Whoa! What happened to March?

So, Spring Break was one big road-trip-ish blur. And now it is over and Holy Week has begun. And everything is happening at once.

Today, a guy showed up early to assess our drainage issues and take measurements for an estimate for putting drainage tiles in the yard. Another guy showed up later to do an appraisal for our refinance (lower interest rate and pay it off in 10 years...rock on!). The new backyard neighbor had a billion nursery plants delivered for her landscaping. It is Spring and things are moving along.

Also, our house currently looks like this.

I was a little disturbed by the rapid arrival of Spring at first, but now I'm used to it. I also took the bold step of buying and planting annuals in my flower pots. I may be extremely upset with the weather if it dares to return to normal and kill off my pretty, pretty flowers. Because the blooms in this picture are already starting to fade and I need some color in my life. April 2, and my irises are already blooming out. April 2!

The babysitting kids returned today, and the baby, who is soon to turn one year old, is drinking milk now out of a sippy. She has definitely moved from babyhood to toddlerhood. Toddlerhood is a lot less work for me.

This baby-turned-toddler is making me ready for a new baby in the house. I keep thinking and praying about a match with our agency. It is very hard to wait. Ideal timing in my mind would mean new baby in mid-summer. I mean, life is moving at lightning speed right now. So much is going on in these next couple of months. But I wouldn't argue if a baby entered the picture right now. We'd make it work. It is just hard to sit and wait. It is very hard.

I guess there's not a lot of "sitting" going on, though. I suppose I can be thankful that we ARE so busy and keeping ourselves occupied. Life just seems like a non-stop whirlwind right now.

I suppose I must feed the children so I can send them outside for awhile. Sun! Heat! April!

Long, long month

Ugh. I hate January. It's such a let down. With the holidays over and the cold intensifying and school canceling for snow every other day, it's just LONG.

To make it even MORE exciting, I'm five days into a three-week course of antibiotics related to a fertility issue, and I'm being hit with several of the unpleasant side-effects, including dizziness, change in taste, lack of appetite and a faint but constant feeling of nausea. Now, not only am I supposed to avoid dairy and sweets and carbs, but they are pretty much the only thing I WANT to eat because they tend to be the strongest in flavor. I feel the need to use flavor to counteract the weirdness in my taste buds and lack of appetite.

At least I'm not constantly thinking about food...

The good news is that we are all over our recent colds. That has made playing outside a little more fun. So let's end this dreary post with some photos to cheer it up, OK?

Olivia wanted to "write" her name with the shovel in the currently-absent neighbor's driveway. I helped.
Sledding is more fun without a constantly-running nose.

Olivia has a new big-girl booster seat. She fits it quite well. I thought it would work OK for car naps too.
But maybe it isn't quite as suited for car naps as the previous car seat!

Happy Monday, I hope!

In which I establish my first resolution

Today is our second "snow" day of the week. I'm already sick of winter. No kids on Monday because of snow. Today it is ice. And my husband has been gone on business since Sunday. We are rattling around in this house, the kid and I. Thank God Joe finally gets home today.

We went out to "shovel" the ice off of the driveway, and both Olivia and I ended up on our backsides. Our driveway is not level...it is a gradual downward slope. The thin sheet of ice was just enough to require us to crawl back up the driveway on our knees. We could get no traction with our shoes.

So, we trekked out to the backyard (the grass was not slippery at all) with a bucket and chipped the ice off of the sandbox lid. We returned to the driveway with a full bucket of sand and two sand shovels. Olivia shoveled sand onto the driveway while I chipped away at the ice with an edging shovel (which worked infinitely better than the snow shovel). I think we may now have enough traction to make it out to go to the post office, but I haven't been back out to test it yet. We shall see...

Since last week, I have decided that the nap is, perhaps, to blame for many of our troubles. Too much energy = too much mischief. I have tested this theory only once, with today being the second try. On Tuesday, we went all day without a nap. By the end of the day, she was exhausted from her first day EVER without a nap. I was exhausted from entertaining the grumpy, whiny three-year-old all afternoon. But then came bedtime, which involved minimal fighting and a sleeping child in under ten minutes! Before 7:30 p.m.! And the angels did sing...

