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!

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!

Olivia-isms at eighteen months

One sided conversations I've been having with Olivia lately:

"Olivia! Mommy's pants are not a napkin! Please do not wipe your mouth on me!"

"Use your spoon, please. Oatmeal is not a finger food."

"Oh, Olivia. I love you even when you hug me with your lasagna-y hands."

"What are you ga-ta-ga-ing?" (Ga-ta-ga is her word for, "Give me that".)

Some new words Olivia says: hello, bath, bye-bye (also followed by her blowing kisses), night-night, go, sit (she know this one because we tell her to "sit" all the time!)

New things that Olivia is doing:

She likes to turn herself around in circles.
She can climb out of the bathtub (she still needs some help)
She can climb onto our bed (I fear the day she can climb out of her crib is coming soon)
She sorta helps me make the bed
When something is split on the floor, she sometimes will get a rag or a towel and wipe it up

Our little girl is growing up so fast! It seems like she is learning a new word a day. She still loves to go outside, still loves her bunny and still loves to cuddle up with Mommy, bunny, paci and a good book just before nap time (I love cuddling with her!) I hope she won't outgrow that anytime soon!

On another note, Olivia's diaper rash is gone! Ya'll must have been praying hard, because we started to see immediate improvement on Thursday. Thank you!

Olivia update

Today I took Olivia to her 18 month check up. She now weighs 23 lbs 4 oz and is 33 inches tall. That puts her in the 30th percentile for weight and the 85th percentile for height. In other words, she's tall and skinny. But we already knew that. :) She is also above average in language development. She can say between 15-20 words pretty clearly and sign a few more. Of course, she's saying a lot more than we can understand right now, but pretty soon we'll be having conversations!


On another note, Olivia has figured out how to scribble! It was pretty exciting the other day - I taped down a sheet of paper on the kitchen floor, gave her a couple of colored pencils and let'r at it! She had a blast!

Olivia - the budding artist

The final product

As you can see, Olivia also took it upon herself to alter the shape of the original page design (i.e., she tore the paper off the floor). That's about the time Mommy ended her first art session. Eating the pencils also influenced my decision. I did write her name on her paper; I was trying to show her that you could write words on paper, too; she wasn't impressed and just ended up pushing my hand away. I guess I did get a little ahead of myself. I bought her some crayons this week, so we'll have another coloring session soon.

happy "birthday" Olivia!!!

Today Olivia is 18 months old! We can't believe that she has been with us for that long; at the same time it feels like she's always been around. I can't imagine life without her! Paul and I decided to celebrate a little bit, so we took her out for lunch at Chick-fil-a. She really enjoyed it! She pretty much ate her whole lunch, with the exception of one or two bites she shared with Mommy (okay, that Mommy snitched). She wasn't too sure about the apple juice, which really surprised me because she normally loves it. She did enjoy squeezing the box and watching the juice squirt out of the straw. She loved her fruit cup! She also finished her 4 piece chicken nuggets! Below are some pictures from today. Enjoy!

Chowing' down on that fruit cup

Trying to decided what to do with her ice cream cone...

Daddy showing her how it's done:

Deciding that she doesn't really like ice cream;
she pushed Paul's hand away and went back to her fruit!
(Don't worry; Mommy and Daddy finished it for her. :) )

Olivia got a book in her Kid's meal! She was pretty excited about it! I eventually had to take the book away from her while she was eating because she kept chewing on it as well as her food.

Playing in the playground at Chick-fil-a:

I would have taken some more pictures of her in the playground but my camera batteries died. I barely got these pictures! I think Olivia had a blast, but she was ready to go home. She didn't fuss at all when I told her it was time to leave. She told everyone in the playground, "Bye" as we where leaving. What a sweetie!

Olivia-isms

I thought I would share a few things that Olivia is doing now in her 16th month:

Olivia has decided that she loves cherry tomatoes out of our garden (see pic below). The first few times she just spit them out.

Olivia likes to say, "ga-ta-ga-ta-ga", which means, "I want that! Give that to me!" (We do make her say please, usually.)

Olivia also says, "Peek-a!", as in, "peek-a-boo"

Olivia like to "help" me fold sheets. When I say help, I mean she likes it when I throw the sheet up in the air and it falls on her and covers her up. This is often when she says "Peek-a!" One day last week Bunny ended up playing with us. We both laughed so hard!

Olivia likes to "help" me sweep with my cool battery powered Swiffer Sweeper (see pic below).

Olivia LOVES going outside. She also loves that she can take Daddy her shoes and sometimes "talk" him into taking her outside.

Olivia loves to climb into the laundry basket, but often has to get Mommy or Daddy to lift her out. The other day she had her stacking/nesting cups in the laundry basket with her, just like it was the most natural thing in the world to play with her toys while sitting on top of a load of laundry!

