I finally went through Olivia’s shoes. She’s received many as gifts. I bought her one pair. I figured with the Fall and nicer temperatures coming up, maybe she should start wearing them so she could toddle around outdoors.

I found a pair of ballet flats that fit her because they are open on the top so her fat feets can poof up out of them. Simply adorable.

And what better place to test them out than on the farm?

Whittaker decided to come say Hiiiiiiiiiii

mischievous elf

Babbling at the horses

DOG! (her loud exclamation for horse)

daddy took a break from manly-farm-labor to take a walk

I found a rock!

walking with mama

teaching her how to say hi to a horse

Then, Sunday morning, my mom comes downstairs with an early Christmas present! Boots!

boots! baby boots! I die.

Meeting Katy, the miniature horse

oh for cute

little horse for a little girl

walking downhill on gravel requires intense concentration. also. cheeks.

I love that Olivia has a chance to be around the horses at such a young age. All the horses my mom owns or boards are sweet and gentle. Some are more spirited than others but the fact that Olivia gets to be around them makes me really happy. I would hate for her to grow up afraid of these gorgeous animals. We’re hoping when she’s a teeny bit older to put her up on one. How fun would that be?

I don’t know why fifteen months seems like a Big Deal to me.  But it does.  Not that she’s doing anything different or there’s any sort of explosion of development happening.

However.

OLIVIA IS FIFTEEN MONTHS OLD.

What the what?

I have cheeks for storing things like raisins and small toys

Yes, fifteen months.

We have walking.  Full-on, full-bore, screw that slow crawling crap, WALKING.  I’ve seen her crawl maybe twice? in the last two weeks.  Our favorite game is to say, “IIIII’m gonna get you!” and stomp on the ground really fast like you’re running.  She shrieks and toddles away laughing, constantly checking over her shoulder.  Then? She turns around and runs AT YOU.

So you run away.

Obviously.

Toddlby Tag.  It’s the newest sensation.

cuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrlsssssssss

She has ringlets.  Perusal of my baby pictures confirms she has my hair.  So.  I love it now and I empathize with her when she’s older and HATE HATE HATES her hair because it’s curly and thick and hot and fluffy and frizzy and hot and hot and HOT.

Right now, the ringlets are adorable as all get out and make for some stellar bed-head most mornings.  I have given up combing her hair except after baths.  It’s useless otherwise.

guacamole finger painting

Food.

She eats it.

All of it.

Well, we’ve run across the occasional thing here and there she won’t eat.  She hates lunchmeat or reheated meat of any kind. She’s very picky about meat in general.  She likes it sauced or heavily spiced and shredded or cut up small.  She adores all vegetables and fruits.  She inhales guacamole and salsa like it’s never going to be around again.  She thinks mama’s smoothies are the best treat ever.  Especially through a straw.

Graham crackers are the shizzle.  And the rule is, “One for each hand one for your mouth.” She will not leave until you comply.

She also eats ridiculous portion sizes.  Her little puffed out belly after dinner is hilarious.  But she’s happy and full and healthy so I’m not worried.

She’s also still nursing for naps and bedtime, which is really really nice.  I love the cuddles and the comfort.

Who let this kindergartener in my house?

Teeth.

Oh lordy, do we ever have teeth.

The front four on both top and bottom have come in no problem.  However, we have entered the special level of hell known as Molars.  Three of them to be precise.  And they are the worst thing in the whole entire world.  They wake her up at night and spontaneously make her grumpy during the day.  I guess the upside (?) is she wants to cuddle when she’s upset, which is sweet and sometimes she’ll drift off for a doze while cuddled against me.

the cute kills me

Her favoritest thing in the whole wide world is to lay on pillows and watch “Rapunzel” (Tangled).  It is, by far, her favorite movie and I’m completely fine with her watching it over and over and over and over and over.

And over.

And over.

If it means less teething crying and the chance for me to do something like write or work on my part-time gigs I’m lining up.  She giggles at the horse, babbles to Flynn whenever he’s on the screen, dances with the songs, and paces around the living room dragging pillows if the mood strikes her.

bukkit

She’s not speaking much other than babbling.  She says “mama” and “deedee” (daddy) and “dog dog wooh wooh” but that’s it.  Her babbling is getting more…specific? if that makes sense.  So I think more words are coming at some point.  I’m trying not to be concerned when I hear/see other babies her age speaking a lot more because I know every baby develops differently.  We read to her a lot and she “reads” her books all the time.  She loves Sesame Street and other educational shows like that.  Plus, she’s around four adults who talk to her all the time so I’m not worried.