(Have I mentioned our recent sleep troubles? The fights at bedtime? The constant power struggle? Sitting with a not-so-tired child until she finally gives in to sleep at around 10:00 p.m.? No? Well, it has NOT been fun.)

Anyway, all this is to say that we've been avoiding nap today. And we are ice-bound. And alone. So we've been trying to find something crafty to do. We ended up with the scary angel,

and these wreaths. There was a lot of Mommy prep work to do on both, but Olivia enjoyed pressing bows and balls into the hot glue. And it killed an hour or so.
Oh, did I not mention the shiner? A product of Monday's snow day, I'm afraid. And it didn't even happen outside, on a slick surface. She was bouncing on her bed (a forbidden activity, as if it matters) and kneed herself in the eye. Yeah.

So, while I was searching my crafty boxes for something to do, I came across these almost-finished projects that have been collecting for years. YEARS. And I came up with a resolution. In 2011, I will finish or frame all of these. They include, in no particular order:

Irish blessing cross stitch. The pattern was a gift from my husband when he led a tour to Ireland a few weeks before we got married. We're not even Irish, so I'm not sure what to do with it. Frame it? Give it as a gift? Hang it somewhere?

I made this turtle cross stitch in high school. I am not even kidding. It has been languishing in my craft box for that long. Pillow? Frame?

Another gift from Joe, this time after a conference at this institution. I REALLY don't know what to do with this one. I'm not a fan. I love the campus, but kind of can't stand the school. And I'm not really a college sports fan. So...?

This is a sampler I did a couple of years back just because I was looking for something to do. It's too small to frame, really, except as a child's room accessory. It does have nice colors for a kid's room. Maybe I will frame it.

This one has been due for framing for about 13 years. I bought it while I was at Harlaxton College for a semester in college. It is in Lincolnshire county. So this is sort of a souvenir that I stitched myself. Never mind that I barely made it to any of these places outside of Grantham. We spent most of our weekends in London and points North. But still. The finished product is wrinkled and sized funny so will require professional framing, I'm afraid. But I spent so much time on it...I feel like it needs to hang somewhere in my house.

This is a pillow I made as a gift that I never ended up giving away because I didn't like the way the ruffle turned out. But Olivia and I stuffed it anyway (today) and I will stitch it together and let her throw it around in her room. At least it will get used.
I also have a box full of matching quilt blocks that do not amount to an actual quilt. Gotta do something about that this year too.

And I also resolve not to have any more snow days. Can I do that?

Running into winter

Halloween is over, and we survived...barely. Our troubles had surprisingly less to do with Olivia's sugar/chocolate sensitivity than with the nasty cold that we all have. Olivia has it in a very small degree, but Joe and I both have a cough that rattles the chest and leaves us exhausted. So, we're dealing with that.

Meanwhile, I've decided to start running. Slowly. With summer being so incredibly hot this year, and capping off summer with surgery and 6 weeks recovery...well, I got a little lax in my physical activity. Time to remedy that. Now that the temperature is tolerable for running/walking without sweating overly much, I have started this program. Yesterday was my second workout in the first week. The chest congestion doesn't help, but it is not much of a hindrance at this beginning stage of training.

I'm sore. But I actually feel pretty good about this, overall. I've never tried to run before. But this program provides interval training suggestions that are manageable. Yes, my legs and lungs were burning the first day, but the second day was easier. And I feel better doing something physical, so I'm hoping that will be enough motivation to keep going.

It is great to be home. Great, great, GREAT! I'm still limited on activity, but every day I feel more like myself, and just being home with Olivia has been wonderful for my recovery.

It's been a flurry of activity here of late. This weekend was our community-wide yard sale. We went out the night before and scoped out a few sales. I came home with a little scooter for Olivia, which she LOVED, and we drove around to a neighbor's house (where it is flat) so she could ride around in their cul-de-sac. Except that they were also having a yard sale. SCORE!

We came home from that sale with a wallet that was $20 lighter and a truck FULL of stuff for Olivia...a playschool picnic table, ball mitt, car seat booster, a pair of jeans, a bag of plastic play food and about 30 books. Olivia was in yard sale heaven. In addition, the guy who is Santa at Local Theme Park was also at the same sale, shopping. Olivia recognized him, even in his shorts and t-shirt, and said, "Hey! What are YOU doing here?" Poor guy is like a local celebrity.

