Taking a Beating

Boy oh boy oh boy...

Trying to get Olivia to go to bed these last few nights has been brutal. I do not know what is different this week as opposed to last week but it is definitely taking its toll on us. The other night she was up until about 10:15pm when Mike got home and was able to bounce her to sleep. Recently I have felt that we are moving backwards as we are finding that we have to basically swaddle her to get her to sleep. There is a definitely frustration and tension that is starting to arise. Olivia can be pretty cranky too and it is hard to figure out what she is really wanting. Time to do some more research? It is just before 9pm right now and I just got back from taking a walk to knock her out. I am going to wait a little bit longer to then attempt to move her to her bed without waking her up. Wish me luck!

I am not sure if she is doing squats or pull ups in this video but this is the night that she was up very late.

We did have a decent day today. It started with me moving to the couch with her in the middle of the night after she woke up. Olivia and I woke up and tried to keep it quiet so that Mike could sleep a little bit longer. As we were hanging out, I felt a rug burn that I got on my elbow the other day as I was chasing her around the living room. So , I decided to hold it out to her and asked, "can you kiss mommies booboo?". And she did! It was the sweetest thing! Well, kisses for her is with her mouth open and her tongue half way out. HAHA! But I will take it :-) I took a picture of her doing it a second time but I will not be sharing it because if someone scrolls through and only looks at the pictures, one day think that it is a picture of her nursing... OOPS! Please know that I will not post a picture of her nursing. That is a private bonging time for me and her.

When Mike woke up we were already late for church but we went anyway. Olivia is much faster than the last time we were there. She was probably one of the loudest kids there. She was also the ONLY kid with a binky. I told Mike that we probably need to start limiting binky time to just at home or just sleep time; nap or bed. Yeah, we will see how that goes too.

I had a really sad realization today... Olivia will not have any other little ones (and I mean kids within a year of her age) at her birthday party in September :'(  We just do not know anyone who lives close. We have had a couple of play dates but it has been a while since we had one and I have been too tired to go out and try to make some. Does that make me a bad mom? Probably not, but I sure feel that way some times. Maybe her second birthday will be better. I think we know that she really needs to be in daycare at least a couple times a week so that she can learn how to interact with other kids her age... well maybe that should be other kids her size. She is a big girl! I have seen kids who are a year who are the same size.

TOOTH WATCH: There are not signs of new teeth :( So sad!

Her tears glisten as mom takes too long to get the food to her mouth

Make sure that you get it all!

Success!! It is 9:32pm and I just moved her to her bed. Hopefully she will stay asleep. I would love it if she would stay asleep. Another thing that I am wondering is if she is trying to ween herself. As sad as it would be, maybe it is time. I will continue to pump so that she is getting breast milk but it may be time. We will have to do some research into it. She does have an appointment on the 9th so we can always ask. We already know that the gal we see will be praising us for still breast feeding. She did last time! Which reminds me of a conversation that Mike and I had! There are times that I will be changing Olivia's diaper and will say, "Yay! Poop!" (when she does). There are times when she will go a couple of days in between, so yes, I get excited! Mike heard me say it one time and chimed in with, "how ridiculous would it be if OUR parents still praised us for EVERYTHING we did?" HAHA! Yeah, it is pretty funny to think about. 'Yay! You went to work today! Yay! You pooped!' Every little thing that we do during a day :-) Sometimes babies just need a little praise :-)

Okay, Okay... Here are some of the other photos from a couple of weeks ago:

Okay, these first several were from Mother's Day...

From the weekend with the grandparents:

Look at the love that they have for each other! <3 <3

Dad had to "burrito" her for a nap while we were at the park

Meeting great aunt Heather for the first time! <3

Exploring an old fridge at grandma Sheila's house

I call this one: THE DEATH GLARE

And this one is: THE DIVA

I will end with her DIVA pose tonight. HAHA! I posted more pictures than I thought but there are so many others that I would like to share. Until next time (hopefully tomorrow!).

