

Drooly baby.

So proud of herself.

6 months: A trip, sort of solid foods, and a doctor's appointment

Over Labor Day weekend Olive made her first visit to St. Louis.  It was a short visit, and we stuck to hanging out at my parents house for most of it, but Olive managed to meet a few of my St. Louis friends.  I'm sure she will meet plenty more when we are home for a full week over Thanksgiving.

I was a little nervous flying with her by myself, but she did a great job both going and coming.  There were no explosive diapers this time, so that was definitely an improvement over the flight home from Albany.  She didn't sleep at all, but she also didn't cry.  Trying to keep an almost 6 month old entertained on an airplane is definitely a bit of a challenge, and breastfeeding with a strangers sitting right next to me was a little strange, but overall things went smoothly.

Olive had a great time in St. Louis, she as a little cranky, because she was dealing with a cold that left her with a runny nose, and a bit of a sore throat.  The first Gator Game of the season took place while we were in STL, and we got to break out her brand new jersey onesie.  It is actually made of jersey fabric, and she looks adorable in it.  She did a pretty good job during the game, but was ready for a nap around halftime.

It was nice getting to take her to St. Louis, and I have to say a big THANK YOU to my cousins Kathryn and Linda for letting us borrow the carseat and pack and play.  Not having to lug those from Atlanta to St. Louis made the trip a lot easier.

With cousins Camryn and Quinn 

Playing with Camryn

Hanging on the front porch with Gammie and Camryn.

Callie is the new baby whisperer, Olive was in her arms for all of five minutes when she passed out.

As for the sort of solid foods, it's kind of a funny story... Olive's second week of daycare I was changing her diaper, and not to get too graphic, but it was a little more solid than usual.  The thing is I had told her daycare teachers that we were waiting until she was 6 months old before we started her on solid foods.  So the solid poop in her diaper was a bit surprising and frustrating to me.  I asked at daycare if anyone had "accidentally" given her solids, and they said no.  To be honest I didn't really believe them, but I didn't know what to do, I really like her daycare center, and think they have done a great job with her.  I decided to wait it out and see if her next diaper had the same solid issues.  The next diaper was as runny as ever so I decided to let the incident go.

When it first happened I was really upset.  I felt frustrated that they were feeding her rice cereal after I had explicitly asked them not to, and I felt even more frustrated because I didn't know if her teacher was lying to me or not.  I figured there was a chance that when her teacher went to lunch or left in the afternoon when someone else came in the room they might have fed her the cereal and her regular teacher didn't know about it.  I also felt upset, because I figure there will be plenty of milestones she will reach at daycare that I will miss out on, Olive eating her first solid foods should not be a milestone I have to miss.  Things like crawling for the first time and walking I cannot control when and where those things will happen, but I can control the first time she has food.

Anyway I explained to her teacher that I was waiting until we got back from St. Louis over Labor Day.  Actually I said we were going to give her solids the weekend after that, because I didn't want to start her during the week.  Well the Tuesday after Labor Day they started her on rice cereal at school.  Her teacher misunderstood me and thought we were starting right after Labor Day.  It's funny because when I thought they gave her rice cereal in August I was really upset, but when it happened after Labor Day I was fine with it.  I think I just felt better if there was a misunderstanding about when to start it, versus feeling like I was being lied      
to, or it was happening behind my back.

On Saturday, September 10, Olive had rice cereal at home for the first time, and she did great with it.  Then today we gave her carrots for the first time.  Mark cooked the carrots and mashed them up himself.  She loved the carrots and ate a ton of them.  I'm hoping she saves that diaper for at daycare.

Getting ready for her first rice cereal at home.

Rice cereal is awesome!

Daddy feeding her carrots.

I LOVE CARROTS!!!

  Finally, Olive had her 6 month check up this week.  She is 27 inches long now, and 15lb 5oz.  She is still in the 90th percentile for height, but only the 50th for weight.  The doctor isn't worried about it, she said that lots of babies don't gain weight as quickly at this age, because they are moving around so much that they are burning a lot more calories.  And she is definitely moving around a ton.  She is sitting up better than ever, she occasionally still face plants, but she does pretty well.  She roles over all the time, and now gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth.  Earlier today I had her on the floor in our bedroom and she started moving like an inch worm.  She would get up on her hands and knees, then lay flat on the floor, and then get back up on her hands and knees.  She kept doing it until she got over to where I was a couple of feet away.  She also has a lot more personality now, and is making more noises.  She makes "da" noises from time  to time, but not with any consistency.  I am loving having a six month old, she is so much fun now, and is usually full of smiles, she also will play by herself for longer periods of time now so we can actually get a load of laundry done occasionally.

This is her activity center, the part she is in allows her to walk all the way around the table, sometimes she plays with the things on the table, but lots of times she just runs around and around in circles.  It's funny watching her when she picks up speed.

Hanging with Titi Taco.

Getting ready to watch the game with Daddy, wearing her jersey, and awesome leg warmers.