She just passed out from sheer exhaustion

Olivia woke up around 4 a.m. and refused to go back to sleep. Instead, she climbed on and kicked me for two hours while I laid in her bed and tried to get her to settle down. She napped from 8-10 a.m., and I was determined to keep her up until bedtime.

Until my sinus pain and allergies decided to double-team me and make me not care anymore.

Olivia gets really clumsy when she's really tired, which has resulted in at least four Mommy rescues after she stumbled and fell into various hard surfaces. One of these resulted in one of those long, silent screams and a little (very little) bleeding.

So when she wanted to sit in my lap with pacy and blankie a few minutes ago, I consented. She fell asleep in two minutes. I'm waking her up in a half hour because a 4 p.m. nap? NOT IDEAL. And I need her to go to bed on time. I NEED that. I may be jeopardizing bedtime as it is. But the poor girl was so tired, and I couldn't imagine any other way to get her to survive into the evening.

*Sigh* Maybe she's affected by the air pressure and pollen too. If so, we are in for a long Spring.

Exhausted

Olivia woke up at 3 a.m., and I heard her in the living room, crying "Mommy!" with terror in her voice. Something spooked her to the point that she was afraid to walk much further in the dark in pursuit of Mommy even though she knows exactly where I am. It was probably nothing more than a car driving by or a gust of wind. She's rather sensitive to sounds during certain stages of sleep, and even more sensitive when she knows Daddy's not home. It makes me thankful that our house is built on a slab and we have no creaky floorboards, but there are still other sounds that can rouse her on occasion.

I laid with her in bed for an hour until she fell back asleep. She was obviously tired, but she needed the comfort of knowing that Mommy was RIGHT THERE. When she woke up, still fussy, at 6 a.m., I knew she was still tired. I pulled her into bed with me, and she dosed off right away.

The weather here has somehow become stuck on "ALL HUMID ALL THE TIME". I was not ready for this to happen until mid-June. I want to say "Rain already!" The air is heavy with moisture, and with the temperature climbing it is not so comfortable around here.

When Olivia wakes up from her nap, she's going to want to go outside. I'm not ready for the onslaught of pollen AND humidity today. Please, rain, show up so I have an excuse to stay in.

I don't know how she managed this

This morning, Olivia kept taking off her pants. I hate it when she does that, so I put overalls on her.

A few minutes ago, I was on the phone and she kept tugging at her overalls like she wanted them off. She got frustrated when I said no, so she left the room. She came back and handed me a diaper. Which was recently on her rear. And her overalls were still on and fully snapped.

Yep, she was going commando. I don't know how she managed to pull off the adhesive tabs and work the diaper out from under her overalls, but she did.

She never ceases to amaze me.

She's darn cute when she's not trying to get into trouble

Yesterday, we went to visit a homeschooling friend and her six kids. The younger kids entertained Olivia while their Mom and I caught up, and then we stayed for dinner.

Olivia was appropriately adorable. She sang the first two lines of "Jesus Loves Me" to the delight of everyone. (She knows all the words, but she never makes it through the song in public because people start fawning all over the cuteness of hearing her sing the first two lines.) Then, after taking a heaping bite of spaghetti at dinner, she looked up and shouted, "I like it!" several times. Our host was tickled pink.

Sometimes it amazes me to watch how quickly Olivia catches onto things. She picks up songs so easily. She sees a character for the first time, like when she watched Finding Nemo at Grandma's house a couple weeks ago, and then she points him out everywhere. She saw that he was on her swim diapers, so now she says "Nemo" whenever we go to change her diaper. Strange, how the brain makes connections.

My husband is out of town for a few days on business, so I'm posting some pics on our other site in case he can get to a computer at his hotel tonight. We are doing our best to stay busy and pass the time until Daddy comes home.

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.

Not that you noticed...

I've been preoccupied lately. The weeks following Easter are always hectic. I don't know why, but they just ARE. There have been meetings and functions and things where I'm involved and have to participate in some way. All of this has led to a lot of Grandparent face time with Olivia and a lot less blogging for me.

*Sigh*

I do have a lot on my mind. I just don't always have enough of a naptime window to compose anything between trying to organize diaper bags and tidying up the house and getting myself prepared for all these meetings and events.

Today, I'm relatively sure I'm going to have to wake Olivia up from her (admittedly too-late-in-the-afternoon) nap. She can't really nap after 4 p.m. anymore, no matter how tired she is, without disturbing her night routine. And I'm sure she won't wake up on her own. She's TIRED. Because we went to playdate today and celebrated the first mid-80s temperature day of the year (in April!) by doing this:



I can tell that a lot of backyard sprinkler days are in our future. At least the grass will be adequately watered all summer...