Recoverying

Yesterday morning I came down with a 24 hour bug that my mom had over the weekend :/ I am thankful that it hit me in the morning because I had not eaten since the night before so there really was no reason to throw up. I am thankful to my brothers Ryan and Jon who came over yesterday and today to help us out so that I could rest and get a couple of other things done. I am finding more and more that Olivia crawls after me even if someone else is at the house to watch her. There are times that I am doing dishes and all of a sudden I have little hands clinging to my calf and moving up my leg. It really is the cutest thing! What a great feeling to know that I am needed :)

At one point today I took Olivia back into my room to feed her and to see if I could get her to lay down for a nap. Well, it did not go as planned and she spent most of the time crawling to the edges and peering over into the unknown that lays on the floor... no really, our room is a disaster... Anyways, at one point she found the remote to the TV, which was off, and what happened was so incredible to watch. She picked it up and held it to her ear, then she grabbed it with her tiny fingers and attempted to push some of the buttons. She then immediately turned around and looked intently at the TV and waited to see what would happen. This girl already knows! How can that be?! Not quite nine months yet and she is already on her way to figuring out how the TV works. It is just a beautiful thing to watch her brain work as she figures out the world around her. I cannot wait to see what she will learn in the next few months. Before we know it, we will be celebrating her 1st birthday!

Playing with the kitties ears

Chasing the kitties

Learning how the remote works

It really is one of the hardest things to do when I have to leave the house after Olivia is already awake for the day. I have pictures of her all over my desk that I stare at all day but it is often not enough and I have to ask Mike to send me pictures and/or videos. These days he is getting faster and will send them before I even ask for them. Here is one of the latest ones that he has sent me:

I do not think I will ever understand how some women are able to so easily able to leave their children to pursue a career. Yes, everyone is different but the joy that a baby brings to your life, in my opinion, cannot be beat by anything else. So I may cause some arguments with my blogs, so what... it's my blog! Some people can disagree all they want and then go and read something else :)

This little girl was crawling is circles up until about 9:30pm! A ball of energy she is; and she didn't even take an afternoon nap. I could not blame it on a full moon but I guess I could try to blame it on this crazy weather! Thunder and lightning! Yeah, not my favorite thing when I am trying to sleep.

When Mike got home I asked home if he wanted to contribute anything to the blog tonight. Well everyone, here it is:

"Olivia tired to eat my toes today. Like tried to eat them four or five times!"

Thanks babe... that was great. HAHA! Yes, I know that our baby girl has a thing for toes at this point in her young life. I hope that she will grow out of it before she hits daycare or preschool. 



TOOTH WATCH: There are no new teeth yet but she has been sleeping a little bit better; only waking up once a night at this point.

Hopefully I will be up for blogging tomorrow. I really do enjoy it, I am just so tired all the time. Sweet dreams!

Memorial Day Weekend

We were blessed to have my parents and sisters Kristen and Lauren in town this weekend. Saturday morning I took Kristen and Lauren with me to plant dahlias at the VA Medical Center. Last week I had received an email that they were in need of volunteers and I thought to myself, "why not!?" We were only giving an hour of our time to plant flowers for our veterans to enjoy and it reminded me of planting flowers as a little girl in our front yard. Olivia got to stay home and hang out with dad.

We believe that our little beauty is teething again! She has bee waking up again in the middle of the night, is more grumpy than usually, but has actually been taking naps. Poor baby girl! Maybe a top tooth? :-) hopefully it will not be a month long ordeal this time around. However, last night we also had the first thunder and lightning storm of the summer! That probably contributed to her constant waking up. At one point I was tired and just done so I picked her up and we "slept" on the couch for the rest of the night so that Mike could sleep. I mean, one of us should get sleep. There is no point in having two sleep deprived parents if you can avoid it. I do think that you should trade off though! That is what it means to be parents together; taking turns and helping each other out. It has taken time but I think that we are turning into a pretty good team and I think it will only get better as Olivia gets older and can communicate. But we will just have to wait and see.

