The Last Post of 2014

What a year this has been. I went through a lot of the big moments of this year in my post about our anniversary back in October. We had a lot of first this year and LOTS of ups and downs. I am hoping an praying that 2015 is better than 2014; but I do not know if that is possible because we got the BEST. GIFT. EVER. Baby Olivia Mae. <3 <3

These first two photos are of Olivia completely worn out from going to work with me the past two days and not really napping. Today I had to hold her and finally was able to get her to fall asleep after wrapping her up and walking outside. The I held her for an hour and a half before she woke up.

Making moves!

HAHAHA!! <3 <3 That face, like father like daughter

Here is the original, she was blowing bubbles

We ended up having the neighbor's kids until 2am. They are easy kids and fell asleep pretty quickly, but we were tired. Their cell phone died at the hospital so the last couple of hours, I heard nothing from them at all. 

All that is left to say about the Quiet Book is that I am excited to do some research and to get things started when Mike gets paid :D

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Trying to get her to take a nap

 The following few pictures were taken with my Galaxy Gear watch that Mike got me for Christmas. It does a pretty good job! They are photos from a friends house where we went for dinner.

A girl on the move! Every time I lay her on her back and turn away, she flips herself right over. There is nothing wrong with that except that she ends up spitting up a lot almost every time. Do not be surprised if I let you know soon and post a video of the beginnings of crawling. CRAZY! We love this little girl so much.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! WE WILL TALK AGAIN IN 2015 :D

We Survived!

Nothing big, just Olivia coming with me to work the last two days. It would not have been that bad except that this whole not napping thing is really starting to get her. At one point, one of my co-workers had her at the back of the building while I was trying to get my meeting started at the front and with the door closed. I could hear her! Geez, this girl have some lungs. She is a trooper though. Both days we came home and snuggled afterwards.

Tomorrow we are going to take our time in the morning and then take our Subaru back to the shop. And I also found out that Thursday is a paid day off! I didn't even think about it until someone told me yesterday :) HAPPY NEW YEAR! WOOHOO!

I really could get her into modeling. I just don't know where to start!

I bet that you have noticed all of the beautiful blankets that Olivia lays on when she poses for pictures. Many of them are handmade by wonderful family and friends (thank you!). So the other day while we were out and about, I was having problems coming to terms with the fact that this is my first child, my daughter, and I have not made her anything myself. I did not want to make a blanket so I went on the hunt for idea. I came across patterns for a Quiet Book. We used to have some and so I have decided that I am going to make Miss Olivia Mae some Quiet Books :D If you do not know what I Quiet Book is, here are some pictures. They are made out of felt and a few other materials. I am currently in the process of picking what activities I want in it. 

To be continued... the neighbor just asked me to watch her kids while she takes Duke to the ER.

Mixed Emotions Today

What a day with ups and downs. Let's start at the end of the day and that I am thankful for my brother Ben's birthday because it means that I can pack up all of my holiday stuff and start the new year off clean (well somewhat clean). 

She had just finished eating breakfast and I was calling her my rooster this morning :)

SEAHAWKS WIN!! 

That is really all that needs to be said about this point. They now get a Bye week, so they do not have to play in the first round of the playoffs next week. And, they get home field advantage so all the playoff games that they play will be in Seattle. WOOHOO!!

As the Seahawks game was starting, I started a load of dishes and noticed that there was water on the floor. I cleaned it up and went to watch the game. Part way through I went back in, while holding Olivia and noticed more water on the floor so I asked Mike to investigate. GREAT! There was about an inch of standing water under the sink and everything was soaked. We pulled everything out, cleaned up the water, and called the handy man to come and look at it. On the phone he said that we must have bumped the pipe and loosened it -_- The pipes should not come apart (and that is exactly what it did) with just a pump. He did come out and fixed it. He told us to air it out and to not use the water for a little while. Before he showed up I noticed some spots on the wall under the sink. I asked him about it and he thinks it is mold -_- great... one more thing to deal with.