Spent Saturday at Local Theme Park. Not doctor approved, so we rented a wheelchair, which Olivia and I shared (my poor husband!). HAD A BLAST. Feels like we are getting back to normal.

I've just been enjoying Olivia. SO MUCH. She is hilarious. Want proof? Check out my most recent post here.

The schedule

When I was little, we never went anywhere. Mom was always busy caring for the little ones and keeping up with the garden and house. It was a rare event when Mom ventured out to go grocery shopping with all five of us in tow. I can only imagine. We did occasionally take off to visit Grandma (my Mom's mom) for the day, but that was about the extent of our outings until we got old enough to participate in sports and school stuff.

We were all active in all kinds of stuff in high school, and then there was college, and then a job that pushed me into the realm of WAY TOO INVOLVED in projects and ministries and social groups. I have spent the last fifteen years running from one event to the next. Even during this past 20 or so months, I've kept up with playgroups and a few volunteer things with Olivia in tow.

Now we are confined to the house five days a week because I'm babysitting. And I thought it would be hard. But you know what? It is SO MUCH EASIER.

Olivia sleeps better. She goes down for naps better and quicker. She's consistently ready for bed at the same time each night and doesn't fight it. She eats more regularly and doesn't throw as many tantrums and is learning all about sharing (in bits and pieces...it's imperfect, but coming along).

So I'm thinking...perhaps the lack of a consistent schedule before was throwing her little system into a tizzy. She is best behaved when she's on a predictable schedule. Go figure.

I guess my Mom knew what she was doing when she kept us all at home most of the time when we were little. While it can be a little isolating (and she didn't even have the internet!), it makes life with a toddler (or, in Mom's case, several small children) much, much easier.

My brain is all afloat today

I have a sinus headache today, so I took some pills which are making me drowsy and a bit cloudy, so forgive me if this bounces around.

Olivia and I went to visit her cousins this weekend, and she had a good time. She's completely worn out today, and I'm hoping that means I'll have time to get a little nap in myself.

When we got home from our 4.5 hour drive yesterday, Olivia's diaper was completely dry. That has never happened before. So we sat her on the potty when we got home, and she went! That's the first time that has happened. Well, for us. Grandma claims that she used the potty at her house on Friday. Isn't that always the way it happens?

Come to think of it, Grandma always gets the happy, well-mannered child. My husband says that Olivia only gives us a hard time to test the boundaries, and she doesn't need to do that with Grandma because, well, it's Grandma. There may be something to that...

The temps are more tolerable and the humidity is down today. It may be a good evening for grilling...

I promise to try to be more focused tomorrow.

Weekend project turned month-long project

This weekend was HOT...for April. Mid 80s and very breezy. Great weather for a weekend project.

My husband's vision for Olivia's playset was to build a box around it and fill it in with pea gravel. It will save us from mowing around all the parts and pieces and it will provide a safer play environment since pea gravel is sort of cushion-y if you fall (much more so than falling directly on our yellow clay ground in the middle of the summer when the ground is dry and rock-hard).

This project proved to be a lot more difficult than we expected, especially with a curious toddler trying to run off with a handful of screws every two minutes. Thanks to naptime and Aunt Lori's help for a couple of hours after nap, we were able to get this far on Saturday.
Sunday afternoon's nap time got us a bit further. You can see the frame around the back of the set and the angle on front.

We still have a bit to go. The right back corner will be made into a flower box, and we are planning to put a corner flower box in on both left corners. We'll put sand in the box under the playset platforms, and we still have to kill the grass, lay our weed blanket and bring in truckloads of pea gravel for the playground box. This is going to take awhile.

Besides being exhausted and sore from all the work, I am left with and itchy throat, watery eyes and a lot of sneezing. I've been taking allergy pills constantly. Dang pollen and wind! It's a very bad combination.

The new reality

Sleep troubles continue. It took two hours to get Olivia to fall asleep last night. I'm taking new strategies, including:

1. Wake her up if she's not already awake by 7:00 a.m.
2. Only let her nap for two hours.
3. Do everything humanly possible to wear her out between her nap and bedtime.

