Weekend with the Wyatts

Last weekend, we headed down 95 South to spend some quality time with my side of the family. I hadn't seen my grandmother, I don't think, since Olivia's birthday last September (not counting Skype)! It was so great to spend time with everyone. When we got in Friday night, we headed to Buffalo Wild Wings for some dinner. We spent most of Saturday just hanging out, making food for the crab feast the next day. Saturday even was spent lazing on the back deck, swinging in the hammock, making s'mores over the fire pit, and listening to Montana sing and play guitar. It was a perfect night! On Sunday, we headed to Skip and Larry's (Amber's parents) for the Scott family crab feast. While we were cracking crabs, Olivia perfected her pool jumping (with Uncle Josh's help, of course!).

It's a Sesame Street World

It's all about Sesame Street in our house these days. Olivia's favorite book is her Elmo "look and find" book. She points out Elmo and Cookie Monster on her diapers. She walks around singing "Sunny Days. . . " (and "Happy Birthday," though that's not Sesame Street-related and we're not sure where it came from). She climbs onto the couch and asks for Elmo. If you give her the Elmo book, you'll get "Elmo TV" by way of clarification. She loves sitting at her new little table and chairs to "color Super Grover" (not just Grover but Super Grover!).

I suppose there are far worse things for her to obsess over, and at least Sesame Street is educational. They even teach Spanish these days. The other day, we sang "Where is Thumbkin?" in two languages! Olivia's favorite part of the show is, of course, Elmo's World. I even get a chuckle out of it once and a while. In a recent episode we watched on Netflix, Elmo asked Shade to go up so he could see out of the window, but Shade was being stubborn and refused to move. So Elmo muttered, "Elmo is thinking of Venetian blinds"! hahaha Don't think that line was really meant for the kiddos. (Is it sad that Sesame Street is where I'm getting my humor these days? ha)

So naturally, all this Sesame Street love means we'll be throwing a Sesame Street second birthday party come September. It's not exactly the most original idea, but I know Olivia will love it. Because it's been done so much, there are tons of ideas on Pinterest. I've already started pinning ideas so I'm all set when it's time to act. I've even started picking up party favors from the Target Dollar Spot, which is great place to find fun Sesame Street books and such!

Because a post simply wouldn't be complete without pictures/video of Olivia, enjoy!

Our Talkative, Quirky Little Stinker

Every day seems to bring new skills, new words, or new funny little quirks. Here are a few of our favs:

• Applesauce. Such a simple word, but it sounds so stinking cute when she says it.
• Diapers are no longer a guessing game. Olivia helpfully grabs hers and says "pee" or "poop."
• Olivia has started to feed herself, though we've only really seen success with Cream of Wheat (thick and sticky). Tortellini, not so much.

• Olivia can name and point to her nose, eyes, ears, mouth, hair, and chin. But chin is the cutest.
• She also knows where her belly is and will gladly lift her shirt to show anyone who asks. Even in Target.
• Olivia can name all the babies at daycare, but Addie is her favorite. When Addie came back from being sick, Olivia ran to her yelling "Aaaaddddiiiieee" and gave her a huge hug.
• While she may like the colors of the finger paint, she's not so much a fan of having it on her fingers, which makes the whole activity rather humorous.
• "Snack" and "eat" are two of her favorite words.
• Ryan changed Olivia's diaper one day after he picked her up and said "Wooo, that's stinky!" at which point Olivia pinched her nose and giggled hysterically. No clue where she learned it, but it's so funny!

New Year's Resolutions are for the Birds

Yeah, so I didn't do so well with my New Year's Resolution of keeping this blog regularly updated. So here's a quick version of what we've been up to over the last couple of months:

We had a low key, fabulous NYE with the Weinheimers and the Grangers. Olivia and Finn got to have a little sleepover, at least until we woke Olivia up at 12:45 a.m. to go home (a process that went much smoother than we could have ever imagined!).


We celebrated Finn's first birthday in January at a Mickey Mouse-themed party.


We've enjoyed this mild winter weather with lots of trips to the playground. Olivia loves the slide and climbing through the fort, but she's no longer a fan of the swings. Ryan and I have both tried a couple of times, but as soon as she's in the seat and it starts moving, that's when the tears start. So at least for now, we'll stick with the slides!


The first weekend of February, we threw a baby shower for Rick and Angela in celebration of our very first nephew and cousin (who just arrived on Monday, but that will be a different post!).


For Valentine's Day, I took the day off work so that Olivia and I could go to a playdate with some of our friends. Olivia gave cute little Valentine bags full of heart-shaped cereal and dried strawberries, and she got all kinds of adorable valentines from her friends!



As I mentioned earlier, our nephew, Kaiden James Breeden, was born at 12:56 p.m. on Monday, February 20th, weighing in at 7 lbs 14 oz! We are meeting him this weekend for the first time, so pictures to come soon!

Miss Us?!

