… what do you see?

Olivia loves this book. She has been carrying it around and trying to read it to us for the past couple of days. She actually whines for it if it’s just out of reach. “Booooown beeee!” (or as close to “brown bear” as I can figure).

I changed up the design a little to make it have less color… I felt it detracted from the pictures in a way, plus the header was really old and had a bad picture in it (yes, I’m picky).

Liv had crazy hair this evening, so here’s a couple of pictures:

Gma got a Sunday treat with Olivia today thanks to the wonderful technology known to many as Skype. Skype requires a web camera and a fairly decent internet connection, but it’s great because Olivia can interact, play, and have a great time keeping in touch with family. Today we dialed up Gma — though Olivia keeps calling her “Amma” — so let it be written, so let it be told (in other words, we’ll call her “Amma” from now on). Olivia filled up a cup of tea and served it to Amma, ran to the kitchen and got her own sippy cup and tried feeding it to Amma, offered her Goldfish through the computer… yeah, good time all around. Amma and Olivia got to sing and dance too. It was really cute to watch. Of course, I couldn’t help but to document the occasion a bit with pictures. It’s kind of creepy in a psychodelic “Big Brother” kind of way with the way the camera captured the interactions, but really it was nice to see Olivia interact with Amma so well over a Skype connection.

Waiting for Amma to show up on Skype

Trying to speed things up… come on Dad! You aren’t fast enough!

This is very “Wizard of Oz”-ish

Olivia dancing to Amma’s singing

We did act like first timers and ran out in a jiffy to pick up a bed. Thing is, it takes 6-8 weeks to get here. Oops. We went to a great store called Baby 2 Teen in Manassas. It’s HUGE and it’s nothing but furniture for kids. Awesome store. I had completely forgotten it existed until Ken told us about it. We went over Friday evening and looked around. Olivia was quite amused with all the beds, and especially the children’s recliners. If those recliners weren’t $140, we totally would have gotten one… anyway, I digress. We ended up getting a nice, sturdy bed that will last her for a few years. It’s a twin-sized bed, mostly so she can have more space in her bedroom to play in. I don’t think she needs a huge bed and even if we did put a double or queen in there, then she wouldn’t have any floor space left as our spare bedrooms are VERY small. She hasn’t lunged out of her crib in the past few nights, but we’ve changed up her routine a tiny bit to make it more relaxing than just picking her up and putting her in the crib, patting her head, and leaving the room. Now we read, sing, and play a little in the bedroom before leaving. That seems to make the crying last a little less time than before.

Today we relaxed and went to church. Liv would not have anything to do with the classroom there though, so I had to go out and walk around with her for an hour while Maurice and the others enjoyed the sermon. I still can’t deal with the “hootin’ and ah’ hollerin’” (aka “christian rock”). I don’t know what it is about it, but it just creeps me out. I think it’s because I grew up with a mixture of Methodist and Catholic services under my belt. I’d dare say I was exposed more to Catholicism than any Protestant faith since my extended family is primarily Catholic. I’m more used to being tortured for an hour and a half with chanting and hymns than rocking out for Jesus in an auditorium with flashing lights, strobes, and video monitors. That’s not meant to be derogatory, of course, to each his own. I am just not used to it and don’t know if I ever will be. Maurice and I thoroughly enjoy the sermons though. The preacher is so down to Earth and relates sermons to real life instead of just giving a humdrum rhetoric from the Bible in a monotone voice that makes Ben Stein seem lively.

Annnnd if you’ve made it through our wall of text, here’s pictures as a reward:

“Ok… and here’s how you pause with a TiVo!”

“Oh my gosh dad! Bologna is soooo like ew!”

“Ok whatever. I’ll give it a try.”

“WARNING: Bologna may cause adverse reactions… like facial twitching and inability to smile at the laughing photographer.”

Maurice letting me test my new 85mm lens on him… it’s sharp. Case closed.

OH GARCON!!! Je voudrais un petit verre tasse de lait et un peu de Goldfish, s’il vous plait!”

Olivia decided to launch herself out of her crib tonight. We’ve been waiting for the signs for a toddler bed to arrive instead of trying to shove her into one too early. I figured 20 months is too early, but she’s telling us otherwise. She screams every night when we put her down now and tonight she decided to take matters into her own hands and pull a Mission Impossible by lunging out of her crib to the floor. Maurice described it as a very loud “THUD.” She’s fine, no harm to her. Kids are made of Rubbermaid, so I don’t think we would encounter any issues. We’re going to see if she does it again or if it was a complete fluke before rushing out to IKEA to get the toddler bed.

In the meantime, a couple of candids I caught on the deck tonight (lord have mercy I wish this child would sit still… shots are so out of focus with her these days!)

FINALLY… some warm weather worth breaking out the capris and shorts for! Thankfully, I came prepared for this weekend by shopping at Old Navy last night. Olivia enjoyed holding onto the clothes that I held out for her. While I know she wasn’t entirely self aware of the experience, I think she is happy with what we picked out. We also caved and gave the Easter Bunny an emergency plea to visit early this year. See, Olivia has been fascinated with “thugging” her kitchen. We set it up every night after she goes down for bed, then the next day, she grabs either a Wegman’s bag or an empty cardboard box from the recycling in the kitchen and puts everything from her kitchen into them and drags it away from the crime scene. She mimics shopping. Thank you Easter Bunny, for bringing us this glorious Little Tykes shopping cart…

Yes that’s a Barbie. No she doesn’t have earrings, because mommy took great pleasure in yanking them out with tweezers. It was a $3 doll on sale at Toys-r-us a couple of weekends ago. I snatched it up thinking “why the hell not” and now she won’t put it down She even calls her “Barbie” (or rather, it sounds like “Bobbie”). What can I say? I can’t help myself.

This morning we just lounged around in the house a bit until Olivia’s nap time. We wanted to make sure she’d have a great nap so she wouldn’t freak out on us at the park instead of play. Here’s a couple of snapshots of her playing with Maurice:

Those were shot with my fixed 50mm lens… yeah, it went back to Canon finally. The 24-70L came back scratched up on the side and worse than before, so it’s going back again on Tuesday SIGH.

Liv has just enough hair now for us to start doing something different with it. For a long time there she only had enough for the top knot, but we can grab a good bit of it now. I put it up in pigtails today… and here I present Mini-Me (about the only time I see pieces of me in there since she looks so much like Maurice 99.9999% of the time):

We hit up the park around 2pm and left at 3:30pm. The funniest thing was as we drove up, she caught sight of the swingset and freaked out. She threw her arms forward and screeched “UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP.” We put Liv in a different shirt, but figured since she was still a bit spastic with the running, we’d leave her in jeans rather than suffer a thousand and one knee scrapes. She did get hot in the jeans, but it was worth the extra heat… she fell god only knows how many times. The sign of having fun though is getting back up and running off no matter the pain She really enjoyed chasing around Isabella, Danielle and Mike’s little girl.

Here’s a couple of action shots from the park… sadly, in B&W. I shot in an automatic mode and ummm… yeah… it didn’t do so hot with the exposure and colors, BUT I am happy they were at least in focus.

Look at the pigtails flying up! Awesome… totally awesome.