9 months means TuTu's

Last Sunday Olive turned nine months old. We can't believe that she has been here the same amount of time I was pregnant with her.
As usual we took an enormous amount of pictures to document a trivial milestone. I couldn't bring myself to narrow the selection so enjoy a whole slideshow!



The doctor visit was a breeze and he was impressed with how social she was.
Her stats were: 22 pounds, 28 inches
I don't know what percentiles those stats fall in because my doctor is very careful not to tell me. Thankfully, I am not particularly anxious to find out how "0ff-the-charts" she is. The most disappointing part of the visit was that, even though she has outgrown her infant car seat, "they" (don't ask me who) are recommending babies are not turned forward until "as close to 2 years old as possible". I have been counting down the days until she hit the magical 1 year mark so we could enjoy car rides again. Does 12 months count as being "as close to 2 as possible"? For us it does. I am also not sure why I used so many quotation marks in this post. "Whatever".

Crib Time is Fun Time

Olive LOVES her crib. That is the place that she by far sleeps the best. I think she is genuinely happy when I set her down in there at night. She almost never cries to go into her crib. She loves it so much that she likes to play in it when she wakes up. I usually hear her awake and talking to herself for probably 10 minutes before I go in to get her. My favorite part is that she is so happy when she wakes up. She used to kick her legs when she was excited to see you. Now that she can pull herself up she bounces with enthusiasm. The down side to her strength is that when she doesn't want to go to sleep she will stand up holding the bars for dear life and scream like a mad woman. Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often.
Since she is usually so happy I thought I would document her after a nap. In Olive's words....

"Oh hi! I am so happy to see you" (Photos don't really convey bouncing, but imagine it was a video)


"Yay for mommy!


"Uh, what is that in you hands and why are you not picking me up?"


"No worries, I found something to chew on"


"Hey there, these bars are blocking me from reaching you"


"Get out of my way stupid bars" (this would be accompanied by grunting)


"I really want to stand up. What is going on here?"

That is where the picture taking ended because I had to reach in and get her leg loose. Chubbiness is not good for fitting into small spaces.

This one I just felt needed to be black and white.

The Girl has got Smarts

Didn't I just post that she was beginning to crawl? It was just over a month ago that she starting to figure out how to scoot around on her tummy. Now she is not only a super speed crawler that must get into and investigate everything she comes across, but has begun to pull herself up on just about anything she can grab hold of. I am still catching up with her mobility and constantly putting things away, or taking things away from her. I am certainly not ready for her to begin climbing! Last week she would only pull herself up to her knees, now she is on her feet and trying to get her knees up on the stairs. It is not that surprising because Olive has always wanted to be standing and looking around. She wants to know what is going on. She always had unusually strong legs but I guess her strength to do it on her own is finally catching up. I thought I was not prepared for crawling, but am now realizing that standing and climbing is a whole new ball game. How did she grow up so fast?

Look how proud of herself she is. Fortunately she hasn't had any bad tumbles yet and is pretty tough when things do go bad but I am not looking forward to the inviteble bonked head.

What else? Basically life has been the same craziness as always. It does seem that we have had a ton of family events lately. In the last month we have had 6 birthdays one of them being Scott's (yeah for 27!), one baby blessing, one graduation, and a baptism, not to mention Easter and having family in town. That is also not counting another birthday and Mother's day this weekend. There has been a lot of family time and May is looking to be just as busy -- hopefully we don't get sick of our families.

Sunflowers will birghten your day

I was talking to my mom and realized that we never posted Olive's six month pictures. As if I am not already an avid over-poster with our pictures, I figured I better add these even though they are almost 2 months late. I think that they turned out pretty great. To fulfill my duties as a mother I must show her off at all times and in all places (or poses as the case may be) even if they are a bit outdated. That is my duty as a mother right?






This is what Olive looks like when she is done taking pictures and about to loose it. You can almost see the cry coming. We have learned to stop going in the evenings before bed time, but at least we got some good shots in.

Don't worry there are many, many more but I will spare you the excesses of first-time-motherhood.

Oh crap....we're in big trouble

Olive is extremely close to crawling and we are *very* not prepared. Today we must go get gates and other safety items to protect our electronics and such. She has been strong enough to do it for quite awhile now and would hold herself up in push up position. Just today it is actually clicking to push with her feet and reach with her arms. She is not all the way there but it is only a matter of days until she will be able to do it properly. This morning she has already gotten into tons of things that she never even noticed before, things I didn't even realize we needed to babyproof. I know this sounds horrible, but we are not exactly excited for our whole world to be turned upside down once she is mobile. Good thing she is so cute while she is destroying/discovering everything.

Not to worry, the dream lives for another day

Well, our plan for fame didn't exactly work as hoped. Apparently it is very difficult to get a lot of viewers on youTube. I guess a lot of it is about timing and how you are indexed, or so I'm told. A lot of people told me that it was a cute video, but only if you knew Olive. I suppose my "parent vision" might have blurred reality a bit. Don't worry though, the dream lives on and now Scott has a million other ideas to make videos of.
Other than that there is not much to report. We have been doing the same old things as always. Let's see, since my last post we:
-flew to California, went to Disneyland, went shopping, flew home all in 2 days (that was an adventure)
-watched a good movie (Let the Right One In) a kids movie (Horton Hears a Who) an awful movie (Rachel Getting Married) and Chocolate (which is a kung fu movie that I opted not to watch)
-played some LBP (incase you don't know that stands for Little Big Planet (incase you don't know about that, it is a PS3 game (incase you don't know about PS3 well, I am not explainging))). Scott played some K2 (that is Killzone 2 which, again, I opted out of)
-I went to a knitting class to learn how to put a strap on the mary jane's.
-didn't go to Mom's group or Bouncing Babie's because I have been knitting like crazy.
-had my youngest brother sleep over after his scout camp, which meant they spent most of the afternoon at Nicklecade.
-went to dinner at my parents house on (every) Sunday night

Like I said, life as usual.

We are a Multi-media Family all for your enjoyment!

One of Scott's life goals is to get 100,000 views on a YouTube video that he made. So I came up with a great idea for one and we thought we would share it with the world. We think that this is hilarious. I can't watch it without crying from laughing too hard. It is a bit long, but stick with it, I think it gets funnier. I hope that you all enjoy it also. Take a view and tell a friend. There can be only good that comes from this because you will have a laugh while getting one view closer to fulfilling someone's dream.
If you have never seen the Evolution of Dance video you must watch it first by clicking here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMH0bHeiRNg

Now watch our video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EulTmQGGLoo

I really hope that you all enjoy!

P.S. You should also check out Scott's new movie review podcast on iTunes called the Showtime Showdown. Or visit showtimeshowdown.podbean.com. I am his wife, but I think it is really funny!