The first won't be hard. The second might kill me. I use every second of naptime, people. But if it helps her get to sleep before 8 p.m., then I suppose it's worth it. I also need my evening free time. I forget how I ever got things done with an infant who didn't go down for the night until 11 p.m. Oh, that's right...she was immobile. There was the swing, the bouncer, the floor, even the sling. Of course, those were the days of two or three nighttime feedings too, so I guess it's all a trade-off.

As long as the weather holds out, the wearing-her-out part should be easy enough. We have enjoyed lots of outdoor time with the landscaping projects recently. Olivia enjoys digging in the mulch with whatever garden tool I allow her to play with at the moment. Note to self: Buy some plastic garden tools. I'm seriously worried that she's going to take an eye out while running across the yard with a garden spade.

Speaking of, I thought I would explain what I did with my 3-hour nap window yesterday.

This is our front landscaping, as it looked last Spring. The landscaping around our house is a multi-year project that we've done on our own, with the help of some family. Our driveway bends out like this on both sides, so we have another "arm" of irises on the other side (my husband calls these our "Arms of Bernini").

The inside row pictured here are all irises. The outside (near the grass) row are daylilies. The daylilies are beautiful and bloom through June and some of July. Since they are different varieties, they bloom at different times.

See? Pretty! This picture was taken the year we planted them.

We haven't seen them bloom since. The deer eat off the blooms before we get a chance to see them at all.

Since the deer hate the irises and they make such pretty flowers, we decided to take out all the daylilies and split the irises up to fill in the spaces where the daylilies were. So that was what I did yesterday.

The daylilies are planted in temporary pots for now, and we are planning to make a fenced-in raised garden for them in the backyard. In the meantime, the deer continue to munch on the leaves. It's maddening.

Today's outdoor project is a little more Olivia-friendly. When she gets up, we will go to the backyard and pick up sticks and other yard waste. She likes to carry the bucket around and fill it with things and then dump them out. Not very productive, but it keeps her entertained.

The Deadline

You may recall that in early January we started a homestudy, which means we spent ten days gathering paperwork and sending away for things like references and fingerprints. The social worker said she'd call to schedule our home visit as soon as the paperwork was complete and the fingerprints were back.

The social worker called yesterday, and we are scheduled for our home visit next week. It will be a short visit since this is a homestudy update and she already has enough documentation on us to write a book about our lives. All she really needs to do is make sure we don't live in a rusty shack and that we have things like fire extinguishers and high shelves to store the cleaning supplies away from small hands. (As if that matters...Olivia is THIS CLOSE to figuring out how to literally climb the walls. I'm kidding, but not by much.)

The home visit will be followed quickly by a completed report, which is followed by "activation", which could theoretically be followed quickly by placement of a wee tiny infant in our home.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not under the illusion that everyone (or anyone for that matter) gets a placement immediately, and it is entirely possible that we could still be waiting many months from now. However, I know that it is POSSIBLE that placement could happen relatively quickly. And I also know that BABY = DISAPPEARANCE OF FREE TIME = NO TIME TO ORGANIZE MY HOUSE = MUST COMPLETE OFFICE-TO-NURSERY CONVERSION NOW.

I guess you could say I'm nesting.

Now that we have an appointment for a home visit, I have made that day my mental "deadline" for organizing THAT ROOM. Wish me luck. It's a big project to undertake.

Holy Climbing, Batman!

The holiday weekend was fun, but Olivia is teaching her 7-months-older cousins some bad habits. Like how to climb on chairs. Not just the little baby folding chairs (which she mastered easily), but also the big-people folding chairs. She was unstoppable. It was all she wanted to do. For awhile, she kept dragging the baby folding chair around, then she would climb up and stand on it and clap until someone told her to get down. My sister kept telling her sternly "Olivia, sit down", jabbing her pointer finger down. So, after awhile, Olivia would climb and stand up in the chair, then look her aunt in the eye and jab her pointer finger down saying "Sit dun!" It was too funny. Yes, Olivia, sit down. She thought it was a game.