I felt so bad! For probably close to 7 hours on Saturday, Mike was outside changing the brakes on our Kia. He was only able to change the driver side brake pads and caliper. He also had to take two trips out to Spalding, a place to get used car parts, because the first time, they gave him the wrong calipers. :( I felt so bad! He got sunburned and was exhausted. But he didn't give up! Next up? The passenger side brake pads and caliper and then on to the brakes on the Subaru! My honey is amazing :-) 

Playing with uncle Ben while he is resting on the floor

BEAUTIFUL :-)

Football!! Look at those muscles in her back!

Yesterday, we went to church and then back to my brothers' house for a BBQ and some time at the park! Olivia took a nap that was just over 2 hours. WOOHOO! I am pretty sure that at some point in the day, we all took a nap... or even two. They were definitely needed.

Nap time with auntie Lauren!

Yup, listening to my sun glasses :)

It was a good weekend. The family took off yesterday morning after having breakfast at our place. Olivia and I then went to see some friends at the park. However, we did not get to stay out long as we heard more thunder rolling in. Yup, we need to prep ourselves for a crazy summer of weather.

It is now Tuesday and we are just truckin along through this week! I have a feeling that the rest of it is going to go by pretty quickly. I am hoping that tomorrow I will be able to post the rest of the pictures from two weekends ago when we spent time with the grandparents. But for now, good night :)

Well That Was Easy

Other than when she is teething, we have never really had a problem with putting Olivia down to sleep. The family that I babysat for while I was at Whitworth, and until this last August, had children who would walk themselves to their beds after lunch, lay dawn, and take a 3 hour nap! When I asked the mother how she did it her response was, "I don't know. I guess it was just always expected. And we has a routine. Well, we have not been good with a routine but it is expected that she lay down and go to sleep when it is bed time because mom and dad need some sort of sleep. Very, very thankful parents! It is 9:12pm and she just went down. It is way past her bedtime but we were Skyping with Grandma Cole and Great-Grandma Nunes. What a ball of energy! She was zooming from one end of the living room to the other on her knees and using her walker.

Right before I put her down, I was laying on the living room floor for a moment to catch my breath. Out of the corner of my eye I see Olivia crawling towards me over my right shoulder. All of a sudden I see a little mouth coming for my eye! that's right, she ate my eye! As her little lips touched down I could not help but laugh and she pulled away and started to laugh with me. Then before I knew it, she was coming in again but this time for my nose! I am not sure where she got the idea but it was cute :) Taking advantage of all the small moments. Hopefully she will be thankful for all of the documenting that I am doing, even if it is not the most well written.

What is not to love about this face!? Loving these bright colors on her. Thank you Grandma Sheila!

Chowing down on some Mum-Mums.


Pictures from our mommy daughter date to the park :) I know that Mike has some too from when he takes her.

She LOVES the swing

Goofball!

Sweetheart

She was totally mean muggin some kids at the park! Just kidding! I just happened to catch her at the perfect wrong moment.

Eating banana pieces!

So, we decided that we were going to try making our own baby food. I opened up the baby bullet that we received at our baby shower and got to work! The first food I made was straight banana. She loved it! Then I made an avocado, blueberry mix. I was not sure what she would think about it because I do not like avocado but she liked it!So after a couple over mixes, this week I made a blueberry, banana. YUCK! She did not like it at all. So, then I tried a banana, apple thinking that maybe it was the skin of the blueberry that she did not like. NOPE! She didn't like this one either -_- UGH! So then I decided to give her slices of banana. It took a little while but I eventually got her to eat most of them. Well, on to different flavors. If the feeding schedule is even remotely close to what we should be feeding her, we are WAY behind. It is now a fight to find flavors that she likes. I do need to try some of the veggies (which she seems to like more anyway) but that means that I have to steam them and I just do not have the time or the energy right now.

Mike and I definitely feel like we need to sleep for a week. Thankfully my family will be here this weekend to help with that! Man, there are so many stores to share but I am completely drawing a blank...