Tonight Olivia was in a good mood for once, which is quite rare considering she gets completely worn out at daycare. By the time 6pm rolls around she is completely dead. I put her in a little pettiskirt and let her dance around the kitchen a bit. She was being really rambuncious and eventually declared that I needed to get rid of the camera by tugging at the strap and screaming “NO WANT IT.” Ooook then The language skills are shaping up nicely, but she seems to have inherited my bossiness and her father’s stubborness. They are two very dangerous traits to mix together. We shall have to see what we can do about that.

I’m still making my way through beach pictures as I have time. Been trying to relax a bit around the house instead of working so hard as soon as I get home from………… you guessed it - working so hard!

I hate shooting on the beach… my equipment gets all kinds of dirty from the humidity + sea spray. By the time I handed the camera over to Maurice for some shots, it had become completely fogged over again, so they’re VERY blurry. Sigh… can’t win I guess

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:

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.