Planning a Birthday Party!

I am starting to get freaked out about the fact that Olivia is almost one. And although I do not need to plan her party a year in advance, I should probably start to get my thoughts together now. Of course I have a Pinterest board started :-) I am thinking butterflies! Now, to figure out the colors. This evening I had a friend over and we started brainstorming what we could do for the party. Because not that many people will come and we do not know very many people with babies, it will kinda double as a farewell party. The party will be on her actual birthday, which kinda sucks because it is a holiday weekend :/ Oh well. I always told myself that I was not going to be one of those parents who go "all out" for their child's birthday party when they are so young because they won't remember. YEAH RIGHT! I want it to be great :-) I am hoping to do a cake smashing photo shoot and I am so excited.

Here are a couple pictures from the last couple of days.

Eating raisins out of the cutest little box! We decided to try the side-pony instead of the whale spout. I love it!

Olivia got dropped off at the uncles' house this morning and she was ready to explore!

Here she is crawling through the splash pad at the park by our house.

She was concentrating really hard to make sure that the peas would not roll away so that she could SMASH THEM!

Lord,

Thank you for this little ball of energy that You have entrusted to me. Parenthood is the most challenging yet most rewarding thing I have been through so far and probably will ever go through. I thank You for her fingers and toes, for her chunky thighs and her hungry little belly, for her little button nose and her wispy blond hair. I pray that You would be with me as I continue down this journey and that I will be the best mother that I can be. Thank You for all of the people who have been placed in our lives to have a positive influence on Olivia. I know that we cannot do this alone and that you gave us family and friends to help fill in some of the gaps. I thank You for her sweet, sweet smile and blue-gray eyes. You have been so good to me and I do not deserve such a wonderful child. I am thankful that she sleeps through the night and loves to play with her kitties. Thank you for the opportunity to raise this little blessing. In Jesus name, Amen.

Great Visit

I am beyond thankful to Mike's supervisor for giving him two days off in a row. According to him, when his trainer found out that he was coming to Spokane for his day off, she went and talked to the supervisor. They switched his schedule for the next week and told him that he has Saturday off as well :-) That means that he did not leave until almost 2pm today. So so thankful for the extra time!

Mike and I were able to go on a date Friday night to the movies and this morning we had breakfast with one of Mike's friends who was up from Cali visiting his family. Here are some pictures of the time that we had together.

We had a GREAT time at the park!

After Mike left, Olivia and I spent time just hanging out at home. We were going to go to the park but it started raining :/ She was walking all over the place! I really think that the time she spent on the pontoon boat really helped her to find her center for balance. Here is a short little clip of her walking. It does not even compare to the steps she was taking when I had the camera off.

Lately, I have also been working on mixing up the food that she eats so that it is not the same thing every day. I have also been introducing more and more solids. Yay! Here are some of the new things she is trying:

Toast!

Pasta and green beans!

CHICKEN NUGGETS!

AAAANNNNDDD, whatever she does not like ends up on the floor..... like tomatoes, zucchini, squash... When I make pureed food, I usually add in zucchini and squash and recently started adding green beans, but she does not like them whole. Hmmm, interesting. I will keep offering and hopefully she will eat them one day. The other day I was talking to a coworker about getting a mat for under her chair. If I cannot get the food cleaned up right away, I basically need a paint scraper to get it off the tile. UGH. She suggested one from an office supply store. i will definitely look into it. 

Here are some other photos from bath time <3

She found the Crunchies that mom bought!

I LOVE THIS PHOTO AND OUTFIT!!

Helping mama clean by putting all the tupperware in the recycling 

Olivia loves Troy and Troy loves boxes. HAHAHA!

Like father, like daughter. Talk about two peas in a pod!

Alright, so this next photo is of one of the outlet plugs that we use to keep Olivia out of the outlets. Yes, it started to melt, I do not think that that is supposed to happen. It kind of worries me. I was trying to take it out as I needed to plug in two things next to me. I had a really hard time trying to get it out. Once I got one side out, the other side seemed to be stuck. I twisted and pulled on it and when it finally came out it looked melted. Did I cause the melting? I don't know but I am going to do some research on the types of plugs and figure out what is going on.

Here are a couple more videos from this week :-)

I am not sure that she understands the bubble machine yet. HAHA!

He's Back! He's Back!

I am pretty sure that Olivia and I spent a half hour outside waiting for Mike to pull up to the house. Car after car after car.... nothing. There were so many white cars that drove by! And of course, the moment that Olivia desiderate to eat a twig is the moment that Mike pulls up. I cannot even begin to explain the flood of emotions that came next. 

What was even now wonderful was seeing Olivia's reaction. She loves her daddy so much and knew who he was the moment she set eyes on him! He has lost some weight and now has facial hair and she did not hesitate for a moment and wanted to be in his arms. They are the CUTEST when they are together <3 <3

Mike suprised me by saying that not only does he have Friday off, but he has Saturday off as well! Thank you Lord! That means that we get him all day tomorrow and until about noon on Saturday. I get to snuggle with someone tonight and Olivia gets to have her daddy back as her morning nap snuggler.