Olivia has proven that she is freakishly tall. Here she is with her second cousin, who celebrated her birthday on Saturday. They are 17 days apart. And they were both born within two weeks of their due dates. So, developmentally, they are at the same stage. But obviously, their genetics destine them to be very different heights.

It's even more striking when Olivia hugs her. We are going to have one tall girl on our hands.

We all had a good weekend and ate way more than our fair share. Best of all, Olivia's cold is gone and my almost-cold disappeared before it developed into anything. I had a nasty sore throat for two days, but that is as bad as it got. And now we are having a leisurely day at home. Finally.

Still sick and acquiring new skills

Ugh. Olivia is STILL dealing with this nasty cold. Since Friday, November 14th, she has awakened at least once each night to fits of coughing or just miserable cold-related crying. I think she's getting closer to beating this thing, but we are all getting a little weary of it.

This past Friday night, Olivia woke after only a couple of hours of sleep in a fit of violent coughing, and after listening to it awhile, I decided to bring her some water and rock her for awhile. To help with the drainage, I thought I'd put a regular bed pillow in her crib so her head would be elevated. She went right back to sleep and the coughing subsided.

Saturday morning, I heard her wake up. I listened to her babble while my husband was getting up to get her bottle, and I heard a *THUMP*, then a cry, then more babbling. I figured she had just stumbled and fallen down in her crib.

My husband found her pulling paper out of the recycle bin in the office. Oh yes. The little stinker used that pillow to hoist herself up and over the rail. She fell out of the crib, but the shock of the fall apparently wasn't equal to the exhilaration of freedom because she barely cried at all. She just commenced exploring the rooms that are typically closed off to her during the day.

SOOO...we spent all of Saturday rearranging her room (and yes, the pillow has been removed from the crib). The full-sized bed frame and box springs were removed for storage, and the full-sized mattress now sits on the floor right next to her bed. Just in case. It will also help us (we hope) to transition her to sleeping on the mattress instead of the crib, but we haven't yet figured out just how to get her to do that and still be awake when we put her down.

Olivia loves the mattress on the floor. She likes to climb up there and read books and look out the window. And removing the bed has opened the room up a bit, so most of her toys now live in her room. That's a real bonus.

Coming up this week...

I'm having a hard time believing that Thanksgiving is this week. November just sort of disappeared. Must have had something to do with the fact that I spent half of it counting down the days until my husband came home from his trip.

This should be a pretty busy week for us. We'll be visiting with one family on Thursday, the other on Saturday, and we're having everyone over to our little house on Friday for Olivia's birthday party. I'm not sure what plans we have for Sunday outside of going to Church, but I'm sure we'll fill it with SOMETHING.

Thankfully, my husband has been able to take the entire week off of work. He had all these vacation days left, so we are taking advantage of that. I think we are going to *gasp* go see a movie this week! This is almost unheard of. We only see one or two theater movies a year, and usually at Christmas time. We just have a hard time justifying the expense of the big screen when we have a perfectly good DVD player at home and free movies from the library. But this is a special occasion. This is VACATION, people. Even if it is the kind where you stay home and cook all of your own meals.

In other news, we FINALLY finished Olivia's photo montage and figured out how to burn it onto a disc so we could watch it on the TV. We will use it at her birthday party. I'm toying with the idea of putting it on the internet and password protecting it (we have family pictures in it), but it's 23 minutes long! I'm not sure any of you are interested enough to watch 23 minutes of my baby growing up. Maybe I'll get motivated to create a 5 minute short version. Or maybe not. We'll see!

Why I love and hate November...

November is the month I was born, the month I was married, and the month my daughter was born. It is also adoption awareness month. Lots of stuff to celebrate in November.

On the other hand, in our area of the country November tends to be cold, wet and overall pretty dreary. The beginning of the month is often pretty nice, but by the time we hit my birthday (tomorrow) even the sunny days are too cold and usually too windy to be outside. I sit and type with frozen fingers and long for the days when I could open a window and enjoy warm breezes.

November also seems to be the beginning of cold and flu season around here, and Olivia has a doozy of a cold now. Luckily, my husband and I seem to have dodged the bullet so far. Unluckily, Olivia's cold came on right before the family arrived for Grandpa's funeral, so she hasn't had much time to catch up on her rest.

