Tentative forward motion Thursday, May 29, 2008

I didn’t witness it myself, but I’ve been told by a trustworthy source that our little Olivia has managed to “crawl” several feet as of yesterday evening.  It was an army-style belly crawl, but she was quite determined to get to point B and made it happen.  Once she’d arrived, she turned and smiled at her mother, then nearly immediately fell asleep.

Additionally, we’re pretty confident that words are on the cusp of their arrival.  Her sounds are getting more and more defined, possibly indicating her ability to form those sounds into short words.  Maybe she’ll just tease us for a while longer, but we can hope.

On an extremely positive note, she’s been considerably better about going to sleep – much more like our pre-San Diego baby.

I’m sure everyone has been looking the photos, but I’ll remind you that its always expanding…

Not owning a dog, I never thought I would own chew toys. Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Wrong.  They are in my fridge, scattered all over the house, and tucked in strategic locations in our cars.

About a week and a half ago, I noticed an increase in Olive’s fussiness level (which is normally pretty miniscule).  She also started chewing on everything she could get her hands on.  I immediately suspected teething and when I checked her mouth, she was the proud owner of a small, barely discernible bump on the front right side of her lower gums.

Fast forward to now – giant lump on the front of her lower gum.  Multiple teeth coming up.  I can feel them under there, but you still can’t really visualize them yet.  My poor girl.  She’s still only a little fussy, but her mommy is absolutely fraught at the idea of my sweet, sweet thunder-thighs in pain.

What am I ever going to do when she has her first real boo-boo?  I mean besides weep in a corner somewhere…

Wow. Really not doing well with the posting lately. Sunday, May 25, 2008

The last few weeks have been so very busy.  San Diego first and then Ian’s trip to Chicago while I went to Chattanooga with Olivia.  It’s all a blur at this point.  We’re still in Chattanooga and I’m writing from my future sister-in-law’s computer.  Ian is with us, having driven here after he got off work Friday.

Let me catch you up with her cuteness, Olive.  She’s five months old now.  She fits quite well into 12 month clothes.  You really don’t notice how big she is (except her thighs… no hiding those puppies) until you compare her to other kids.  Our friends Adam and Megan have an almost two year old who Olivia could probably swallow whole if she were so inclined.  They wear the same diaper size.  Not kidding.

In the past week, she has learned to sit on her own.  She can’t yet sit up without assistance, but it certainly isn’t for lack of trying.  She’s amazingly apt at sitting, but now that she’s sitting she really wants to be standing.

She loves squash, likes carrots, and tolerates peas.  She eats breakfast, lunch, and dinner on top of her bottles because whenever the adults are eating she MUST eat too or there will be mutiny.  When I was young, I hummed while eating (much to my older brother’s displeasure).  Olivia is her mother’s daughter, happily humming and gobbling up her food.  Right now, I think it’s quite cute.  In a couple of months, I will probably share my older brother’s opinion.

Mimi gave Olivia an activity center.  It’s the type with the swivel seat and a suspended bungee base to build up those legs (not that they could feasibly get much bigger).  There are cute little toys to teach cause and effect on all the corners.  So far she loves all the dangly stuff.

Doodah bought Olivia two toy dolls.  One speaks Spanish and English when you press buttons on the hands.  The other is a little life-like baby.  Olivia was flabbergasted by the talking doll.  She may have a crush on the life-like baby.  She squeals and giggles just like she does with her boyfriend, Shaw.

Oh.  Yes.  Boyfriend.  Already engaging in heavy petting and makeout sessions, much to Ian’s discontent.  Olivia loves Shaw, the cute, tow-headed progeny of our friends, Mark and Laurie.  They have sucked face (literally, not figuratively).  Olive coos and giggles when she sees him.  He grabs her by the ears and plants big wet ones on her.  “The Talk” is apparently going to be needed much earlier then anticipated.

I know there is more going on in our lives than this but my brain is mush.  Mush, I tell you.

