Thursday, October 23, 2008

Happy Birthday, Olivia!

Yeah yeah...only a month behind...so what else is new?!? Olivia is now 13 months old! Also as usual, a lot has happened over the last two months! Here are some highlights:
Her 1st Birthday! - We had a Baby Einstein themed party as we figure she will have a million "princess" parties, but she won't be into Baby Einstein forever. We did it the same weekend as her Baptism, so lots of friends and relatives came for the festivities. Olivia was cautious with the cake at first, but eventually got the hang of it and had a great time with the icing.

She also got lots of great presents. However, we are finding that she would much rather play with regular household items...bowls, spoons, water bottles, etc....than most of her store-bought toys. She loves playing with an empty 5 gallon Zephyrhills water jug...it makes a great noise when she bangs on it or picks it up and drops it, and she can easily push it all over the house. So much for regular toys! But some of her favorite gifts were the Abby Cadabby doll, a little baby doll (the one in the picture), an Elmo See N Say Shape sorter, the Little People Farm and her giraffe maracas. And mommy was smart enough to buy storage ottomans for the living room so we can pick everything up and hide it quickly when needed! :-)


Baptism - The day after her party, Olivia was baptized at St. Catherine's Episcopal Church. She now has two godmothers, my sister Tanya and my good friend Jody, and her godfather is Richard's brother, Scott. I think Olivia is in good hands! The priest who baptized her also baptized Olivia's cousins (Jonathan and Sarah, shown in the group picture).


Walking! - 5 days after her birthday, she finally decided to let go of the furniture and now stumbles around like a pro! Richard likes to call her "the drunken sailor", but she's doing a great job and is really good at checking her balance. We can also tell when she is really tired as she becomes more wobbly. But it's fun to watch her wander around and explore the world! Of course, that also means we have to be alot more diligent about monitoring what she can reach. And now she's figuring out how to climb things. One day I expect to find her on the kitchen table!

Language - Olivia now does 5 signs... "bubbles", "thank you", "milk", "more", and "eat". She also throws her hands up in the air when you say "So Big!!" She's really into learning the name for everything and walks around the house pointing to things, wanting to know what it is. Of course, this means I repeat things like "shoe", "table", "chair" about 400 times a day, but it's still fun to watch her developing interest in language. She hasn't started repeating the words yet, but we figure it will be like the walking thing...she cruised for 2 months before she let go and started walking, so we figure in a few months she'll pop out with sentences! She can also correctly identify the main Sesame Street characters (Elmo, Ernie, Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Abby Cadabby, and Zoe), and seems to understand most of what we say to her in terms of her food, toys, and basic commands. Though, she has already started tuning out the word "no".

1 Year Check-up - She was 22.4 lbs and 30 1/4 inches (both of which put her in the 75th-90th percentile for her age). She seems to have a very high pain tolerance as the doc always comments on her quick recovery time after her vaccinations. She also had her very first lollipop (which only lasted a few licks before she wanted to play with the sticky end) . Overall, he says she's doing great and is right on target!

We're still going to Gymboree and a music class and she loves them both! The socialization factor is the main point of going, but it's great to be in spaces twice a week where I really do not have to tell her "no". It's also fun to see how she changes from week to week. In today's music class she was actually bouncing to the beat, clapping along where appropriate, and banging her drum. It's a HUGE change from the first week when she completely ignored the group and just crawled around the room.

We had a professional photo shoot for her birthday and baptism and will be doing our family Christmas picture in a few weeks. Here are some of my favorites:


We head to Disney on Sunday to celebrate our 3rd wedding anniversary and, despite the number of times she has been to Disney, this will be Olivia's first real venture into the parks. I'm sure I will have LOTS of photos of her at various locations and with various characters.

At the end of November, we head to North Carolina for Thanksgiving with Richard's family. We are looking forward to the trip and hope that Olivia travels as well now as she did back in July!



Several months back I found a Miami Dolphin cheerleader outfit on sale at Target for $4...I couldn't pass it up, especially since Richard is a Dolphin fan. So here is Olivia in her first cheerleader outfit (I'm sure the first of many...). She's even smiling and clapping....GO TEAM!







We've been lazy and still bath her in her small tub that fits on the kitchen sink, mostly so we can save our knees and backs. However, she really doesn't fit in the tub very well, so we are going to have to make the transition to the big tub. And we've also started brushing her teeth with a toothbrush and toothpaste. She seems to like the taste of the paste and doesn't mind the brushing, at least for now! :-)

There are lots of pictures on our Kodak Gallery site...feel free to check them out! Until next time...