Olivia has officially helped mommy bake some chocolate cookies! She seemed to have a great time doing it. Daddy is also preparing for his baking session… BEER! It will be my first try at homemade beer and so it should be interesting. We are going to try for an Amber Ale. No worries, there will be plenty for all (40 bottles worth).

“Lets get started mommy!”

“Let me do it!”

Olivia stealing some chocolate chips when mommy wasn’t looking!

“MORE! MORE!”

Olivia is officially in charge!

Who knew making cookies could be so fun!

A true master at work!

“You’re not doing it right mommy!”

“Cans we eats them now?”

BEER! (will take 4 weeks from this weekend…)

Last week Olivia had her second birthday! It is really hard to believe that it has been two years already. It feels like just yesterday she was this tiny, squirmy thing that confused us first-timers. Of course her birthday fell on the annual beach trip this year, so we celebrated amongst family last week. I made a successful attempt at creating a giant cupcake for her birthday. Last year we did little cupcakes, and this year I did a giant one. She seemed to like it. I tried to find the old Williams-Sonoma sand castle cake pan, but unfortunately it was no where to be found. Maybe next year I can snatch one up before the trip!

We had a lot of fun and it was tons easier this year now that Liv could walk. Last year we spent a lot of time chasing after her or carrying her all over. Now we could basically just let her do the running Much easier! She enjoyed the beach and got very upset when we wouldn’t let her run down there on her own from the beach house. She’s not quite fond of sand, but what kid at this age is? We still have a bucket full of seashells that she picked out to bring home. They’re not the prettiest things, but they’re special to her and that’s what matters.

Potty training is well under way. She tells us when she needs to go to the potty, though she doesn’t always make it there. We’re being pretty patient about it and not pushing it. Daycare does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to potty training. “Das poot” is her way of saying “that’s poop!” Our theory is that the daycare ladies check their diapers periodically and if they see poop, they exclaim “That’s poop!” Kids say the darndest things!

And on to pictures:

(Uncle Danny with Natalie)

Now for some retro Liv:

Can’t wait to see what this next year brings!

Olivia is getting SO big and I feel like I’m starting to lag behind in getting some decent portraits of her. I had posted a few a couple of weeks ago before Amma arrived. Here are more from that session:

We’ve had such a busy past couple of weeks! Amma came to visit with us for an extended weekend and we had so much fun! I’m just now getting to the images, mostly because I’ve been swamped with clients the past few weeks. The wedding threw me off quite a bit. Saturday we had the distinct pleasure of having brunch with friends. We found out the hard way that Liv loves the drums in Rockband. I think Amma may have almost gotten clipped in the face with the drumsticks a couple of times. We’re glad we didn’t have to make any last-minute trips to the emergency room to have a drumstick dislodged from her ear.

We also have video taken on the camcorder that we’ve been meaning to update. Unfortunately, our choice in camcorders was a poor one. It takes forever to convert the files, because it saves in a different format than what you can show on the web.

More coming!

Tonight I had a client needing a week to recover from one heck of a back injury, so with 70 degree weather, low humidity, blue skies, and puffy clouds, we decided to take advantage of this by going to Cracker Barrel for dinner followed by a small photo shoot at the park. I overuse this park, really I do, but I LOVE it for toddlers. Liv can ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuun all she wants and it’s ok, because there are no big distractions, nothing I have to Photoshop out later, and it’s beautiful. Right now the grass is about a foot and a half tall, so thankfully she didn’t run off into it. I wouldn’t trust it right now with all I’m hearing about snakes in the area anyway.

I’m still working on the wedding that I documented last Friday, so I could only take a small break to edit some of these tonight. There is a whole series I want to make and put on a little storyboard for the house!

Sorry for the watermark, but as always, I’m trying to protect not only my work, but also Liv.