Bed time Wednesday, May 14, 2008

So Miss Olivia now has a bedtime.  An official, carry her to her crib, bedtime.  Or at least we hope that’s the answer…

Since we returned from San Diego, she hasn’t been the best bedtime buddy.  We attributed it to a lot of things – the time change, the change from sleeping in the same room as us, and even the bed she was sleeping in.  She’d scream uncontrollably if you laid her in her crib or even on the floor next to you.  She might consider calming down if you rubbed her leg reassuringly, but it wasn’t the perfect cure.  We tried letting her cry it out, but after a couple of 30 minute sessions that didn’t see an end in sight, we had to try something different.

All we could do is put her back into the glider that she’d slept in for the first month or two.  It pretty much got her to sleep without too much of an issue.  We figured we’d ween her from it slowly, getting her back in the crib within a few weeks.

However, last night we discussed taking her to bed at a specific time.  We were a little later than planned on getting her to bed, based on a couple of previously successful attempts last week.  Tonight, however, Susan carried her up at 8:15p and we’ve not heard a peep from her yet.  The key, beyond time, is that she is still a bit awake.  If, for some amazing reason, she’s actually fallen asleep, it isn’t going to work.  And if she has already started to fuss?  Forget it.

Our little one is growing up!  But now we’re chained to the clock for a while…

Ugh Sunday, May 11, 2008

Ok… so we haven’t posted the trip report or much of anything else since our return because we’ve been a bit busy.

Olivia didn’t re-adjust too well upon her return – she kicked into a screaming fit when it was time to go to sleep.  We figure not only was it a time thing, but an environment thing, too.  You see, every night she’d gone to bed with us in the room.  On top of that, 4 nights were spent sleeping in the middle of an adult sized bed, with the last being alongside her mother.  (More on that once I get the trip report up…)  So we’ve had to deal with that each night, which is a big change for us.

On top of that, I’ve been working a great deal, keeping me from polishing off the details of the report.  What is a great deal you ask?  How about the fact that I worked from 11p on Thursday and didn’t go to sleep until 6:30a on Friday morning.  One problem after another welcomed me into my on-call week.  It hasn’t improved an awful lot either – notice I’m posting at 5:20am?  I didn’t choose to be awake at this time, trust me.

So anyway… those are our excuses.  I will note that we fed Olive some yellow squash last night, and she did reasonably well with it.  You can see those pictures on Flickr.  We’ve also uploaded our photos from the Disneyland portion of our trip.  I think the only photos left to upload are those from Susan’s camera, which I’ll do a little later today.  Oh, that and try to get some of the video up, but that’s not quite as easy as the photos.

Home Tuesday, May 6, 2008

We’re home.

We haven’t posted the trip-report because we haven’t had much internet connection time, nor have we had much time in front of the computer.  Once we left San Diego, we were in Disneyland Friday night and the majority of Saturday.  Sunday had us up to LA and back to San Diego.  We got into San Diego at midnight, woke, went to lunch, and headed off to the airport.

Disneyland was fun – worth the stop, but we would have had a better time if we’d gone during a weekday instead of a weekend.  LA was good – we like San Diego better – and it was fantastic to see Kim, Sparky and Richie.

We saw Tiffany for a final farewell lunch on Monday afternoon before heading to the airport.  Olivia flew well going out, except for an incident wherein she rid herself of almost 8 oz of formula at once.  Luckily we were on a very low population airplane and we happened to have a number of burp clothes at our disposal.

We’re home now and happy to be here.  The yard and flowers have grown dramatically.  Mark and Laurie have done a great job of keeping Mooch in a clean home, and Mooch is quite excited to have us home.  Her cry was quite pitiful when we arrived home at midnight.

I’m up for work at the moment, but headed to bed now.  Maybe we’ll have a better post in a day or so… its going to take some time to recover and regroup.

Oh yeah… Thursday, May 1, 2008

I’m slowly writing a comprehensive report of our trip to San Diego that hopefully we’ll post this weekend.

Photos… Thursday, May 1, 2008

Just to make sure everyone knows, we’ve created a collection of photos on Flickr from our San Diego trip…