Enjoying the Sunshine

I am LOVING the weather today.  My favourite weather is when it's sunny enough to wear a t-shirt, but cool enough to wear jeans...and that's today!

{I think she has a little dimple on her left cheek (although hard to see in this picture).}

{Nathan brought Olivia a ball to play with.}

{The grass didn't even bother her, she just went crawling where she wanted to go.}

{I have a love-hate relationship with the sandbox.  The kids love it.  Nathan plays in it every single time he's outside, which I love.  However, the sand is really wet right now and so it sticks to everything and gets everywhere and so they come to the house absolutely covered in it.}

{I had bought a second bike seat off of the facebook swap for $15 in the fall, for Olivia (I wanted to keep the one we had for Nathan just in case we did a longer bike ride).  Jon put it together this afternoon and so we put Olivia in it for the first time, with Kayla's old helmet.  She looks really cute in it.  She was super-tired and ready for a nap, so she shed some tears being put in it, but I'm sure she'll love going for bike rides!}

{Our neighbours gave us a Little Tykes plastic wagon when they did some purging a couple months ago, so Jon pulled them to our little park in it, for fun.  Yes, the coordinating royal blue shirts were planned :) }

{Brothers!}

Olivia is on the go!

**There is a new (boring) post below this one, too :)**

Two days ago, Olivia learned how to pull herself up on toys and furniture.

Yesterday, she learned how to creep.

Today, she learned how to crawl...and boy is she getting good at it!

I feel like tomorrow I'm going to wake up and she's going to be walking...and talking...and going to school...and getting all grown up on me.

Please slow down, Olivia.  I don't want you to grow up yet.  You're my baby!

Olivia is 7 Months Old!

At seven months old, Olivia weighs 18 lb 3 oz.  She is comfortably into her 9-12 month clothes and wears size 4 shoes.

Shortly after she turned six months old, Olivia learned how to roll from her tummy to her back, over her left shoulder.  About a week ago she learned how to roll over her right shoulder.  Combine that with the fact that she is really good at spinning around in circles means that she is all over the place now.  She also pulls herself up to her knees all the time!  If she gave it a little more effort she would be pulling herself up fully.  Olivia also is on all fours all the time.  She knows how to move her hands forward in a crawling motion, but doesn't quite know how to lift up her knees and pull them forward.  It won't be long though!  She can get quite grumpy when she's left on the floor to play because she is frustrated that she can't get to where she wants to go.

As a birthday present to me, Olivia started talking.  Her voice is so cute!  All she says is, "Dadadadada".

Also after she turned six months old, I stopped swaddling her for nap and bed times.  She was getting really frustrating with spitting out her soother and then not being able to grab it because she was swaddled, so this has relieved most of that.  She is really good at being able to find her soother and put it in her mouth.  She likes to put it in sideways, hold it there, and chomp up and down.  That and the fact that she likes to bite on toys and her fingers and is drooling a lot makes me think that she is going to be getting her first tooth sooner rather than later.

Olivia is still not a great drinker.  She manages to drink 4.5 ounces each feed, but I would love to see that increased to 6.  She has a strong dislike for any 'baby' food, unless it's some sort of fruit.  She tolerates her rice cereal every morning, at best.  My other kids all had rice cereal every morning for breakfast until they were at least a year, but I don't think I'll keep her on it beyond this package.  She is very capable of eating whole Cheerios.  Olivia LOVES yogurt and fruit.  She typically has bread for lunch and eats whatever we are eating for dinner.  She doesn't eat a large volume of food each meal, so we have a lot of work to do in that department.

Olivia loves her siblings.  She loves Kayla, and Kayla loves that she can now carry Olivia around.  Matthew pays the least amount of attention to her.  Nathan still smothers Olivia, and she is still quite tolerant of it.

She also loves having a bath in the 'big kid' bath.  She loves to sit and splash, and often tries to pull herself up on the edge.  It's a full time job watching her in there!

Olivia knows what she wants.  The other night I was walking down the stairs carrying Olivia and walked past the toy room.  Big mistake.  She freaked out!  As soon as I walked back to the toy room and set her down she was happy as a clam.  Stinker!

Enjoying Every Moment

This evening I went to the hospital to visit my sister and newest nephew (which brings my niece/nephew count up to 23!  Yes, my kids have a LOT of cousins!).  Holding a newborn is such a good reminder of how quickly they grow up.  I went from holding a newborn to holding (almost) seven-month old Olivia and it's amazing/incredible/sad how quickly they grow up.  So tonight when I came home, instead of cleaning up the toys all over the house like I normally would have while Olivia waited to be put to bed, I spent some quality one-on-one time with her, cherishing the moment because tomorrow, she will be another day older and another day wiser.

No More Naps for Nathan

For the last few months, putting Nathan down for his afternoon nap was a battle (most of the time).  There were a lot of tears (from him) and threats (from me) and even then, he didn't always sleep.  He was determined to not nap anymore, but I was determined that he was not ready to give up his nap yet.  Or, maybe I wasn't ready for him to give up his nap yet?  Matthew and Kayla stilled napped every day until they were just over three years old so I was assuming/hoping he would be the same.  I guess not!

Two weeks ago I still put him in his room for his nap, but didn't fight him if he didn't want to stay in there.  The first few times he came downstairs he came down slowly, with a sly grin on his face.  He knew that he was risking getting in trouble, and tried to be cute so I wouldn't get angry.  And I didn't get mad.

Nathan hasn't napped for two weeks now, and it's actually gone really well.  He typically has a slight melt-down around dinner time because he's exhausted, but a quick threat that Jon's going to help him eat (instead of me) if he doesn't sit at the table is all it takes to get him at the table and eating.  He's been under-the-weather for a few days so I couldn't convince him to eat dinner tonight, nor did I want to force him to eat it.

He now willingly goes to bed (most of the time only if I'm helping get him ready for bed, not Jon...have you noticed a theme?  Yes, he's become quite the Mommy's boy).  I've successfully put him to bed even before Matthew and Kayla have gotten ready for bed, which I'm pleasantly surprised about.  I thought for sure he would refuse to go to bed until the older two did, but I guess he's just so tired that he doesn't even care.

There are afternoons where I wish that he would fall asleep on the couch while watching a cartoon or during our drive home, but he typically doesn't.  Oh well!