Her cold and lack of sleep has made her grumpy. Oh, so very grumpy! And I'm stuck in the house with her grumpiness, wiping up snot and consoling her when she trips over her own feet for the umpteenth time today. Tripping and falling barely warrants a notice on regular days...she typically pops right back up and keeps going. But did I mention the grumpy? You'd think someone had been stomping on her hand the way she throws out her pouty lip and cries the cry of breathless sobs. Oh, the drama!

I really, really want someone to blame for this nasty cold. She hasn't had a cold since August, and she was SO HEALTHY last week. Maybe the one-year immunizations contributed. She did start the congestion and sniffles just one day after her appointment. Which makes me DREAD returning for her second flu shot (yes, itty bitties need it broken down so they have to get stuck twice!). We are supposed to do that next week.

Grrr! We are going to try to get out of the house today, but I reserve the right to cancel my plans if I deem it necessary. Olivia needs her rest more than I need to get things done.

Her one-year pictures are scheduled for tomorrow. Ha! I also reserve the right to reschedule those if we can't clear up the dry, red skin on her cheeks and get her feeling a little better. This time of the year is just hard.

Things I have observed about my one-year-old

Thanks to everyone for your birthday wishes for Olivia. She had a really nice day, despite the rain and Daddy not being home. We had dinner with Grandparents, Godparents and her cousin, Trey, and the best part about the day was OTHER! PEOPLE! IN! THE! HOUSE! We're getting a little tired of just seeing each other. Luckily, we are busy with out-of-the-house things for a couple of days, so the time will pass quicker.

Olivia has been entertaining me these past couple of weeks by showing me just how fast she can pick up new things.

For instance, we've been singing some children's songs lately, and one of her favorites is "Six Little Ducklings". This was one of my favorites as a child, and it goes with hand motions. If you don't know it, here's the first verse, with hand motions:

Six little ducklings I once knew (hold up six fingers, then point to yourself)
Fat ones, skinny ones, fair ones too (hold hands wide, then close together, then in between...think "$5 footlong" style)
But the one little duck (hold up one finger) with the feather on his back (put wrist on tailbone and wiggle hand like a feather on your back)
He led the others with his quack, quack, quack (clap hands in duck-beak fashion)

Now, aside from the obvious clapping, which she caught onto quickly, she has also started doing the feather-on-the-back motion. Except that she got it a little bit wrong. Instead of wiggling her hand, she slaps her little hiney with her hand. It's so hilarious. Also, when she wants to request that we sing the song, she walks over to me and starts slapping her hand on her hiney.

She also loves "Itsy bitsy spider", but instead of putting her hands together to make the spider, she just waves both hands back and forth. She's getting there.

She loves to have her teeth brushed. I say "Want to go brush your teeth?" and she yells "Tee!" and runs to the bathroom in her little footie-pajama-ed feet. Sometimes it's the little things that are so precious.

This week, just to make life a little more challenging, Olivia has learned how to open the pantry doors, and she has also discovered that she's tall enough to reach door handles throughout the house. This pretty much makes the whole house available for her destruction. Luckily, she's content to stay in the room with me most of the time, but I have to watch her more closely.

We're off to the doctor today for her *gasp* one-year boosters and check-up. I'm REALLY dreading the shots, but I can't wait to get her new measurements. She's already taller than most of her one-year-old friends.

My many projects

Olivia is very serious about voting!

I voted this morning. (And I realized that my cell phone takes pictures, which I can email to myself. Duh!) Now it is your turn. I believe that you should not complain about your leadership if you do not vote. Since I voted, I reserve the right to complain all I want. (Although I probably won't do much of that. I would rather spend most of my time talking about Olivia.)

For those of you following along, today is day 2 of Daddy's trip, A.K.A. 13 days until Daddy gets home. We are missing him lots already.

To pass the time and keep myself from going insane, I've planned a few projects while my husband is gone. They include:

1. Organize the office. (This may seem like a rather straightforward task, but it's really pretty involved. The office will have to function as a bedroom when baby #2 comes along, so we must begin the process of weeding out what we can live without, what we can store, and what we can reposition so that most of the furniture in the office eventually gets placed somewhere else in the house. Not an easy task.)

