It finally decided to snow in Northern Virginia today and not a moment too late either darnit! We’ve been patiently waiting for a good (well, “better than nothing”) snow for two months now. Typically we have gotten a lot more than this in the past or at least several snows that range 2-3 inches before getting the motherload of snows (> 6″). It snowed most of the day and has now tapered off to sleet and freezing rain. Aside from making a very interesting commute tomorrow morning, we’re doing fine. We have loads of toilet paper and milk, so if the world comes to an end due to 3″ of snow, we’ll survive.

Today does mark the first day Olivia has ever experienced snow. We only got a couple of pictures this morning of her outside with us. Sadly, we didn’t invest in a big, expensive coat for her, because we don’t take her outside for more than a few minutes to get to and from the car. It seemed silly to spend upwards $50 to get an infant a coat she’d just outgrow in a month. She is growing too fast I tell ya…

This weekend we took it easy. We didn’t really go anywhere or do anything in particular other than have Charlie and Allison over Saturday afternoon and evening for some fun. We took a ton of pictures today to choose from for our Valentine’s cards from Olivia. Those will hopefully go out this week. We dressed her up in a little pink, knit dress that was given to her by her Great Grandmother Mary quite a while ago. She’s only just now able to wear it, but it’s adorable on her! She seems to like playing dress-up, but the photography sessions have become very foot-centric. In other words, she only wants to get to her feet to hold onto them and suck them as opposed to getting her picture taken.

Olivia’s very close to sitting independently now. We’ve been putting her in toys that strengthen her upper back to help give her the help she needs to learn how to sit. Most of the problem is balance. She gets to sitting, then leans back and flops over. One of the toys we’ve been putting her in the most is her walker. The scary thing is, she’s figured out that she can move it. She doesn’t move it quite like she should, but we don’t feel comfortable enough just walking out of the room and hoping she stays stationary for any amount of time!

Knitting has gotten to be quite fun. I’ve made 3 scarves and part of a hat for Olivia. I need to learn how to use double-pointed needles before I can finish her hat up, but it’s looking really cute so far. It’s just a simple beanie cap in purple. The Fierce Kitten Studio is also starting to fill up. I’ve made 5 bags so far, that’s half of the inventory I wanted to make before opening its doors again on Etsy. We’ll also be putting the finishing touches on Grandparents by Grace’s website this week. My work laptop will be out of commission tomorrow as it gets an exorci– err overhaul. It seems to be a little on the flaky side as of late.

Our latest thing for Olivia is making her food as opposed to buying premade food from Gerber. While the convenience of just picking up jars of food is great, it is getting costly. It costs $1.79 for 5oz of a Gerber stage 1 food. We can buy 1 bag of carrots for that much and make enough food for her dinners to last two weeks! That’s crazy! We’ve been steaming and/or baking until tender, then pureeing the food in a food processor/mixing wand with some water until we get it to the correct consistency for Olivia. After we puree it, we fill up ice cube trays and freeze them individually. Each cube is about 1oz or so, which is perfect for her serving size. She can only eat about 1/2 a jar, so that works out! Once frozen, we take each cube out and put them in freezer baggies, labeling them with what food it is and when it was made. It saves us a ton of money, AND the food has more flavor since it isn’t dummed down with preservatives from Gerber. Ick. This is much more natural and wholesome for Olivia! If I couldn’t breastfeed, the least I can do for her is take some 5-10 minutes of my time during the week to make her food for the month!

Olivia is now a whopping 6 months old! It’s hard to believe that it’s been half a year since she entered our lives, and we couldn’t be happier! She’s babbling more (especially after she’s been fed early in the morning), enjoying her solids (specifically carrots), and rolling all over the place. Her 6 month checkup was this morning. She received all the regular vaccines, but then we found out she has another ear infection. Hopefully it was caught early enough that it won’t turn out as badly as the last one she had around Christmas. She is in the 90th percentile for weight and height, so she’s proportional, but running on the large side. She’s 17 pounds, 12 ounces and 26.5″ in length. Crazy. She must get that from Daddy’s side of the family, because everyone on the Wall/Timberlake side of the family is height-challenged.

Some neat facts about Olivia (to date) are:

• She loves carrots and applesauce. So far those are her favorite foods. She’ll eat everything, but keeps her mouth open whenever those are part of her meals.
• She enjoys playing with any toy that has lights and sounds. Discovering how to make the lights turn on makes her very happy.
• She loves simple ring toys too. Those are the linked rings you can get to attach to strollers, car seats, etc.
• She prefers to suck her thumb over the pacifier. We’ll walk in to check on her after putting her down for the night only to find her paci in one hand and her thumb firmly glued to her mouth.
• Bath time is fun now! She likes to kick around on the floor right before she’s put in the water.
•  She is ticklish behind her ears and right along her sides closest to her armpits.
• Saying “da da da” and “ma ma ma” makes her smile every time.
• The television is the most awesome thing in the world, next to Mommy’s iTouch lightsaber that is…

In other news, Maurice is all signed up for his Spring semester coursework. He’s looking forward to getting back into the groove after acing his last class in the Fall. As for me, I’m bored to death now that I’m not learning something, so I decided to pick up knitting. I’ll also be focusing a lot of my weeknight efforts on designing the Grandparents by Grace charity website started by Grandma Evy. She has a skeleton site up now, but I fully intend to focus on that over the next week or so. I’ll also be building a stock for the Fierce Kitten Studio again so I can relaunch the business in February. Hopefully I can add some baby-related products to it. Many of the designs will be simplified in their construction so they’re easier to make and give me more time with Olivia and less time with the sewing machine.

And now for pictures… the outfit she is wearing is a jumper given to her by her Great Grandmother Mary.

We’ve had a rough weekend, so suffice it to say, there haven’t been any pictures taken. Olivia got a fever on Friday afternoon, but the daycare called the wrong parents. They also thought it was a good idea to take her on a walk in a stroller when it was below freezing outside, but our neighbors think that they stroll them in the hallways instead of actually outside unless it’s over 60 degrees outside. We’ll see about that on Monday.

Olivia does not have an ear infection, thankfully, but she does have yet another head cold. Her fever peaked at 102 Friday and then broke sometime very early Saturday morning. At least she’ll have an immune system before going to elementary school *sigh* but it does make these weekends rough. Maurice having to work and stay up a total of 24 hours on Friday was not helpful either. Poor guy was really messed up all weekend on sleep because of that, but you have to do what you must to support the extended family (aka Mythic).

Despite all of this, Olivia gave Bananas and Sweet Peas a shot this weekend. I didn’t even get a dirty look on the peas, which is unusual. Most kids hate those things. She seemed to fare well on them though and sucked it all back before bed tonight.

We’ll try very hard to get some updates this week with pictures.

FINALLY! We caught Olivia laughing on video… she has been laughing since she was almost 4 months old, but it’s been hard to catch on the video camera, since she loves to stare at it when we turn it on (I think the red light amuses her inner-adult). Maurice is the master of getting her to laugh. Henceforth, he shall be known as the Laughmaster.

Enjoy the video