Another month has crept up on us and Olivia is now a whopping 8 months old! She’s cut two teeth in the past month and has become quite fond of trying to grab our glasses from our heads when we’re not paying attention. Olivia’s also venturing into the land of finger foods. She enjoys the Gerber puffs and wagon wheels (both in apple flavors). These are great little items to give to her under supervision, because they dissolve quickly and don’t break off in pieces that could pose a choking hazard. We’ve also added some new items to her menu, cauliflower and lentils. She’s not too fond of lentils, but she’ll deal with them as long as they’re mixed with cereal. She oddly enough loves cauliflower and noms it up whenever we give it to her.

Unfortunately the ear infections persist. Just this past week we’ve had to deal with a double ear infection. We saw an ENT specialist and it was concluded that she should get ear tubes. While the thought of surgery for an 8 month old is daunting, we know that getting the tubes is the best thing we can do for her. It was very scary when the ENT doctor told us that Olivia has only heard us sound like Charlie Browns’ parents since the ear infections began in December. She’s also been prescribed more antibiotics in a 4 month span than most children get in a full year. This is not a good thing. We’re working with the ENT to schedule her surgery. It should be very quick and painless for her.

Olivia is up to 21 lbs and 29″ in length. Crazy! She’s about the size of an average 10-12 month old. This means we’ve been investing in 12 month sized clothes. Yeesh!

Below are images from our 8 month photo shoot at home. I’m beginning to wonder what the big deal is about professional pictures, when Maurice and I do a good enough job by ourselves. Seriously. Why pay $250 for limited prints from a professional when you can do it at home? Food for thought.

Also, Easter cards will be sent out shortly. We have some wonderful and very cute pictures for those! Actually, here they are… why keep it a secret? They’ll be in your mailboxes shortly anyway, and if anyone wants, we can send these pictures to your local Walmart/Target/RitzPhoto too.

Tonight’s little video clip is of Olivia playing in the bathtub with Maurice. He’s squirting her with water from a little elephant-shaped bathtoy that we received at her baby shower. She giggles a bit when he does this. It’s very cute. She was cutting up much more before the video camera was in the room… then she got a little shy.

As it turns out, Sir Toofus has an accomplice in his heinous crimes against babies everywhere. Olivia’s cut a second tooth, next to the first tooth. This means she’s going to have her two bottom teeth by the time the month is out. Oh my. This explains so much. In a futile effort to capture the glory of this moment on tape, I’ve used the camcorder to try to catch Olivia’s teeth in visual form for the family. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make out unless you watch the video a couple of times in full-screen mode (click the multiple arrows icon in the bottom-right corner of the video).

Here are a couple more videos to make up for the weekend’s lack of pictures.

Video 1: Olivia loves to have air blown into her hair. She tilts her head to the right almost every single time I do this to her too. It’s really cute, so I wanted to catch it on camera. Luckily enough for me, I also caught her eyebrow twitch! Now this isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually pretty darn cute too. She gets a slight twitch in her left eyebrow just before she gives a big smile. She’s been like that since as long as I can remember. It’s really neat to see it. Many friends think it’s funny!

Video 2: Olivia got a kick out of her tiny piano from Aunt Sarah tonight.

We’ve all been a bit under the weather this week. Even I had to take two days off work in order to get some rest, and if anyone knows me, they know that’s RARE indeed. Even when I was pregnant I was reluctant to take any time off to rest. I am one of those people that stores up PTO hours like they’re going out of style. Anyway, we haven’t taken many pictures this weekend at all. Olivia’s tooth is breaking through, so she’s not as fussy as she was earlier in the week, but it still hasn’t popped up enough to get a good picture yet. We’re working on it! Every day we check to see if it’s picture-worthy yet.

Tonight Olivia was treated to a homemade meal of cauliflower, oatmeal cereal, and butternut squash. I’m shocked she liked the cauliflower so much. She ate the entire meal (about 6oz of food) in under 5 minutes! Crazy!

Here’s a little video of Maurice playing with Olivia: