It Has Been Way Too Long!

15 Month Valentine Day Pictures!

 My goodness I can hardly believe how times flies!  Every weekend I say to Dan, "I am going to update the blog this weekend!  We have so much to include about Olivia and our growing family!"  The weekends always seem to get away from us and on Sunday I am upset that I never got to update the blog!

Miss Olivia is 16 months now and has developed quite a personality!  She weighs about 22 pounds and is 30 inches long.  That puts her in the 36% percentile for weight and 36% percentile for height.  What is funny is she has tiny feet, size 4, and it has become difficult finding shoes that fit her that are for a walking/running/climbing toddler.  I am sure there can be worse things than small feet!  I always wished she would have small feet and hands too! She is definitely our little toddler, constantly on the go and a little mimic!  We are having fun with this stage, but to be honest it can be exhausting! 

We decided that the theme of this entry is, "The reason why I have NOT updated the blog!"  Here is the list of reasons in no particular order!

Teething

It is hard to capture her teeth, but if you look closely you can see top ones!

My goodness we never had an issue with teeth and Olivia until the molars started to enter the mouth!  Right night she has four front teeth on the top, two on the bottom with two more breaking through.  In the back of her mouth she has four molars now, and the other day at the doctors, she said there are four more breaking through!  WOW...lots of drool and lots of cranky!  We feel terrible, but there is nothing we can do except offer her the teething rings, wet washcloths, and her tooth brush!  Yes, brushing those new pearly whites is one of her favorite activities!  She will walk into the bathroom three and four times a day point to her teeth and say, "brush."   So there are days when she just wants to cuddle with us and that is fine with us.  It has not affected her sleeping at all...just her waking hours!  Hope this all ends soon.  She does look so much older with a grin full of teeth!

 Talking 

Most of you know me and know that I love to talk!  Well I guess this trait has been passed down to Miss Olivia!  Oh my goodness what a talker!  What amazes Dan and I is how from week to week she adds to her vocabulary and her talking becomes so clear!  There are many times we still have no idea what she is saying, but there are more times now we can understand her.  About a month ago, I counted and she could say over 20 words, but now that number is larger!  Her favorite words are, please, cheese, walk, eee for Hurley, and milk.  Of course she is always shouting for daddy and momma!  My favorite word she says is night night, which apparently she named her blanket that!  We would always say ready for night night Olivia and she would go runing for the stairs.  While changing her into her PJ's we would give her her blanket to cuddle with and suck her thumb.  I guess she understood night night to be her blanket and now it has been dubbed that name! 

Walking

At the playground!

"Walk...Down...Walk" is a constant phrase we here when walking through stores or the parking lots!  Olivia loves to walk and walk and walk!   We will go to the playground and she likes to go down the slide a few times, but she will spend more time walking around the place than on the equipment.  On weekends we take daily walks outside, weather permitting, around the block.  She has certainly mastered this skill and it has only made our life more exhausting.  haha

Eating

Well she loves to eat!  Anything and everything we give her she will gobble down!  She will usually have oatmeal, or yogurt for breakfast with some Cheerios and fruit.  Lunch is a variety of items and we usually try to vary it up with some kind of protein a fruit and a veggie.  Dinner is about the same.  Right now she prefers to eat, cheese, pasta, avocado, blueberries and strawberries and oddly enough her favorite veggie is zucchini!  We are constantly giving and trying new foods and she loves it.  Her most favorite food is off of mommy or daddy's plate!  We often have to say no it is mommy's or no it is daddy's.  Then a fit is usually thrown, but we try to distract!

Waving 

Bye-Bye, to her shadow, dogs, and cars, Olivia loves to wave at anything and anyone!  She has developed this princess like wave.  She holds her arm out in front of her and moves her entire wrist back and forth!  We have no idea where she learned that from because we never waved to her that way, but man oh man I hope this is not a sign of what is to come! haha.  In any case, she is quite the waver and that is  usually accompanied with blowing kisses as well.  One thing is for sure, she is a lover not a fighter!   

Feeding Herself 

Eating her yogurt with her spoon!

Olivia has always wanted to use the spoon herself and often gets upset if we do not let her feed herself, so recently we gave up control a bit and let her go for it on her own.  The task can get messy, but to be honest, she is doing wonderfully!  She can stab most items with a fork, but still needs help with soft things.  Her cereal and yogurt are on the way to being mastered.  It is nice to be able to give her something and walk away or sit down to eat too.  Our little baby is growing up!

Traveling and Other Visitors

The girls

We journeyed to the beach after Christmas to visit with Dan's family.  Olivia is an excellent traveler!  She will usually sleep for about an hour and then be content to look at book after book!  She loves being at the beach house too.  Olivia had a blast keeping up with her cousins!

We had two weekend visitors in February.   My friends from college, Denise, flew down to Maryland and Beth drove up from Virginia.  Olivia hardly napped all weekend because she wanted to play with the girls!  We had a girls night out and left Dan home with the baby!  It was nice to have them here and I look forward to seeing them again soon!

Last weekend my mom, Tyler, Olivia, and myself traveled to Ohio for my cousin Heather's wedding.  The car ride out was fine.  We stopped for dinner and shortly after, she fell asleep. It was a bit chaotic when we arrived at the hotel at 11:30 that night, and both kids were awake for a bit.  She settled down though and took a fairly good nap on Saturday.  Saturday night we pushed the limits and she was up way past her bedtime.  Exhausted, she finally succumbed and fell asleep in her stroller.  Sunday's drive home was long and we ran into snow, but her exhaustion helped the journey!  She did not really want to be walking around anyway!  Tyler turned on a movie and that kept her occupied for quite a while too!  She is our little traveler and we look forward to more road trips this spring!

Favorite Anecdotes  

There are many Olivia stories, but these are the ones that make us smile the most!
Ring Around the Rosey was taught to Olivia by Grandma and Grandpa Hart one night when she spent the night.  It is a cute little game, but for weeks she was obsessed with it!  She would walk up to you and hold out her hand saying, "Ashes, Ashes!"  It was fun and adorable the first few times, but when it went on for hours one day...I had enough.  I taught her how to twirl and I sang the song for her!  She still loves "Ashes" so you are not allowed to say that word unless you want to spend hours spinning in circles!
Itsy Bitsy Spider is another song, Grandpa taught her.  This one is fun to watch her move her two index fingers, trying to move that spider!  We sing it in the car on the way to school and she is getting really good at the other hand movements!  We want more like that Grandma and Grandpa!  haha
The last of our favorite Olivia anecdotes includes Hurley.  A few weeks ago we were eating breakfast in the dining room.  Olivia's high chair was facing into the kitchen.  All of the sudden she says, "EEE (her name for Hurley) No, No!"  We turn around and sure enough he had his head all the way into the garbage can.  Apparently someone did not close the lid and he was having a field day!  We laughed about that one for awhile! 

Olivia's  Favorite Activities

Dont take me inside! 

 One constant favorite in her life is reading books!  I would like to think it is because we have read to her since she was born, but I am sure it is also because both Dan and I love to read too!  We have so many books and she loves to read them in the car, in her room on her favorite chair, and in the living room with the bin of books.  This is the only activity that will keep her attention for a span of time!  Her favorite book at the moment is "Blue Hat, Green Hat" by Sandra Boyton, she often giggles when the last character is wearing the wrong outfit and the book reads "Oops."  She will repeat oops.  She is also into the books that make noise.  We bought two new books with buttons and sound.  When she pushes the button it will say what it is.  Perhaps the favorite new book is the animal noises one.  She pushes the button for kitty and it meows.  She will sit in the car and hit the button for the animal noises the whole ride.  We are constantly saying what animal makes the noise.  Hopefully one day she will know it and say it back to us! 

Her second favorite activity is walking and playing outside.  Whenever the weather is nice she is outside playing both at Mrs. Sharon's, our house, and grandma and grandpa's swing set.  It is very hard to get her back inside.  Often she throws a fit when we come inside, as you can see with the above picture!  Mrs. Sharon was surprised last week when Olivia threw a fit for her when she needed to bring the kids inside.  It was funny to us because Olivia will throw a fit and this is the first time for Mrs. Sharon to see that!

Lastly, all day it is up and down the stairs.  We use to have gates up to block them, but she is so confident going up the stairs and loves to play in her room.  So we gave up on the gates this past month and are teaching her to go down the stairs too.  She has almost mastered going down too, but she likes to play on the stairs and we often have to stop her and say, no playing.  I am thinking though in the fall we will have to gate off the stairs to keep her retained to one floor of our house because...

Baby Puryear #2 is preparing for an August 17th arrival

Yes it took us 18 months to finally get pregnant with Olivia and had to go through IVF, but in December we found out we where expecting again!  It has taken us by surprise, and we feel so blessed!  To be honest, in the past few weeks I have just started to show and it is starting to become reality.  The two kiddos will be 21 months apart and I will stay home with both kids in the Fall!  I think I will be teaching summer school this summer, but it will be great since I will have an extra three months off!  I can handle that!   We have an anatomy sonogram on March 29th and we will find out the sex and if everything else is healthy!  So for now we keep telling Olivia about her baby brother or sister and use the word baby a lot.  We do not think she has any idea what it means, but I am sure she will soon enough!

This blog has been four months coming and I hope we do not go that long again, but running after a toddler takes much more energy than I ever imagined!  We continue to be amazed on a daily basis and some days are more exhausting than others, but overall we would not change a thing!

We will update soon! Until then, enjoy the pictures on the Picasa link and pray for a healthy baby!
Love to all,
Dan, Laura, Olivia, and Baby Puryear #2