I've been thinking a lot lately about this weird waiting thing. Pregnancy affords couples the opportunity to know with relative certainty when they can expect the baby to arrive. We don't exactly have that luxury.

It's not that we're not prepared. We have a crib and a changing table and a diaper bag full of gender-neutral newborn clothes. And they are all in the "baby's room". It's just that the rest of that room looks like a storage warehouse. Things just keep showing up in there. We have to start organizing.

I'm thinking that this Spring will find us simplifying quite a bit. We CAN fit our family in this space. We just need to start getting rid of stuff that we don't need anymore. Books and toys and furniture. It's going to be a process.

Our project for this weekend is to start on Olivia's play yard. Daddy is going to build a box around the playset so we can fill it in with pea gravel. I will also get a small garden box out of this project. I'll post pictures when it is finished. And then you can come over to play at our house!

That's all the brain power I have for today.

Expecting

Having a toddler and being in the "officially waiting" stage for adopting a second child have put me in a position of relative contentment. Infertility hardly ever crosses my mind (well, about once a month when I am again reminded that I'm not pregnant, but it's not an obsessive thought).

So it took me a bit by surprise when I was hit with a weird sort of melancholy after hearing my brother's news that he and his wife are expecting their first child.

It's not like I didn't expect this to happen soon. They've been married almost two years and just bought their first home. They were preparing. I guess I just didn't expect it to happen this fast.

(For those of you keeping score at home, that means that all three of my brothers will be adding babies to their families in 2009. Grandkid-palooza.)

I'm happy for them. I really am. I wouldn't wish infertility on anyone. It's just that I'm sometimes surprised to find so many people having babies with relative ease. I occasionally forget that fertility is a normal state of being.

So, this weekend at Olivia's cousin's birthday party, two of my sisters-in-law were swapping recommendations on where to get cute maternity clothes and what was the best type of nursing bra to buy. I had absolutely nothing to add.

Infertility doesn't define me, but it's always a part of my reality.

My child speaks in full sentences

Heard on Friday:

While visiting a local pioneer village that features a cabin/livestock, etc. We were watching the cows and sheep. I said, "Look at the sheep, Olivia." She said, "He walking away." Yep. He was.

After clipping her fingernails (which, by the way, is akin to cutting off her thumb with a hedge trimmer, judging by the way she reacts), I let her play with the clippers to help her calm down. She managed to separate the metal part from the plastic part. She looked right at me and said, "I broke it." Yep. She did.

She has come up with lots of random sentences with no prompting. I just can't believe how quickly she's catching on to all the verbal stuff.

In a screwed-up world, THIS is where I find hope.

I knew a woman once who argued for abortion rights based solely on the fact that she had a friend with a medical condition which would made pregnancy almost certainly fatal for her. This woman argued that abortion MUST remain legal so that her friend would not be condemned to die if she would accidentally get pregnant.

Few people understand that reversing Roe vs. Wade would simply put the abortion decision back in the hands of the states. That means that some states would likely decide to keep legal abortion and others would decide against it. I doubt that abortion for medical reasons (as above) would EVER be criminalized in any state. I have my own opinions about such a case, but I'm not going to debate the morality of a life-or-death (of the mother) decision here. My concern in this post is for all those non-medically-necessary abortions.

Ninety-eight percent of all abortions are performed for non-medical reasons. I would venture to guess that the majority of these are decisions of convenience. The mother-to-be is too young, too old, too unmarried, too married (not to the father of the baby), too close to a promotion at her job, too scared to be tied down to a special-needs baby, etc.

I attended a pro-life event this week that I attend every year. The speakers at this event were so high-profile that if I were to list them, you would be able to find out exactly where I was. As much as I enjoyed the speakers, the most moving part of the evening was a testimonial by three women who are involved in a project that is close to my heart. This project speaks to the heart of why I am pro-life and how I fit into the spectrum of those who defend the defenseless.

While I recognize the importance of protecting life through our laws and policies as a community, state and country (and while I shake in my boots to think of the potential harm that our current national administration is doing and will continue to do to those policies), I believe that the greatest power we have in changing the culture is to change people's hearts and lives...one at a time.