2. Paint the laundry room. This is actually just an idea I had the other day and will probably only happen if I can find enough leftover paint from the dining room to do it. It's a very small room (more like a closet), so it shouldn't take much. But I know it would be a nice surprise for my husband if I get it done (and if he doesn't manage to read my blog at all while he's gone...otherwise it won't be any kind of surprise at all).

3. Plan Olivia's birthday party (which we'll have over Thanksgiving). Get favors for the kids and send evites.

4. Finish Olivia's video montage for her birthday. This is the one for her party, not for posting on the site. It's 25 minutes long, people. And every minute touches my heart.

I also have to find some money in our budget to buy a replacement range top for our stove. We have one of those ceramic-top ranges, and yesterday I cracked it. Oh yes. I dropped a bowl full of soup on top of it. And the bowl didn't even chip. I could have handled a shattered bowl. But a cracked stove top is MUCH more expensive. Grrrr...

It's been a long week already, and it's only Tuesday.

C-c-c-cold!

After a very warm September and an unseasonably warm beginning of October, it has finally turned cold around here. We decided to turn the heat on Sunday night and set the thermostat to 65 so it wouldn't kick on unless absolutely necessary. It was necessary.

Olivia seems to be unaffected by the change in temperature and the fact that her room is the coldest in the house. She still kicks off all of her blankets. Granted, she is dressed in a sweatsuit and house slippers at the moment. But so am I. She's napping now as I sit here and type with numb fingers and frozen toes. I just went into her room to cover her back up. I don't know how she manages to sleep comfortably sprawled ON TOP of her blankets, limbs far away from her body, with her belly peeking out from under her shirt. If I were napping, you can bet that I'd be doing it with hands tucked under my pillow and at least two blankets piled on top of me. She MUST be very warm-natured.

Cold weather? Bring it on!

In other news, I think I'm going to try to blog every day in November. I couldn't participate in NaBloPoMo last year because we were living in a hospital and hotels for a couple of weeks and picking up a baby and all that jazz. This November is going to be quite low-key. I'm not sure if I'm going to participate in an "official" way, but for the three or so of you who keep up with me, you'll at least have something to read daily. That is my promise to you.

One nap is a good thing, really!

Olivia seems to be changing fast. I mentioned a few weeks ago that she seemed to be transitioning to a one-nap schedule. I'm fairly confident that she is now firmly settled into that schedule.

Now I wasn't really sure I was ready for the idea of my baby being awake most of the day because she's not exactly the type to let me get anything substantial done while she's up. There are things to do! Birds to watch and dancing to do and things to point at! Busy, busy, busy. And don't you even try to stand there and do the dishes, Mommy, or I'll wrap my arms around your leg and hold on tight until you come and play with me!

But I have to admit, it has been really nice. I am getting better at being Olivia's playmate, and the morning really does fly by most days. She typically takes a good 3-hour nap, and then we only have a couple of hours to fill before Daddy gets home. The difficulty is dealing with that last 30 minutes before lunch. That's when she really starts to get grumpy.

Lunch for Olivia is usually at 11:00, and even that is sometimes a bit of a stretch. Like today, for example. My husband called at 10:30, and you would think the world was coming to an end because for five minutes MOMMY IS NOT GIVING ME HER UNDIVIDED ATTENTION and I MUST CLIMB ON HER AND GRAB AT THE PHONE UNTIL SHE GIVES IT TO ME SO I CAN TALK TO DADDY and OH NO YOU DIDN'T JUST HANG UP WITHOUT LETTING ME TALK TO HIM! WHAAAAAAAH!

So we had lunch at 10:45 today.

Our usual schedule is lunch, followed immediately by bottle and nap. She decided to skip the bottle today.



She has only done this once before and she was very sick that day. So this caught me a bit by surprise. But it has given me an idea about how to start weaning her from formula. I suppose it's about time to start that process. She takes four bottles a day, but she's becoming less and less interested in her daytime bottles. Her morning bottle is really the only one she's super excited about, and she doesn't always finish that one either. So it looks like the lunchtime bottle is the first to go. We'll wait a couple weeks, I think, to eliminate another, though. I'm not quite ready to surrender by baby to this new toddler-like figure that is taking her place.