Olivia had pasta for dinner. Yay! It took me a little bit to get her to try it. Unfortunately, most of the green beans ended up on the ground. The rest of the remained untouched on her tray. It is all trial and error when feeding babies. I also feel like it is taking two steps forward and then one step back. Two steps forward and one step back. Is she having too any solids? Should I be go in her more finger food? Is she getting enough water? How am I doing on the variety in her diet? Well, the answer to the last one is: not very good. But I'm working on it! Slowly but surely  I'm getting there. And what do new parents do when the baby is down? Date night of course! Shared homemade nachos and some sparkling cider :-) I may not post tomorrow but that is because I want to give my husband all my attention while I have him for a short while.

Getting Back on Our Feet

It has been about three weeks since Mike left for Seattle and what a crazy ride it has been! He has Friday morning off so he will be heading over on Thursday morning when he gets off work. We will get about 24 hours with him :-) It may not be much but we will take what we can get!

This last week has especially been full of ups and downs. On Sunday the 12th Grandma Sheila flew into town to watch Olivia while I went on my expedition. The staff where we were were so gracious to not only give me a place to pump but also a place to store my milk so that I did not have to pour it out. The trip was a blast! We did not lose anyone :-) We went hiking, rocking climbing and repelling, and did kayaking this year instead of white water rafting. The staff really wanted me to bring Olivia along but I thought she was a little young.

Snuggles with her kitty!

The hardest part of the whole trip? Well, yes... being away from Olivia for three days was hard. However, it was very difficult when I Skyped with Sheila and Olivia Monday afternoon and almost as soon as Olivia saw me she start to hyperventilate and sob her eyes out :'-( It was so sad to see! I could not take it so I told grandma that we would not be Skyping anymore but asked her to continue to send me pictures and videos. It is so heart breaking to see your child so sad. It broke my heart and just made me want to get home that much faster. Grandma said that she did great the rest of their time together. Thank you Sheila for coming over and keeping little Miss Olivia company! 

Olivia did not want to say goodbye

It was sad when we had to take grandma to the airport that Thursday. After the airport, we were on our way to meet up a friend to go out to her wedding venue when Olivia threw up all over her car seat! The poor thing :-( She had milk and a Go-Gurt that morning. I pulled over and cleaned her up the best that I could before heading straight home to get her cleaned up. She had a temp of 101 degrees. To this day I am not sure if she caught a bug or if it was from teething. Her appetite did decrease drastically, but she kept nursing. It took until today but I think she is finally back to herself :-) 

Last Friday was my friend's wedding that I was in. Olivia was not feeling the best but she did really well all day long. The wedding was at a lake front property and absolutely beautiful. Olivia was surrounded by little kids from 4-7 years old. They all enjoyed each other. It was also her first time playing in sand and she LOVED it!

Olivia and the Bride, just after getting her hair done

In the one on the left, she had crackers on both hands so she went down with her mouth to pick up the cup with her teeth. But could not drink from it! 

Saturday was pretty low key, we hung out with uncle Ryan for a little bit. Then on Sunday, we went to the river house of a family that I used to babysit for. I have not seen them in about a year because they moved and it was so wonderful to see them! We went out on their pontoon boat and Olivia had a wonderful time. She took it as an opportunity to work on her balance as we bumped along the waves from the other boats and jet skies. We pulled off the river to play in a shallow part and some sand. Olivia just loves the water. She liked being held up in water where she couldn't stand. On the way back, I pulled out her whale spout and let her little hairs free. She was getting fussy and I was trying my best to keep her calm. At one point she threw her head back and opened her mouth to whine some more, and what do I see??? 

TWO MORE TEETH! 

That's right! She now has four little teeth on top :-) I am so excited for her.

I was able to get her to calm down a little and put her back on the floor of the boat. She stood up and shimmied along the seats to the front of the boat. Once she was there, she grabbed onto the front gate and stared up river. Her wispy hair was flying all over in the breeze and she was gripping the gate really hard. At one point she turned around and gave us all the cutest, gappy smile! She was so content in those few moments. Pure joy and contentment. Oh to have no worries in life. There have been a few times when she has been scared or startled by things and she will basically jump into my arms. What a gift it is to have a little person not only depend on you 24/7 but trust you as well.

She did not like this vest either

This is a big pup! He is about a year and a half pure Great Dane I believe. Such a sweety though. Olivia is by his front paws.

I need to invest in one of these... a river house I mean

Yesterday was rough for me. I think that everything finally caught up with me and I could hardly get out of bed. By early afternoon I had a temp of 103.1, a massive headache, chills, hot flashes, a sore throat, and my body felt like it was hit by a car. It. Was. Bad..... Ryan came over after work to help me out. My fever broke before I went to bed last night. I felt a little better today but not a whole lot. I am just hoping to feel better by the time Mike gets here so that we can all enjoy the time we will have together.

Olivia and I stopped by my brothers' house today on our way home. We were just exploring and discovered that she could climb stairs! (Well, she climbed stairs at the river house on Sunday but I got it on video today). She is growing up so fast :-)   :-(