Mike and I have been watching TONS of home improvement type shows so that we have somewhat of a better idea when we go to buy a house. I think that my favorites are Property Brothers and Holmes Inspection. We watch them both on Netflix. Holmes Inspection is about people getting scammed by home inspectors and buy houses with way too many problems. Holmes comes in and does his own inspection and fixes all the problems. Most of the problems that he deals with is mold (and here is the point!) so we now feel a little more informed about mold, how it starts and when to be really concerned. We will clean it the best we can as it is not very much and will be letting the landlord know.

Little miss Olivia may not be rolling over a ton yet but she is rotating herself around the blanket! I wish that I had gotten pictures of the first time that I noticed it because she did a 180.

My brother Ben came over for dinner and we made homemade burgers and fries. YUMMY! As I took the burgers off the griddle, I reach for the sides to push the griddle farther onto the counter to let it cool and OUCH! Yup, I burned myself. Boy does that hurt! Thankfully (although that is mean to say) Mike had burned himself when Olivia was very young and I had to go to the store and get him some burn cream. It really does help. It does not look so bad right now but I have a feeling that it will tomorrow. 

We have this WONDERFUL two piece swing for Olivia. It is great to be able to put her in and when we travel, we usually take the top part that can bounce. As I was holding her up today and letting her stand on her feet, I noticed that she was having a hard time standing up all the way and straightening out her back. So what do I do? Google! It says that rockers are great and can really help a baby calm down but their time in it should really be limited to an hour or less a day.... OOPS! She definitely spends more time in it than that. So while we were both home the last four days, even before I knew this, we have tried to give her more floor time and more cuddle time on our laps. I am also thinking that I need to get people to babysit for Olivia's sake so that she can stop being bored of us :) 

I'll add in a few things here as I wait for the video to load. We have gotten a small dusting of snow the last day or so. It really isn't that much but I do love to watch it. Even our kitty cat Troy likes to sit in the window and watch the flakes float down from the sky.


This video is from yesterday morning. I was woken up by the sounds of her grunting in her bed. I waited to see if she would start to cry. After a couple of minutes Mike got up, thinking that I was asleep, to go put her binky back in her mouth. I told him to wait as I thought she had just wiggled free and was playing with her feet. That was not the case and she was still swaddled but laying there content and this is what I heard:

Olivia ended the night and weekend playing with her dad. Oh how I love to sit back and watch!

Replenishing the Stock

I can understand why more and more moms are just using formula to feed their babies. Making sure that you produce enough milk is a tough job! Our stock was non-existent for a few weeks. Talk about being stressed out. It meant that I would have to cut my work days short so that I could come home and feed Olivia. How we have been doing it is that I wake up at 4:30am, feed Olivia at about 5/5:15, pump whatever is left (and she goes back down), Mike feeds her during the mid-morning what I have pumped, I come home around noon to feed her and stay home (most days). After I put her down around 9pm, I finally have time to get things done and pump what I can before I go to bed so that it can be added to what I pump in the morning. Then it starts all over again.

I am excited to say that I have 5 bags of milk in the freezer again! WOOHOO! I have been trying to figure out how to balance and how to produce more. Olivia may be going through a growth spurt. We have thought about formula to supplement for what she is not getting because I am afraid that I am not producing enough to keep up with her growing body. She has an appointment coming up and we want to talk to her doctor first before we introduce formula or anything else.

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So, I was informed today that our baby girl has been alive for 109 days! WHAT!?!?! That is insane. But I was also informed that I have only blogged for 52 of those days :D Oops! At this point I feel like I do a lot of repeating though but if you all don't mind, I will keep rambling and try to remember my new discoveries when I have them.

Here are some photos of Olivia in her Christmas dress that somehow did not make it into the blog last night. Pretty, Pretty Princess <3

Too stinkin cute! We will need to do another photo shoot in the dress, she did not want to smile. The dress (thank you grandma Sheila!) says that it is 6 months and she fits into it pretty nicely. We will probably use it for Valentines Day also :)

Waiting in the car while daddy runs into the store

So, this outfit that Olivia is wearing is an outfit that I wore as a baby. When I can find the photo of me wearing it I will do a side by side. She is Thumper from Bambi.

