Olivia received finger paints for a Christmas present and we finally got them out. We decided the garage would be a good place to start.



And here's the video I was able to get before she changed gears.

Oh my gosh, look at my little cutie! I swear she gets cuter every day and makes my heart all gushy. This is my little monkey allowing me to leave ponytails in her hair for a few minutes . . . for the first time ever! Must have been a good nap! I haven't changed her out of her jammies yet but we wanted to show Daddy her ponytails. This is in Steve's office downstairs; he says don't look at the mess. This first picture is her version of smiling and saying cheeze for the camera. That scrunching of the face . . . do I do that?

We had a spectacular lunar eclipse last week. Steve was traveling for work in Bozeman Montana and he saw it there as well. You know, come to think of it, where else was it visible? Let me know if you saw it and where.
I have a camera that has the picture stablization and some other pretty cool features, but have I gotten the manual out yet and looked into all that yet????? HUh? No, I have not. But I thought these pictures were still of sharing worthiness. Taken from our back deck after Olivia was in bed. She loves seeing the moon, and asks about it all the time. Loves to talk about it in books and look out the window at it with me. And during the week of this eclipse you could even see it in the daytime sky, which she got a real kick out of.

You know how hard it is to get a picture of a moving toddler so you won't mind these shots, I bet. Back of the head, side view, any view I can get! I had a great video of my little missy picking up rocks, but it was too big to load up here on Blogger. I did load it on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7_6mS4B3Ow. Try this link.
That is Olivia's greatest pleasure right now - getting as many rocks into each hand as possible. She loves rocks. All rocks, but especially rocks that fit into her hand. If she falls down while holding the rocks she will not let go of the rocks but will try to get up without loosing a rock. She is rocking it. (Sorry I couldn't resist.)
These are front yard rocks.

Back yard rocks.

Olivia loving her neknek, and her galoshes that she has not quite grown into.





An afternoon at the playground.

Post throw. Good job Olivia!

Our little monkey. She has a little bit of a cold right now. It is not too bad so far, so we are hoping she doesn't feel too yukky. I think I am catching it; I feel a sore throat coming on!

Maddie hearts Teetee 4 ever.

Here I go again. I have pictures that Steve took of Olivia and I can't narrow them down to any less then these 7 pictures.
During dinner, Olivia was "all done" and wanted down. Then she wanted up in my chair. Since she hadn't eaten much I kept offering her her dinner. Elmo enjoyed dinner with a bib on and it would not be complete without the fire fighter's hat.

This weekend was a sunny one and a three day one to boot. How lucky are we?? And Olivia wanted to wear her sunglasses just like mommy and daddy do. This is the only picture that came out focused. Sorry for the laundry and unmade bed scene. It is clean laundry.

Daddy came out with us for our morning walk during the fabulous weekend weather. We usually end up somewhere for Olivia to get out and play, play, play as we like to say or to go walking or running as Olivia likes to say.

If you look closely in the clouds you can see the Olympic mountain peaks covered in snow on the left mostly. Our region has had record breaking snow fall this year. Tons of avalanches and highway closures in the Cascades. For us here in the Seattle area it seems a little colder, a little wetter and a few days of snow.

Happy 18month birthday to big girl Olivia. I still can't believe it. White cupcakes with white frosting and sprinkles. But only the frosting is getting ate and, well, smeared.

She'll be 18 months old this week on the 13th.

Olivia is doing new things everyday. Tonight she identified so many animals in her animal book it was just a proud moment. Seems she took to answering our question of "where is the such and such" overnight! She pointed out the sea horses, lady bugs, deer, doggie, roosters, ducklings and butterflys on a very busy page. It was pretty cool. We were tempted to continue in grilling her since we were all having fun, but it was winding her up instead of down, and it was supposed to be reading books before bedtime.

About 2 weeks ago I mentioned to her Kindermusik teacher that she has at least 100 words, and then later I thought to myself that I might have been exagerating and bragging about my incredibly wonderful daughter. So Steve and I decided we would jot down all her words and count. We stopped counting at 95 since it was a done deal, she used more than 100 words. Granted some are only understandable by us her parents. Like dappa dee. That is diaper. She wants to be nek nek all the time and that includes taking off the dappa dee.

Her words are getting more grown up as each day comes. She now says "all done" with the n in the done word. It used to be just "aw duh" used with the sign for all done. And today she started telling Tee Tee one of our cats, to "get down" and not just "down". With the emphasis on the get just like her mommy says it!
She also enjoys practicing her gymnastics from her gymnastics class with both me and her daddy at home. Today we practiced the straddle stretch position, the pike stretch positon, the tuck sitting position, the star standing position and saying "taa daaAaaaaaaa!" with arms straight up in the air. It is so cute to see her practice kissing her knees in straddle position and then she says "tee doo" for the teacher in her class.
And another first from today, she did the sign for play and kept saying playground which sounded like paypo or paydoh or peepo and she asks to go swinging in combination with the play/playground sign and word. And her word for swinging is funny too, she doesn't say the s with it, so it sounds like winging. She got upset! I told her we couldn't go to the playground b/c it was raining! But then she was ok when we did the raining song. I sing "it's raining it's pouring, daddy has been snoring. He went to bed and bumped his head and couldn't get up in the morning." We have another raining song too but I will save that for later.

We'll go to the playground tomorrow for some swinging and maybe I will take some pictures or video of my amazing child. Maybe.