Yes, I'm alive!

Work has been madness, with me working many late nights. FINALLY, my vacation begins, so here you go....



Olivia is over 19 pounds now. She's also crawling and getting into all sorts of things. She's also turned into quite the little fusspot when it comes to food. If anyone else is eating around her, she HAS to be eating, too. Vernessa says she has become aggressive with other children at daycare, wanting to take their food because she's eaten her own so fast.



She's clearly saying "mama" and "dada", as well as "hi", "bye" and "yeah". She can give you a high five, point and wave hello and goodbye. The other night at our congregation book study, Jenny Crook was fanning herself with a bamboo fan, and, after watching her for a bit, Olivia starting waving at her...not with her usually, wrist-bending wave, but like her own hand was a fan. Jenny was terribly amused. And Barbara was so tickled with Olivia's crawling, she herself got down on her hands and knees and starting playing with her. Mind you, Barbara is seventy-something, very petite and wrinkly....and down on her knees, playing with the baby. Quite a sight to see.



Anyhoo, here are some videos for your enjoyment. A snippet of her crawling, her feeding herself cheerios, and her enjoying the cat's velvet covered doll bench.

My girls

It's love.

More at the picnic

I discovered at the picnic that Beverly (forgive me, I have no clue how to spell her last name, so I'll do so phonectically) Goo-yum-john has a big thing for the Boo. Tony had to work, but Beverly was more than willing to carry Olivia around, play with her, watch her while I grabbed a bite to eat, etc. There were actually a couple of girls (and young women) who were fawning. There was even one brother who wanted to hold her and took great delight in teasing me. He sat Olivia on his knee, then would throw his hands up in the air and shout, "look, no hands!" I didn't say anything, so that prompted more of the same. I think when I told him she'd pee on him is when he surrendered her to me.

So this is video of Beverly holding Boo...and I thought I'd keep the 15 seconds of tug-of-war in it because a) it has several people in it who have been important to Olivia and I and b) how many can say they've seen 20 Jehovah's Witnesses playing tug of war?

You'll see a little black girl running towards the rope. Her name is Mikelah and Olivia has inherited alot of her clothes. She was running towards her mother, Celeste, who is my bathroom buddy. We frequently see each other in the mom's lounge at our meetings. Mikelah started running towards Celeste, and John Kirby called out to watch out for her, so you'll see Anita, a larger blonde woman, running out to pick her up. You'll also see a blonde woman heading up the team on the left side of the screen. That's Susan Aldana. She is the ANGEL who helped us with our nursing issues when Boo was 2 months old. She's been a lactation consultant for years and years and was kind enough to come by for a few hours a couple of days in a row to help us get on track. She's a terrific lady who, sadly, takes a tumble in the video. Okay, enough of that.

Lastly, here's a 'lil snippet of video taken last Sunday at the Orange County Fair. We went with Nonna, great grandma, and cousin Sadie. Sadie is about three weeks younger than Olivia but outweighs her by at least four pounds. She's normally fairly aggressive, but that day she was pretty subdued. Olivia LOVED the fair. The music and all the people delighted her. We're hopeful about more outings like this one.

Finally!

She's been doing the army crawl for weeks now. Last Thursday night, we were at our congregation book study, listening to brother Crook make some announcements. She was a good girl and stayed in my lap or on the seat next to me for 45 minutes, but I figured she was due some floor time, so I put her down. Tony and I were watching her when all of a sudden she props up on all fours and starts honest-to-goodness crawling. Brother Crook was still talking, and we didn't want to interrupt, so we sat there quietly mouthing to each other, "did you see that!? did you see that!?" Tony gave the closing prayer, then we shouted out, "she crawled!" This prompted Barbara, one of Boo's biggest fans, to try to prompt her to crawl over. Of course, she didn't. I didn't have a camera with me that night, but I pulled it out tonight. Unfortunately, the video is dark, but you'll get the idea.

On Saturday Olivia and I went to our congregation picnic. We had a grand time. More on that in a moment.