The Gabriel Project was started by a Catholic parish in Texas in 1973 as a response to Roe vs. Wade. The priest at this particular parish had a sign erected on his parish property which simply stated that this Church would offer any necessary support to any pregnant woman in need. This developed into a ministry over the years in which participating churches have volunteers called Gabriel "angels" who become the mother/sister/friend figure to the pregnant woman in need, walking beside her and loving both her and her baby. Most churches or networks offer a variety of supporting ministries that provide material support to women in need.

The whole point of the Gabriel Project is to EMPOWER women to and help them find the resources they need to be able to make the decision to give birth. Most women go on to be self-sufficient moms. Some women decide to make an adoption plan and are supported through that decision. All women are treated as beloved family members who are deserving of all the love and support the parish can give.

I heard about this project at a pro-life conference several years ago, and it percolated in the back of my mind until 2007. Something about adoption research made me realize that there were so many scared women out there who just needed ONE PERSON to be a friend. I brought the Gabriel Project idea to our local pro-life group. Shortly thereafter, I became a full-time Mom. But the idea had caught on, and the people who took the reins ended up taking it further than I ever could have.

Speaking onstage were two of the Gabriel "angels" and one of the Moms they had helped (along with her adorable 6-month-old son). I was reduced to a sobbing mess as I listened to one of the "angels" recount her experience with this Mom. It was powerful. The "angel" had become a family figure to the Mom, to the point that she was invited into the c-section delivery of the child who was to become her Godson.

Two women. Two different races. Two different socio-economic backgrounds. Two dramatically different sets of life circumstances. United by a desire to protect one little life. And now they are family, their lives forever intertwined by the circumstances that made them friends.

This, my friends, is what God wants. It's not about party politics or power or population control. It's about creating an environment where every woman has the resources and support she needs to make a miracle out of unfortunate circumstances. It's about empowering individuals to open their hearts to God's plan for their lives. It's about walking hand-in-hand with another human person, for the good of all humanity. Because when one person is hurting, the community suffers. And when that person is hurting because we failed to reach out with compassion, we suffer all the more. We are one human family, and when we reach out in love to a member of that family, many lives are changed.

How many hearts and minds are changed when you change the life of one person? How many lives will be affected by that child who will know that he is loved not only by his mother, but by a community of people who support her? How many "angels" will find their lives deeply affected by the families they encounter?

Become a participant in spreading the Love of God, and God will change your heart forever. And THIS, my friends, is the change WE need.

Oh, child, just a moment to myself PLEASE!

Naps, they are elusive here. Went out for groceries and necessities today. A 2-hour outing. Olivia fell asleep on the way home. For twenty minutes. Then she woke up. No subsequent nap in sight. Toddler is doing everything in her power to be defiant and get into trouble. My consolation is that she should go to bed early tonight. That, however, will probably come back to bite me around 4:00 a.m.

*Sigh*

This has been a busy week for having (so far) almost no obligations. Tomorrow is an actual busy day out of the house, with an evening commitment and an overnight babysitter and everything. Unfortunately, it is an event that I've been looking forward to only because I want it to be over. Long story.

I had something real to blog about, but it will have to wait for another day...one with a nap.

Busy day. This is all you get.

Olivia sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as she climbs around/out of her high chair this morning.

Happy Easter!

In a moment of insanity yesterday, I decided that Olivia and I would go to the Easter Vigil Mass (Daddy had to go to all the Masses as Master of Ceremonies). We were on our way home from Grammy & Grampy's house, so we had about ten minutes to change and hop back into the car to get to Church in time. Olivia looked roughly like this, except for the cute Easter shoes. I forgot those in my haste. She had to wear the white tennis shoes that were in her diaper bag already. Good thing it was dark in Church when we came in.

This picture was staged today for posterity. In my haste I also I left my camera behind.

The decision to attend was made based on Olivia's late-afternoon nap and my suspicion that she'd be hard to put to sleep on time anyway. With blankie and pacifier in tow, we did pretty well. We had to pace the back of Church during the Eucharistic prayer, but she played happily in the pew for most of the rest of the long Mass. I actually heard and comprehended most of the readings and homily, so I guess the whole thing could be regarded as a success.

My favorite parts of last night's Mass:
When we were outside lighting the Easter candle from the new fire, and the fire started shooting out these tall flames...Olivia was watching intently, pointed and said, "Oh NO!" She was possibly worried about her Daddy, who was in charge of lighting the taper from that fire.

When Father was saying the closing blessing, and as soon as he uttered the final word, Olivia says in a loud voice, "A-MEN!" Perhaps she was happy that she could finally go home and sleep.