Sorry we have been so MIA from the blog. I've been working a lot on my other blog, Mom Machine, and between that and working full time, getting ready for Christmas, and just keeping things running, this definitely got put on the back burner. But it's one of my many New Year's resolutions to be better about keeping this blog updated, which might mean that Ryan is going to start doing some posting of his own (even though he may not know that yet!). Well, on to the updates, shall we?

Olivia is now:

• Walking (and I mean laps, not just a few steps)
• Stacking up to 8 blocks
• Saying "baby" and pointing to herself when you ask "Where's the baby?"
• Sporting 10 teeth (including 2 molars!)
• Saying "go," "baby," "mama," "daddy," "hi," "tay tay" (for Tater), "me me" (for milk), and "night night"
• "Blowing" her nose (aka holding a tissue to her nose and making the noise with her mouth)
• Loving books—she'll carry one over and monkey crawl into your lap so you can read to her
• Climbing up and down stairs
• Eating pretty much everything under the sun
• Scribbling with a crayon (sometimes even on paper!)

As you can see, things have been rather busy around here! We were so blessed to spend the holidays with both of our families and are looking forward to all the fun things 2012 will bring (including a new baby nephew/cousin in just a couple of months!). Here are a few videos of Olivia, enjoy!

How the time flies!

It's been a busy fall so far! Ryan, Josh and Matt ran the Tough Mudder on October 22nd, and we were at the finish line to cheer them on as they finished.





We've visited the pumpkin patch and best friends.






Olivia has been climbing stairs, cruising around the house, learning to walk, signing a couple of words and is starting to say "Night Night" when it's time for bed.






She is eating pretty much anything we put in front of her- tonight she had cheese ravioli with pumpkin sage sauce for dinner- but she especially loves yogurt, carrots with cinnamon, spinach and cheese quesadillas, sweet potatoes, veggie pasta, lima beans and. . . CUPCAKES.

Happy Halloween From Our Little Stinker!

New Tricks

Olivia is starting to do all sorts of new fun tricks, including high fiving, clapping, drinking through a straw, sticking out her tongue and doing "How Big is the Baby?" She also does this adorable thing where she uses her hand to make this little noise with her lips. We used to do it to her and now she's picked it up. We're working on playing Peek-a-Boo now and doing "Touchdown!" Olivia is also eating all kinds of new foods- tonight for dinner, she had butternut squash and apple soup with grilled cheese, just like Mommy and Daddy! We did find out after her 1 year appointment that she is slightly anemic, so we have been eating more iron-rich foods, and she is taking iron supplements each day. In another 8 weeks, we'll go back to the pediatrician to have her blood tested again. Fingers crossed that everything comes back normal!

Climbing the Stairs

And she's off!!

Sharing

We have been working with Olivia on sharing and handing us things when we ask for them. She's picking it up pretty well I'd say- once she starts, she just doesn't want to stop! haha

Birthday Part 2

Here are a couple of videos of Olivia very much enjoying her birthday cupcake.

Happy Birthday!

Olivia turned 1 last Wednesday and celebrated. . . with a fever. Yep, she got her first fever on her birthday, and we've been battling a bad cold since. But before the sickness set in, we threw her a first birthday party the weekend before her birthday. It was great to have our friends and family around to celebrate with us and watch Olivia cram a cupcake into her mouth (she's definitely my daughter!). Here are a few pics from the party:

C'mon Irene!

Well, we will never forget our first family vacation, that's for sure. After spending 5 days at the beach, we were forced to evacuate the Outer Banks ahead of Hurricane Irene, which was aiming right for the coast. We were really bummed to have to cut our vacation short but better to be safe than sorry. So we packed up the Jeep (somehow everything fit much better on the way down than the way back up), took one more quick trip to the beach, and we were off- or at least we were after sitting in 5 miles of evacuation traffic to get over the bridge.

But before Miss Irene kicked us out, we managed to spend an afternoon walking around Manteo, got my favorite- Kill Devil's frozen custard, spent 3 great days on the beach, inhaled some delicious Duck Donuts, hit up the outlets for a little shopping, and went through half a bushel of crabs (discovering, in the process, that my brother's girlfriend, Caity, is allergic to crabs- thank goodness for Benadryl!). Despite our hasty, premature exit, it was still a good vacation and hey, at least we weren't at work!

Enjoying an early morning belly rub with Daddy

Loving her dinner at the Rundown Cafe

Looking out at our beautiful view of the ocean

"Alright Mama, enough with the pictures."

OBX 2011

We arrived in the Outer Banks on Saturday for our very first family vacation, and it couldn't have come soon enough! Ryan has been working long hours with the opening of the Mark Center, and life just seems to get more and more hectic. It's so nice to hang out at the beach for a week with no schedule, no work (mostly. . . boo, I know), and visits from friends and family. My dad, stepmom and sister were wrapping up their week-long vacation as we arrived, so they stayed an extra night with us. Then my brother and his girlfriend came down and stayed a night, and my mom is on her way down for a night as I type. While Josh and Caity were here, we asked them to take some family pictures of us on the beach. Here are a few of my favorites.