Olivia LOVES drinking ouy of Mommy's cup with a straw. Yesterday I had her cup and my cup side by side - can you guess which one she made a beeline for? She also loves drinking out of Daddy's sports bottle.

Olivia loves it when I sing "Little Bunny Foo Foo, hoping through the living room, sneaking up to Livi and bopping her on the head!" I take Bunny and bop Olivia on the head. She laughs and squeals!

When we go for a walk around the neighborhood, Olivia often stops in front of the houses of people we know. Sometimes she'll even run up their sidewalk and bang on the door! We've had a few impromptu visits because I couldn't catch her soon enough!

Olivia has been trying to feed herself with her spoon in her left hand, even though she has better control with her right hand. She'll get frustrated because not much ends up in her mouth, and then dive in with her right hand and grab the food! Learning to feed yourself is messy business. *sigh*

What are your favorite Olivia-isms? Leave me a comment!

the play place

Today I decided I would finally take Olivia to the play place at the local mall. I have been meaning to take her there for a while now, but it just never seemed like a good time. I actually wanted to take her to splash in the fountains outside the mall, but they didn't have them on. :( No worries! I got a little shopping done and Olivia got to run around in the play area. The play area consists of gigantic Loony Toon characters (sans Bugs) on top of some sort of rubbery flooring (so it doesn't hurt if kids fall). You can climb on top of Speedy Gonzalez and his cheese, or slide down Pepe Le Pew's tail. I figured Olivia would love to climb everywhere, but once again, mom was wrong. She spent her time running around the characters, watching the big kids, and trying to escape. (No surprise there!)

Watchin' those big kids

Climbing on Speedy's hat

(I actually lifted her up onto the hat. I don't know if everything was too hard for her to climb because it was so slick, or if she just wasn't very interested.)

Checking out the Build a Bear Workshop

"Mommy, I love this tunnel thing! Watch me climb through it!"

Found a new friend! (This little girl's middle name is Olivia!)

new tricks - part 2

As promised, here is Olivia's other new skill that she learned this week:

new tricks and other non-news

This week has had some ups and downs. Olivia and I have been battling some illness. Mine is a yucky cold that I am afraid might be turning into an even yuckier sinus infection. I think Olivia's is just more teeth coming through. Either way, we've both been more cranky than normal this week, and that doesn't make for pleasant days!

On the up side, we went "swimming" with our neighbors earlier this week. This involved Jeanie (our neighbor) and I sitting in chairs while Alathea (Jeanie's 2 year old) splashed in her baby pool and we all tried to convience Olivia to join her. Olivia had fun: she pushed Abigail (Jeanie's 4 month old) in her swing, she played with some of the pool toys, and she ran all over the yard. She did not seem the least bit interested in splashing in the pool! A couple of times Alathea chased her, calling out, "Come back, Yeah-a!" and brought Olivia back by holding her hand. ("Yeah-a" is Alathea's name for Olivia.) It was so sweet! This is the only picture I got of Olivia in the pool. I had to pick her up and put her there. As you can see, she wasn't too happy about it:





Olivia has mastered a couple of new skills this week. I'll let you check this first one out:

I'll post her other new trick in the next day or so.

the first trip to the library!

Today I took Olivia to the library for the first time. As much as she likes books, I thought she would love it! Perhaps I should let the pictures tell the story:

Ooooo... What's in here?

Mommy, will you read me this book?

We can sit here to read... hey! What's over there?

Let's go see!

This is fun! I like running through the stacks!

(This is actually what she did most of the time we were there. We were in the kids section, no one else really was, and she was quiet. Mostly.)

Whoa! A computer that is on my level! And since Daddy's not here to take the mouse away...
(Olivia loved this! She stayed here a good 3 or 4 minutes.)

Well, since we're here, maybe I should read at least one book...

And then, as soon as we got in the car, this was what she wanted to do:

Apparently, the library is a fun place to run around and finally get to play with the computer. Reading is for somewhere else!

Guess what I did!

Hi Friends and Family! After much jealously, I mean, admiration over my friends' blogs, I finally decided to write my own. This blog has 2 primary purposes: 1) to post cute pictures of Olivia and 2) to keep up with the Joneses. Seriously, I have so enjoyed catching up with all my friends via their blogs, I decided to return the favor and write our own.

So, in honor of purpose #1, here is a cute picture of Olivia:

Okay, she's a little mad in this one. I think she's trying to say, "Mama! You gave me pigtails for the first time and they look really weird!" So I put her down for a nap, gave her a snack and redid both the pigtails and the picture:


Much better! Happy "birthday" Olivia! You are 16 months old today!