Mass last night left my morning free for preparing our Easter dinner (lunch). Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Lori came over. Olivia was charmingly entertaining in her own sleep-deprived way. (Note to Olivia: Getting up at 6:00 a.m. is not a rule. You can sleep longer when you are tired. Mommy and Daddy have an alarm clock, so you don't have to worry about getting us up at a certain time. And you can nap for longer than 45 minutes at a time. Please? Love, Mommy.)

After three egg hunts, three Triduum services and three late nights, we are all in need of a good, long nap. The end.

More Holy Week thoughts

I heard a priest say the other day that Holy Week is like traveling day by day, hour by hour with Christ on his journey from The Last Supper to The Resurrection. It kind of brings the story into real time. I like that. It kind of explains why Holy Week is so powerful, dramatic, emotional.

In other news, it's likely that I won't be attending Holy Week services again for a few years. My husband volunteers as MC for our services, which means I am left to wrangle the child alone. And it's HARD. Especially on Thursday night. 7:30 p.m. is not a good time for small children to behave in church. Tonight's Vigil Mass is, of course, out of the question. 8:30 p.m.? Please! As if. And if we have another little one by next year? I think the decision will be out of my hands.

That said, I do miss attending the Vigil. It is the height of the Church year. It's like this amazing drama where we tell the story of Christianity through all the extra readings and rituals. Love it.

Olivia is running back and forth between her bedroom window and the front door windows, watching Daddy as he puts fertilizer on the lawn. It's high entertainment, let me tell you. And it's the only reason that I have two minutes to type this.

Oops...she has spotted me on the computer. Blogging time is over.

Food preferences

Olivia has always been a fan of broccoli. She seems to prefer it, though, to anything else on her tray. Moments ago, with crackers, turkey and a banana still on her tray, she sweetly requested "More brock-ee, pease?" She loves her broccoli.

She has also developed a preference for Grandpa's homemade pear sauce (like applesauce, but with pears). She calls it "Nummies", which is her word for "yummy". "Nummies, pease, Mommy! Pease? Nummies?" Pear sauce is quite a bit messier than broccoli, but she loves it so much that I can't much resist. We also mix it with oatmeal for breakfast, and she LOVES it.

With her two most preferred foods being "Brock-ee" and "Nummies", you can imagine what diapers have looked like lately.

Olivia has recently become very attached to her "Up-Up Elmo" doll. She carries him everywhere. I came into the kitchen yesterday to find this.


She's so proud of herself for buckling Elmo in for his nummies.
Happy Holy Thursday!

Holy Week

I always look forward to this week. There's just something about the Triduum that is so invigorating for me. It builds the emotional and spiritual momentum toward Easter, which (for me) multiplies the joy of the Easter Sunday and the whole season of Easter.

Even with the added distraction of my child in the pew, I can't miss the symbols and the rituals that bring us back to the event that freed us from our sin. Though we celebrate the Last Supper at each Eucharist, it is so much easier for me to reflect and meditate on that event when we do the washing-of-the-feet ritual at the Holy Thursday Mass. It reminds me of the friendship between Jesus and His disciples, and it sets an unmistakable example of service.

Good Friday, no matter how sunny and bright (and it always seems to be sunny), is always an emotionally sober day for me. The Good Friday service is powerful, and it reminds us that Christ had to suffer and die in order to rise. It happened. It was a real event. Good Friday service brings us into the real drama of that day and makes it concrete that our Savior did die for us.

Holy Saturday is, by far, my favorite Mass of the year. I won't go this year because of Olivia's sleep schedule, but that won't keep me from thinking about the lights and the singing and the water and all the beautiful symbols that charge our emotions and make us feel joy about The Resurrection. I also thoroughly enjoy witnessing the initiation of new members of The Church. I usually have to fight back some tears at that point.

Easter Sunday is more low key than the Vigil Mass, but it is still plenty joyful. I look forward to putting Olivia in her prettiest Spring dress and singing songs of joy while we celebrate Our Lord's Resurrection.

Happy Holy Week!

Returning to a state of "normal"

Olivia is fine, Praise God. She was sore for a couple of days and probably had a headache, but the baby painkillers helped a lot. Now she's asking for "Meh-cine" because of the flavor, and I have to deal with the fallout that comes when her request is denied. But that's a small problem to have.

We haven't been back out to the playset. We were busy with church stuff all day on Sunday, and then we had a return to Winter on Monday. Temps aren't expected to rebound until tomorrow, which is our errand day this week. I'm not terribly sad to have a break from playground duty. I'm no longer afraid to try it again, but it helps to have a few days to settle from our recent trauma first. I'm sure the playset will see countless hours of safe playtime...maybe the early accident will serve to make us all a bit more cautious when we play.