Olivia is holding her own bottle!

She is picking up on things. Last night we had her laying on her floor mat with toys hanging above her. There are a couple that when you pull on them they play music. I pulled on one of them a couple of times and showed her how to do it. She was pulling and straining so hard to get it to play music, and she did it! We just loved to watch her work at it and learn. As you can see in the picture above, she is also learning to hold her own bottle (but not without supervision!). It is amazing to see how she grows from day to day. 

What I really love is to Skype with family and hear them say and point out how much she has grown since the last time that they saw her. We do not see it as much because we are with her all the time. But we do know that she is growing. As a teacher, I cannot wait until she can really start to communicate and I can teacher. 

Earlier I was on Facebook and came across a TED Talks that I thought I would share. For parents, happiness is a very high bar. It definitely gave me a new perspective. I let Olivia know all the time that I will do my best but I know that I will mess up and that we will have plenty of fights.

TED Talks: TED is a global set of conferences run by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan "Ideas Worth Spreading". TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event; the annual conference series began in 1990.

     There are several TED Talks worth listening to. There is one about introverts by a gal named Susan Cain. It is great :) I would encourage you to listen to a few!

Alright. To end the night, here are a few of our first professional family photos:

Yes, I did take pictures of pictures in order to post them... it would have taken too long to scan them! And I lied, the last thing for the night is a cute video of baby girl.

Baby's First Christmas

Olivia's First Christmas!

There are going to be a lot of first this year..... obviously. And some of the big ones are holidays. Travel or stay home? What traditions to start? Do we need to start traditions in these first couple of years when she won't remember?

This year we decided to stay home and just have time with the three of us. Olivia has not been sick yet (knock on wood) so we wanted to keep her away from people, we wanted some quiet family time as Olivia does not do will with big groups of people, and being an introvert, when I get time off of work I prefer to just recoup at home.

It was wonderful :-) We did not wake up until almost 9 am and spent the day opening gifts and playing with them, Skyping with family, eating breakfast food, and taking family naps (so important!). 

Thank you to everyone who sent Olivia gifts! It would take way too long to go through them all but know that we are very grateful to have such loving family and friends. 

She was not sure how to feel about the frog toy I bought her :)

Knocked out from all the excitement!

 We hope that you all had a wonderful and blessed Christmas! <3

Olivia has not rolled over again since the weekend (I feel like she is teasing me!) but she is blowing bubbles with her mouth: 

These last couple of days we tried to stay out of the crowds and to just stay home. I think we did a pretty good job this year of having everything done in advance.

Making a Snow Angel in her blanket!

I caught her playing with her feet at nap time

TOES!

 I know I know... wishful thinking with this one. I stood her up, snapped a blurry picture, and then she slumped over. But it will be so cute WHEN she CAN stand!

Playing with mom's yoga ball

Thank you grandma Mona for the overalls! 

What do you do when you don't have a fire place??? You search "fire place" on Netflix and TA DA! A fire place with the sounds included and background music. Next year if we still don't have a fire place, I'm going to buy of kids red play time bricks and build a fire place around my TV. HAHA! IT will be wonderful :D

Mike took today off and is taking tomorrow off. Unfortunately I have to do some work tomorrow as I did not take some time off. We are both feeling like tomorrow should be Football Sunday though!

I will say that I am very disappointed that Olivia did not get a white Christmas for her first Christmas. People kept telling me that it is fine because she won't remember. And to be honest, I would probably be telling them the same thing last year before I had Olivia. Yes, she will not remember, but I WILL! We are supposed to get snow this weekend though so I will have to dress her up very warm to go outside to take "Christmas" pictures in the snow. She won't know :D 

At some point this weekend I am hoping for us to take Olivia out to look at some Christmas lights. There are a few places around town that have some great light set ups. Supposedly there is a road up on the South Hill that they call Candy Cane Lane in the winter time. I have to find it! She does love sparkly things so I can't wait to see the look on her face :D

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL! <3