Back to normal

Well, after a week of vacation and activities with the cousins, life is finally back to normal.

Except that normal is a little different now. Before vacation, I could count on two solid naps from Olivia, a semi-regular bedtime and a very regular early wake-up (5:55 a.m., almost to the minute).

For the past several days, Olivia's naps have been inconsistent (she still takes them, but it's harder to predict their duration). She's also sleeping quite late in the morning. She's been waking up between 7:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Not that I'm complaining! It's just weird. Maybe it's because she is still fighting a snotty cold, or maybe she's just catching up from her lack of sleep from last week. It might just be temporary, but I'm savoring every late-morning wake-up.

Other than the sleep differences, Olivia has been back to her normal self. She's playing happily and getting into everything she's not supposed to have. Today I caught her trying to squeeze herself behind the TV stand. She was trying to reach that pretty wire that everything plugs into. I thought it was hidden far enough back there that it wouldn't be a problem, but apparently I was wrong. She also ended up tangling herself up in the dining room chairs this morning. Seems she was trying to climb through them to reach a toy she had thrown in there. She's like a little monkey. But a cute monkey. Especially when she follows me around the house and holds onto my legs. That's when I know she's tired of playing by herself and wants some Mommy time.

Can you believe that my precious little baby will be NINE MONTHS OLD tomorrow? Seems impossible to me.

And so it goes...

I am quite sure I am in the beginning stages of a cold. As much fun as it is to spend time with the family, exposure to so many little kids (not to mention the absence of any decent nap during the entire vacation) inevitably leads to snottiness for Olivia, followed by a full-blown cold for both of us (I'm hoping my husband escapes it completely since he doesn't have the luxury of naptime).

Olivia has been congested now for three days, but since the cousins are staying at Grandma's (just a short 10 miles away) and we live really close to an amusement park that has a great waterpark, we couldn't resist an outing yesterday. We met Grandma, Grandpa and the little cousins (and their parents) for some fun in the sun.

Olivia has a blast in the spray park.




She played so hard that she fell asleep in the two mile drive home and slept straight through to morning. She'd spend every waking moment in a pool or sprinkler if I'd let her.

Back from the Smokies

Yes, we have returned from the Great Smoky Mountains. This is where we stayed.


This is some of the nature we saw.


Trey and Olivia hanging out on our cabin's porch.


We threw Daddy and Uncle Brad an early birthday party.


We went to the aquarium.

"In weather news, it looks like the midsection of the country will be experiencing a strong front of fish coming in from the East."


Olivia and Trey like to stock up on hugs whenever they see each other.


Olivia got to pet a camel.


But her favorites were the baby goats.


On our last evening there, Daddy and Olivia's uncles and Grandpa went go-kart racing. Olivia was cheering hard for Daddy!


Olivia has four other little cousins who were also on this vacation with us, and we got LOTS of photos with them, but I won't publish identifying photos unless they say it's OK. In the meantime, I have a few non-identifying ones that will go up on our photo blog shortly. More about vacation when I've had a chance to recover.

Boring household item, or incredibly exciting plaything?

Yesterday, Olivia managed to reach our brand-new flyswatter, which sits up on top of the box that holds our trash can, and when did she get so tall?

Anyway, apparently the flyswatter was the most intriguing item she had seen in a good long while, because she carried it around for a good half-hour while I was cleaning up after dinner. She sat on the kitchen floor and whacked it against the floor, then she crawled over to the dining room chairs and whacked on them for awhile. Then, she found this facinating plastic box of clothes to smack around.



These are her latest round of hand-me-downs...all in 9-12 or 12 month sizes. (Did I mention the tallness?) We had just brought them home to be sorted and put away, but in the meantime the box set up camp on the dining room floor and became the object of Olivia's attention for a good long while.

Olivia finally started to get bored with these new "toys" and came over to hang onto my legs and beg to be picked up, but I wasn't finished cleaning yet. So I opened the box of clothes, thinking she would be occupied with emptying the clothes onto the floor for at least enough time to let me finish what I was doing.

A few minutes later I peeked around the bar to find this:





She is getting much bolder with her climbing. Sheesh.

We're leaving on vacation tomorrow, so I won't be posting for awhile. I have a general rule on vacation that I avoid computers as much as humanly possible. It helps me focus on just being present to the family (did I mention that this is a vacation with my entire family?). But I'm sure I will have tons of cute photos and silly stories to share about Olivia and her cousins when we return. Happy August!