How to entertain a toddler

This morning, after I had freed Olivia from her high chair and was finishing the breakfast dishes, Olivia wandered off into the living room. Two seconds later I heard the variety of scream that means "Mommy, come quick! I have been attacked by living room furniture!"

By the time I reached her, she was beside herself and bleeding. At least, there was some blood on her lip. But it wasn't coming from her lip or from her face. She kept putting her hand to her mouth and moving her tongue around inside her teeth, but she WOULD NOT LET ME LOOK. So my guess is that she bit her tongue or hit her gums and made them bleed. I was able to confirm that all six of her teeth are still intact, so apparently it was more painful than it was permanently damaging. I wasn't able to identify the offending piece of furniture as she was sitting in the middle of the floor, but something obviously got the best of her.

Anyway, after cleaning her up with a cool washcloth and calming her down a bit, I let her suck on an ice cube. This is one of her favorite things to do, and in this case had the added benefit of soothing what I assume was the injured area. I sat her on the floor and watched her as she kept dropping the cube and chasing it around the kitchen floor.

It occurred to me that this is great entertainment for her, and why don't I do this more often? We typically only resort to ice cubes when she's crying because the cold cube distracts her and makes her happy. But it is a good way to keep her in the kitchen when I'm trying to finish clean-up. I would only recommend it, though, if you aren't squeamish about your baby sucking ice cubes that have been all over the kitchen floor.

Another popular form of entertainment for our toddler is pulling clothes out of her drawers. Socks are her favorite, so we have lots of socks randomly scattered around the house. This doesn't bother me much since there wasn't much organization in the sock drawer to begin with. More difficult for me is dealing with her newfound skill of opening her dresser drawers. This morning I found her throwing her long-sleeved onesies onto the floor. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if she wasn't also in the habit of throwing things into and taking things out of her laundry basket. Now we have clean clothes and dirty clothes mingling all over the floor of her room. I've had to start checking her laundry basket periodically for things that don't belong. Last week I inadvertently washed two small stuffed animals and a cow magnet that made it into her basket.

Olivia has recently decided that it's fun to go into her room and close the door. Since I've finally removed anything that I don't want her to destroy, I let her have her fun. She will usually wander around for a few minutes and then decide that she's tired of being in there alone. To let me know that she wants company (or to be let out) she knocks on the door. It's very cute.

Life is never dull around here, my friends. Sometimes it's a little slow, but it's never dull.

Nicknames

When we selected Olivia's name, I wondered how her name would end up being shortened into a nickname. Let's face it...four syllables is a lot. It's such a beautiful name, but I figured people would start calling her Liv or Livy or Ollie Rose (perish the thought!) or something.

So far, none of the obvious nicknames have caught on. In the meantime, though, we've developed a few rather odd nicknames.

First to emerge were "precious" and "sweet baby". These were what we called her in the hospital. Then we got her home, sleep deprivation set in, and "precious" quickly dropped off the list. Soon to replace it, though, was "Sweet Pea". This one has stuck for me and I still fall back on it from time to time.

She's been called "Rotten" when she's doing stuff she knows she's not supposed to do. She's also been referred to as "Stinky" when she's, well, stinky. "Little Butt" is another favorite of mine because her little hiney is too small to hold up most pants that are the right length.

But by far the most ridiculous nickname she has acquired so far is "Smooshie".

Don't ask me how this started or why, but somewhere along the line I started calling her Smooshie. I'm also the only one who does. I think it may have originated when she first started smiling because she smiles with her whole face, and I guess I got it from the way her nose wrinkles or gets smooshed up when she grins. Anyway, I think she is starting to RESPOND to this nickname. She absolutely knows her real name, but I just hope that when she starts to come up with her own version of her name, she uses her given name. If she starts saying things like "Ee-bah do it" (translation: I/Olivia will do it), it will be easy to explain to people that she is referring to herself. It might be a little more difficult if she says "Ooshie do it". Because there's no way you are getting "Olivia" out of "ooshie".

What strange nicknames do your kids have?