Olivia has been suffering from sleep deprivation lately. Various things have contributed...the ER (of course), too-late naps, long errand days. I think the most she has slept over the past week was 8 hours. Last night was the first night that she slept a full ten-plus hours in over a week. It was also the first night in at least a week that she went to bed on time (before 8 pm). And life is easier today.

The crib is history. After her fall on Saturday, we didn't want to risk any further injury by giving her the opportunity to climb and possibly fall out of a crib while suffering soreness and disorientation from her accident. So we put her on her big bed (full-sized mattress on the floor). We lined both sides with pillows so she'd have a warning barrier if she tried to move too much. And you know what? She did great! And it was easier (and safer) for her to get up and find us in the morning. We are on day 3 of bed-only nights and naps, and I'm happy with it.

We still can't get Olivia to go to sleep on her own again. For the past three weeks, she has consistently NEEDED someone to either rock her or lay down with her. I'm not going to stress about it, though. As long as she's fairly active and doesn't nap too long, the rock-to-sleep routine doesn't take terribly long. She'll learn someday. I just don't want to fight that fight at the moment.

We dyed eggs today. Olivia was relatively well behaved as I let her stand on a chair and watch. The dye cups were out of her reach, but that didn't stop her from trying to get to them. I'm going to work on putting egg tatoos on them for the duration of Olivia's nap. I'm entitled to some anti-productive creativity, right?

Rite of Passage

So you bring baby home from the hospital and slowly transform your house to meet the needs of baby. Baby gates appear, sharp-edged furniture disappears. You get the picture. But I don't think you REALLY commit to making your house into a home that screams "A FAMILY LIVES HERE" until you put up one of these.

A neighbor of ours just moved, and we asked if they were taking their playset with them. They agreed to sell it to us for a fraction of what it would cost to put up any similar set. And as a bonus, they only live a couple hundred yards away, so my Dad and my husband and my brother were able to easily disassemble it and carry the parts across the yard. Easy delivery.

"Plus, the parts are so fun to play with!"

It took all day to move and rebuild the playset. Luckily, we had a beautiful day for such work. And the client was pleased.

"Hi Grandpa! Thanks for building my cool slide!"

"My very own bridge!"

"And swings!"

"And did I mention the slide? My favorite part!"

(If you are related to me, don't mention this next part to my Mom and Dad. I don't want them to freak out about what happened next.)

We were still basking in the glow of Olivia's brand new playground...

She fell from the top of the tower. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.

She was playing on the ramp and she kept asking me..."Mommy, come?" She had decided that she liked having me in the tall tower with her. Like our own little clubhouse. So I followed her and she decided that she wanted to slide. I didn't mind her sliding alone because she has learned how to land safely, but she didn't want to sit down. THAT I had a problem with. I was trying to get her to sit down, and all of a sudden she was leaning out the front of the tower, grabbing on the rail and facing the tower, like she wanted to hang on from the outside. And in a second, she was flat on her back on the ground.

I thought she had hit her head on the frame below, and I was sure that she was badly injured. I scooped her up and ran inside, yelling to my husband that we had to get her to the emergency room. She was crying, but not in a "I hurt myself" kind of screaming way...more of a whiny, disoriented way. That just scared me more.

She screamed for the entire half-hour drive to the ER as I worked hard to keep ice on her head and keep her awake. She was mad about both. She desperately wanted to sleep (causing me to be more worried). When we finally got there and saw a nurse, she started crying louder. She has developed anxiety about doctors and nurses because of shots, so she was just inconsolable.

The doctor assessed that she was bouncing back well and that we should watch her closely and return if she started vomiting or if we couldn't wake her up. I was unconvinced. This docile little child wasn't acting like my kid. But maybe that was the exhaustion from crying.

We went to get some dinner. She refused to eat and mostly just sat and stared through dinner. Then we went to get a few groceries. In the store, Olivia consented to hold Daddy's hand and walk. She NEVER lets us hold her hand. She's too independent. A few minutes later, she wanted to be held. And then...the entire contents of her stomach were all over herself, Daddy, and the store's floor.

When we arrived at the ER the second time, we had to wait. Olivia fell asleep for 20 minutes or so. We got a room. By the time the doctor got to us, Olivia was awake and singing her songs and responding to questions in normal fashion. This doctor (a different one) weighed our options but decided that we should wake her at regular intervals and watch her closely and return if something got worse.

