One of Olivia's new favorite things to do is to "go shopping". She puts Bunny or Baby (or both) in her shopping cart, goes into the pantry and fills her cart. On this trip she has some egg noodles, several cans of beans, a can of diced tomatoes and some sandwich bags. There are also some toys in the bottom of the cart. So cute! She's pretending to be like Mommy. I love it!

beach trip!

We finally got to take Olivia on her first beach trip. She loved it! It was quite a drive down there. We thought she would sleep quite a bit in the car, but we were wrong. She finally fell asleep when we were about an hour away. We only got to be out on the beach Saturday morning. Olivia loved every minute of that! She ran up and down the beach, splashed in the water, and even went "swimming" with Daddy. (Which means Paul held her the whole time while he waded out into deeper water.) After her nap, we went out to eat at a seafood restaurant, went to play putt-putt, and had ice cream. Olivia really enjoyed playing putt-putt, but she didn't quite get that she was supposed to hit the ball with her putter. She either scooted the ball around on the green, or she just picked the ball up and dropped it in the hole! Of course, she didn't do much playing at all, she mostly ran around the course. She liked the fake animals that were there, and wanted to climb some of them. Olivia really enjoyed the ice cream cone that we bought her after playing putt-putt. She also really enjoyed the rocking chairs that were at the ice cream shop! We knew we wouldn't have time to go to the beach on Sunday, so we packed up the car and headed to a public playground there. We had a picnic and let Olivia run around and play in hopes that she would be really tired and take a long nap in the car on the way home. Overall, we had a great time, but we hope we can stay longer next time we go!

paci broken!

A couple of nights ago Olivia woke up screaming. As I got her up and tried to comfort her, I noticed that every time I tried to give her the paci, she would spit it out and cry harder. So I just assumed that her mouth was hurting. (She still hasn't cut her 2 year molars.) After an hour of trying to comfort her, I noticed that her paci didn't look quite right. Sure enough, after closer inspection, her paci was broken. The air bubble had deflated, and she was rather upset (to put it mildly!)

So I told her, "I'm sorry, sweetheart. Your paci is broken."

"Paci broken?"

"Yes, baby. Paci broken."

That's all it took. She laid her head on my shoulder, and she stopped crying. A few minutes later I was able to put her back down.

When we would get ready for naptime or for bed, she used to say, "Bunny, paci. Bunny, paci." (She needed both to go to sleep.) Now she's been saying, "Bunny, paci broken. Bunny, paci broken." So sad! I've tried to comfort her by telling her that Bunny is not broken, and Mommy and Daddy are not broken. I think she is going to latch onto her pink blanket next. We'll see!

Christmas cookies!

Today we had two exciting events in the Abernathy household: Aunt Mere came to visit (woo-hoo!) and we held our first annual Christmas cookie baking day! I didn't do anything fancy this year, just store bought cookie dough, canned icing and sprinkles. Maybe in the future we'll try be more creative. We did try to use the fancy cookie press that I have... "try" being the operative word. :)

Yea! Aunt Mere!

"I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work..."

"The sprinkles I can do!"

"Mmm... icing..."

Cookies

More cookies (pay no attention to that half eaten one at the bottom)

A few of the finished product

prepare yourself for a cuteness attack!

Since it's been forever since I posted, I thought I'd post a little about that sweet little girl:

Olivia is now a regular chatterbox. Half the time I don't know what she's trying to say, but there are a lot of words I do understand.

Mommy (Mom-ee!), Daddy, (Dad-ee!), Olivia (ya-ya), Granddaddy (ga-da-da), Grammie (gee), Nana, Papaw, Kathryn (ka-ka), Will, Wyatt (wy), Reece, Abbi, baby, bunny (b), paci (pha), water (wa), cat (ca), dog (daw), turtle, mouse, goat (go), frog, deer, moose, bird (bir), duck, goose, baa, neigh, outside (ow-sigh), bath, sorry, amen (men), touch (toush), fall, go (as in "here you go"), again (geen), ball, balloon (boon), book, read, story, night-night, uh-oh, kiss, butterfly (fie), flower (fowr), stuck, hot, soap, bubble, rock, phone, nose, mouth, teeth, eye, foot, truck, boy, girl, bible, sun, dressed, shoes, socks, eat (e), egg (ya), cheese, cookie, juice, apple, banana (ah-na), orange, berry, pepper (as in bell pepper, one of her favorite veggies), peas, turkey, chicken, quiche, cracker, raisin (ree), cereal, bean, bib, spoon, fork, burp (we're working on "Excuse me"), more, please (pease), thank you (ee-ya), hello, hi, bye. (That's almost 100 words!)

One of her current favorite things to do is to read books. Olivia now thinks that when we read together on the couch, we have to have a blanket tucked around us. It is sweet!

Here is a recent picture of Olivia with her hair in pigtails. I would love to put her hair up more often, but it is quite a challenge with one so mobile!

death of a paci

What a sad post to write! Today after Olivia got up from her nap, I noticed a rather large tear in her paci! Now, I don't think Olivia will be too sad about having to throw this paci away; she likes her Pooh and Tigger pacis better. But I am! This was my favorite paci because it is so cute! Once we had two, but we lost the other at church several months ago. *Sigh* We always knew this day would come...

leaves!

Now that we've moved to the new house, we have a much bigger yard and no landscapers to take care of it! (Part (most?) of our HOA dues paid the landscapers to mow grass, seed, blow leaves, etc.) So this year we are raking our own leaves.

Olivia "helps"

Playing in the leaves with Daddy

Wheelbarrow rides

At first Olivia wasn't too sure about riding in the wheelbarrow with a bunch of leaves. Then she decided to lay back in the leaves and loved it!