There are a number of things that we’re thankful this year. First, of course our beautiful daughter Olivia. She’s brought a lot of change to our lives, but all for the better. We’re thankful to have good jobs, a home, and loving friends and family that have helped us out so much over the past few months as we’ve adjusted to being parents instead of 24/7 gamers and hard workers. While we weren’t exactly planning on going anywhere for Thanksgiving, the itch hit us late last week. We just came to the realization that Olivia is not going to be this small forever and with some of our family only 4 hours away, it was wrong not to try to visit for a couple of days. Hotel fees suck, but so does sitting at home looking at your 4 month old and thinking she’ll never know her family.

We had a great time. Even though the hotel was $$$ it was worth it even if just for the privacy at night. We got plenty of rest and Olivia adjusted very well to the ride down and to sleeping in a hotel, sleeping until 6 or 7am most nights without any interruptions. We also got to meet our neice, Natalie, for the first time this week too! She’s very cute and VERY small. I forgot how small Olivia was at that age and Natalie helps remind me of that. She’s very petite and delicate

Picture 1: Grandma Ruth feeding Olivia

Picture 2: Natalie

Picture 3: Our Aunt Vann holding Natalie

Picture 4: Olivia’s plumber’s crack… verrah funny. Those jeans did not want to stay up on her!

Picture 5: Aunt Elizabeth and Olivia

Picture 6: Natalie sleeping away in her car seat (I’m getting good at this Photoshop thing)

Picture 7: Olivia and Natalie sleeping off the morning visit with Grandpa and Grandma Wall

Picture 8: Grandma Mandy and Olivia

Picture 9: Mmmmmmmmm Turkey!

Picture 10: Olivia and Natalie

Picture 11: More Olivia and Natalie

Picture 12: Olivia and Natalie in the same outfit (Olivia is 3″ longer than Natalie at this point… same outfits, but different sizes. Look at what just 2 months can yield in an infant!)

Picture 13: Mommy and Olivia

Picture 14: Grandma and Grandpa Wall holding Natalie and Olivia

And of course, what would a big Thanksgiving post like this be without video?

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Finally! We had a chance to take some very good pictures and video of Olivia today to make up for the fact that we couldn’t do so earlier in the week when she really turned four months old. Again, another month has gone by and it seems like a blur. She’s growing by leaps and bounds, and we’re not kidding! Her 4 month appointment was this morning, which revealed to us that she’s just growing like a weed. She weighs 15 pounds, 2 ounces. She is now 25″ long, which is actually an entire half inch longer than a week and a half ago when we took her in to have her ears looked at. Turns out she actually has begun teething. Given her weight, good head control, and eager appetite, the pediatrician recommended we slowly introduce rice cereal into her diet. Let’s just say that has made our evening very entertaining.

The fourth month revealed a lot of goodies for us. It has definitely become a lot easier now, and she is an absolute joy to play with. She loves to get up in the morning and play. We look forward to going in and getting her now. I actually find myself upset when I have to rush off to work and can’t get a chance to see her before leaving. I’ve taken to hanging back a bit and being a tad late so I can sneak a little Olivia time in! She did stop sleeping through the night, but that is just typical of this age. She has so many new things to discover and is into everything that we put in front of her, that she just wants to play, play, and PLAY. A few nights ago she actually woke up just to talk, which is cute normally, but at 5am you have no clue what to do other than to just let her talk. It seems we have a little chatterbox on our hands already. Oh lord, we better get the cell phone plan squared away!

Another gem: she no longer needs her Miracle Blanket. We’re so happy that she just switched cold turkey over to using a sleep sack. She has had zero problems transitioning to this new sleeping style, which has made our lives easier. On top of that, she can be put down wide awake with a pacifier and put herself to sleep now. I don’t mind cuddling her to get her sleepy at all, but it is nice when you can feed her and put her back down in 20 minutes when she wakes up at 3am on a work night

The family pictures have been ordered. Target did a wonderful job of taking them. I know most people scoff at that and think “oh Target, that’s cheap,” but honestly, they did an awesome job, better than a “real” studio would have, and cost less. We paid $100 for the digital copies of all of the pictures taken so we could print out loads of them for Christmas this year. We will be sending out family Christmas cards after the Thanksgiving holiday, so be on the lookout! Until then, the family picture is really a little secret.

We have some wonderful pictures for everyone to enjoy as well as two videos!

Olivia’s First Bite of Cereal from Georgia Nelson on Vimeo.

Here’s a video teaser for you! We’ve been meaning to capture this kind of video for a while now, because it’s one of the most favorite things we look forward to each day, which is going in to the nursery to get Olivia up in the morning. She’s so happy and smiley in the mornings, as you’ll see in the video. It’s rare that she wakes up crying now. She more or less starts talking into the monitor for us to come get her. The funny thing is, I understand what she’s saying most of the time! I know the difference between hungry chatter and tired chatter. It is very weird, but cool at the same time.

Anyway, here’s the video!

Olivia Good Morning! from Georgia Nelson on Vimeo.

Just a quick shout-out to family and friends: Olivia is four months old today! I was going to take pictures this morning, but the sun hadn’t risen enough to give us good lighting at home. We’re probably going to have to try to do the monthly picture session this weekend instead. Besides, most of her clothes are too small so I have to run out and get some things to tide her over until the grandmothers go crazy at Christmas.

The four month old priss-pot woke up at 4am to eat, then she wiggled her arm out of her Miracle Blanket and passed out again for an hour and a half until she woke us up with the grandest of poops. She went to bed again, then greeted us this morning with more poops! She is in good spirits, obviously. One of these days we’re going to take the camcorder in there and video how she wakes up in the morning, because it’s the most rewarding thing in the world to us. It just erases all of the night-waking memories from our minds.

Anyway, patience young padawans — we will have pictures soon! I promise!