Jeff, Ami, Kiran, Ellery and Olivia: February 2011

The Birthday Girl!

It is hard to believe that it has been a whole year since our sweet girl was born! She is such a joy to all of us! She is growing and changing and doing new things every day! She has five teeth - 4 of which she has cut in the past month! Livvy's little personality is really shining through now. She is often quiet and observant, but she loves to play and be engaged with all of us. She gets the best thrill out of dancing with her Daddy in the kitchen. She is still just incredibly laid back, but over the past week or so, just in time for her birthday, she has started throwing herself forward onto the floor when she is upset! Her first little fit was over me taking a too-big apple bite away from her. Olivia is cruising around everywhere. We bought her a little walker for her birthday, and she is doing really well walking with it, but like her big brother, she knows that she is way faster on all fours. So for a while longer, we get to see her sweet little crawl! She loves pointing to all kinds of things, especially things outside! She can say "out" and "birds." She has said lots of words, but she just says them once or twice and that's enough for her. After that, she goes back to taking in all of the details of what is surrounding her, quietly.

I love the picture above! It shows Livvy's sweet, sweet smile! You will see in other photos that Olivia can be quite the serious girl. She checks out things and people, examining and observing very carefully. It's actually really cute, but often when we want a smile on camera, we get a look like, "what is that thing you are aiming toward me?" (I also love this photo because I think it is one that looks almost identical to one of my own baby pictures! I wouldn't say that Olivia looks like me, or Jeff, but we see glimpses of lots of family members in her at times.)

There is no doubt! Olivia gives the best hugs of all time! She will wrap both arms around your neck so tightly and then pat you gently! It is wonderful! She also does this with her babies! She likes to pick them up and kiss and hug them and pat them. Too cute!

Here she is with her first birthday cake (actually a craving for cake by Mommy on her birthday). We had planned to make her big birthday cake over the weekend. After school on her birthday, we ran and got a yummy piece of cake from a local restaurant for the family to share. She was serious about eating each bite!

Here is the cake we made a few days later. Olivia loves animals so much, and we thought she needed an animal cake!

Here is the sweetest photo of her sleeping while I held her in the rocker one night when she was struggling with an ear infection.

Here is Olivia at play with Ellery. Livvy would rather be upstairs than anywhere in the house. She knows where the fun is!!! All of her favorite toys are there. And, best of all, playing upstairs means playing with Ellery and Kiran! However, she has been banned at times from Big Brother's room already. Kiran calls her "The Destroyer!" She is well known for tearing apart Lego creations and puzzles!

Her hair is always a little crazy and definitely curly after bath time.

Here she is with one of her new favorite toys: Crayons! She loves them. This picture shows when she was just becoming interested in them. She would take two out at a time, one for each hand. Then, she would try and put them back and get more out. Now, of course, she has advanced to dumping the whole box as well as eating them, so she only gets them when she has full supervision!

Livvy "opens" her gift from Kiran and Ellery! The funny thing is that the big kids seem to enjoy her new toys as much or more than she does!

On her birthday, Daddy got to meet up with Livvy and I to eat at Chick-fil-a! What a fun surprise! Then, he got to go with us to pick up Kiran. We turned Livvy's car seat around while waiting on Brother, then the whole family took Livvy on a drive in her new riding style!

Livvy gets to turn around in her seat! We could tell that she liked it, but of course, she was serious about it!

Here she is playing with Ellery's doll house! She loves taking the Mom and Dad out and putting them back in the house. Livvy also really loves playing with Ellery's school lunch box that you see in the photo!

Okay, another favorite of Livvy's right now is all things LAUNDRY! She loves to watch the clothes spin in the washer and dryer. She loves to pull every single item out of a laundry basket (whether Mommy has them neatly folded or not!) She loves crawling into the laundry room and throwing herself onto the piles of clothes! The only thing she hasn't loved so much is the 3 or 4 times she has fallen into the laundry baskets when she loses her balance! But, it hasn't stopped her.