Child development is amazing

Some things about child development just amaze me. When Olivia was a newborn, every waking moment was about experiencing something brand new. And it was all so overwhelming to her. I can understand why infants get overstimulated so easily. Imagine knowing nothing but dark, warm wetness for your entire existence and then suddenly being thrust into a world full of bright lights and strange noises and big shapes. Babies quickly begin to recognize those two people who are always hanging around (a.k.a. Mommy and Daddy) as the providers of all their survival and comfort needs, and they start to trust them. But for the most part, they really aren't very social. They just sort of exist and get their needs met.

Gradually, they begin to interact on a more social level. And before you know it, you have an intelligent little 8-month old who mimics words that you say (or at least your inflection), understands meals and naptime, claps when she's excited and follows Mommy around when she's doing household chores (because, you know the laundry is so much more interesting than any of her musical, talking or moving toys).



She's developing her own wake-up style and her personal preferences for naps and play and eating. She teaches us how to be parents as we grow together. And every day, there are moments when she just amazes me. When I go in to get her out of her crib after a nap, and she's sitting in the corner playing with her doll, and she flashes me that famous smile the moment she sees me...pure joy. I'll never fully understand how we got so lucky as to be blessed with this amazing child.

I think we are slightly spoiled. Although Olivia has her bad moments, the amazing moments completely outweigh them. I'm not sure how a second baby is going to stack up...although something tells me that whenever and however he or she appears on the scene, it will be different, but just as amazing and miraculous as Olivia has been for us.

Here and there

My mind is bouncing around today.

Olivia is growing at an alarming rate. Well, not alarming, really, except for the fact that she is too tall for her tops and too skinny for the matching shorts. Where are the tall boutiques for babies? I mean, for adults you have Big & Tall, Petite, and Plus Size stores. Then, for the ultra skinny, the Juniors department. (Seriously, when did teens evolve into beanpoles with attitudes?) There are all kinds of stores that cater to the size-specific needs of a vast array of adults, but apparently babies are all supposed to be proportioned exactly the same as every other baby within their 3-month age range of clothing options.

Whenever I'm really tired, I tend to dream about trying to calm Olivia down so we can rest (because she is apparently the main reason for my exhaustion). It doesn't happen often. We are actually pretty well-rested in this house. Olivia sleeps ten hours at night, unless we put her to bed late. Then she insists on waking up early. I don't see the logic in this, but it is what she does.

When Olivia was teeny, my dreams revolved around actually putting her to sleep. This was back when she required rocking, patting and soothing to fall asleep. So, in my dream I would imagine that I have her lying on my chest and I'm patting her back to help her fall asleep. I would usually wake up and realize that I'd been patting my own chest or belly in the midst of this dream.

A few nights ago, I had the dream again, only this time I dreamed that Olivia was crawling all over our bed. I leaned over to grab her, stroked her back and patted her (in my dream). Turns out, I was patting my husband's shoulder. He woke up and said "What?". Which confused the heck out of me, and it took me a few seconds to realize that Olivia wasn't crawling in our bed...she was in her own bed, asleep.

Speaking of beds (random transition), Olivia fell off of ours this morning. She was playing and I was watching her climb on pillows. I turned around for ONE SECOND to get the laundry basket off of the floor, and when I looked back at the bed, she was tumbling to the floor. It was AWFUL. She screamed for five solid minutes, flailing around, alternating between crying into my shoulder and leaning back to look at me and "explain" what happened through her sobs. A half-hour later, she was playing and babbling happily again, but I think we will not be climbing on beds anymore.

We were at a family reunion yesterday, and Olivia played in little kiddie pool with about eight other little girls (second cousins to Olivia), all age 4 and under. They kept jumping in and out, and mommies everywhere were saying "watch out for the baby", but Olivia was loving it...crawling here and there, watching the other kids. It didn't bother her at all that they were a little, um, crazy. I think she enjoyed herself immensely.

See my teeth?


She's a very social baby. Just like her Grandpa, she has never met a stranger.

Babysitting

I'm babysitting my nephew, Trey, today. Olivia and Trey are seven months apart, but they are very close in size and love to play together. So I was really looking forward to this.

We successfully made it through the morning. Olivia usually takes a morning nap and an afternoon nap, but she refused to sleep when Trey arrived. We got through lunch and then I put each of them down to nap. After some fussing, they fell asleep. And I was thinking I was doing pretty well with my management of two little ones.

However, Olivia has been waking every ten minutes or so and screaming since she fell asleep. I'm afraid she got overtired and now she's having a hard time settling down. This should make for a very interesting afternoon.

*Sigh*

I shouldn't really complain. Trey's just about the easiest kid in the world to watch. He's very easygoing and tolerates Olivia's tackle moves.



Seriously, though, they do play well together. I caught them hugging or kissing each other several times this morning (although I could never reach my camera in time to catch it). They are both very sweet kids.