So, two trips to the ER and the same basic diagnosis. She had a bad fall and got pretty shook up. She must not have hit the beam after all because she doesn't seem to have a bump.

She slept well last night and woke up crying today. She cried through her bath and sat on my lap for an hour before she felt like herself. I really think that her body just ACHES. She was feeling better when the tylenol kicked in.

Now, she's pretty close to normal. She's still very tired, but I think she's bouncing back well.

New playset, first real trip to the ER. I think we are going to lay low for the next few days and recover.

She has the duck & cover thing DOWN!

Olivia is scared of loud noises. Our TV is hooked up to our Bose stereo so that we can feed the sound through the Bose for better quality. It works great, but you have to turn the TV off if you want to listen to the radio or you'll get bad feedback.

Olivia was watching her cartoon this morning, and she managed to get her hands on the Bose remote. She hit the button for AM radio and was hit with a loud buzzing sound. Instinctively and immediately, she tossed the remote up in the air and dove to the ground, covering her face and crying.

I shouldn't laugh, but it was funny.

It's a good thing she's so darn cute

We all slept better last night. Olivia slept 8 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. Her Daddy and I woke up two or three times thinking we heard her crib rails rattling...a sure sign that she's climbing out. She wasn't...our minds were playing tricks on us. That's what happens when you find your daughter standing next to your bed in the middle of the night. You start to expect it to happen regularly.

Olivia just went down for her nap, and I expect it to be under 2 hours since she has decided to take a stand against long naps. I have a million things to do, so this will be brief.

Just wanted to make note of a few things that Olivia is doing now that make me happy to be her Mommy (despite the occasional sleep deprivation).

We have these two statues outside our front door...Mary and St. Francis. Olivia likes to say "Hi" to them when we go outside, and she has become fond of giving them each a kiss. When I see her kissing Mary, I always say, "Oh, that's so nice!", and now she says it.

"Hi, Fansis!"

*Kiss* So Nice!

I think I mentioned the politeness. I love how she says "Pease" after everything she requests. She has started to become very attached to her pacifier and blanket. "Pacy, pease? Blankie, pease?" It must be a phase of some sort, but she can't go anywhere now without these two things.

This morning, as Daddy was leaving for work, he gave her a kiss and said "Love You." Olivia responded, "Welcome!"

Olivia and Trey played awhile last night after a family dinner. They enjoyed riding Olivia's firetruck together. Olivia was getting tired, so of course she needed her pacy. When she knew Trey would be leaving soon, she chased him down to tackle him in her own style of hug. They are so cute and absolutely love playing together.
That's all for today. I'm going to attempt to mow the lawn before Olivia gets up. I'm relatively sure that I'll come in to find her awake and on top of something tall. What a climber that girl is!

When did this blog become all about sleep?

Life, it has been busy. We've either been out during the day or suffering from extremely short naps, which explains why it's been almost a week since I've been back here.

In my last post, I worried about Olivia's sleep issues and how they would affect her uncle, aunt and cousin, who were kind enough to keep her this weekend while we led our retreat. As it turns out, I shouldn't have worried. Combine her aunt's superstar childcare abilities with the added excitement/exhaustion brought about by spending the weekend playing with her cousin, and you have a recipe for great sleeping. I even managed to get her to lay down Sunday night and go to sleep without climbing out of her crib. I had to stand at her door and tell her to lay back down every time she stood up for fifteen minutes, but still.

Yesterday, I put Olivia to bed at 6:30 p.m. (asleep) because we had been running errands all day and she had only had a short car nap. She was exhausted and was asleep in ten minutes. Score! I had a nice evening of relaxation with my husband. We watched some TV and went to bed around 10:30.

I woke up later with the vague idea that the closet door was moving. Then I heard some tiny footsteps. I reached down and scooped my nearly-silent child onto the bed. I thought it was probably 5:00 a.m. or around that time and I might be able to squeeze another 30 minutes of sleep in if I could get her to be still and relax. But something didn't feel right. So I took a look at the clock. 11:30 p.m. I didn't want to disturb my husband's sleep since he has to work, so I took her to her room to see if I could get her to go to sleep.

We laid on her big bed, tried the crib, tried rocking, repeat. Three hours of this. At 2:30 a.m., I finally crawled back into my own bed, having (finally) successfully put a sleeping baby back in her crib.

Please, God, let her sleep well tonight! Tonight is our family dinner night, which means her cousin will be here, so maybe they'll wear each other out. I hope, I hope, I hope!