She definitely understands certain phrases and reacts accordingly.  ”How about we lay down and sleep now?” “Where’s your pacifier?” “Do you want to watch Rapunzel?” “Come get in your chair to eat dinner.” “May I have a kiss?” “Do you want to dance?”

and then I died again from cute

She’s an amazing little girl and we are so lucky to be her parents.  And I can’t wait to see what the next few months have in store.

What’s that expression? Pictures speak louder than words?

Father's Day last year

Father's Day this year

I will say this.

Stephen,

You are an amazing father.  A truly amazing, understanding, protective, loving father.  Neither of us are perfect parents but you have a wellspring of patience that never ceases to amaze me.  That little baby brings out so many good qualities.  My heart always goes pitter patter when I see you, hear you.  You are my partner, my mate, my best friend.  And I always melt inside when I see you with our daughter.

Love,
me

Once upon a time, back in the early 1800′s, a small family picked out a nice plot of land to settle.  The menfolk cut down some trees and shaped some timbers.  The womenfolk helped pull up some rocks from a nearby stream.  Together, they built a small farmhouse.  It was a modest house, kitchen, living room, porch, cellar, and a crawlspace upstairs just tall enough for the children to stand upright.  Soon, the crawlspace became bedrooms.

Fast-forward through a few decades.  The farmhouse is passed down and sold.  Land is surveyed and plotted.  A lake is dug.  Railroad tracks curve around the perimeter.

In the 1930′s, a small family moves in and they take a ridiculous amount of photos.  A new car.  A new bathing suit.  A new hairstyle.  Siding on their little house.  Adventures in the lake.  Chickens in a newly constructed coop.  Hay in the surrounding 23 acres.  The family sold it and flourished for a while.

Sixty years later, the house is sold again.  This time to a couple who enjoy renovating old properties.  They rip off the siding and are delighted to find original stone and timberwork underneath.  They take off the original roof and replace it with a metal one, also extending the crawlspace to a full two stories.  They add a garage.  They add another addition with a new living room, dining room, office, and a master suite upstairs.  They dig out a full basement.  The chicken coop and barn have fallen into disrepair.  The hay farm is gone, replaced by acres of cedar trees.

The wooden siding is the addition. The stonework in the middle is the original farmhouse.

In the late 1990′s, an Englishman, his new wife, and her two children from a previous marriage come look at the house and the land.  His wife trains horses and they see the potential for having a boarding stable.  The children are tremendously excited about the lake and the land and the huge house that just looks cool.  So, they buy it.

So, my freshman year of high school, I moved into a farmhouse.

View from the front porch. Old outdoor kitchen, wood pile, and (unfinished) Guest House.

Wood pile with the old chicken coop, guest house and old garage in the background

Outdoor kitchen

Creek

The Lake

I moved away when I went to college.  I moved to Atlanta after that.  Now, nearly thirteen years later, I have returned to that same farmhouse with my husband and baby daughter.  It’s surreal to be living in the same bedrooms, eating in the same kitchen, walking these same grounds…  I’m still processing and getting used to the idea that we [live] here now.

However.

In the meanwhile, we finally fixed our rooms up.

My old bedroom - Master Bedroom and Nursery

Yes, the rooms are enormous.

Standing in the nursery corner

Olivia's space

I picked this room when we first moved in because it’s at the end of the hall upstairs and it’s hardwood.  It’s smaller than my brother’s room and he had direct access to our bathroom, but I loved my privacy and I loved the hardwoods.  And I adored that shelf.  See the shelf on the wall in the pictures above?  That’s where the original roof met the house.  The renovators just capped it and turned it into a shelf that runs the entire length of the hallway and the outside of my bedroom.

Extinct Red Pine Floorboards. My room and the hallway has these.

My brother's old room - Living Room, Craft Area, Library, Media Center and Office

Standing in the Office area

My craft table

Office

The rooms are L-shaped, with a closet in each corner.  So all of our clothing, old baby stuff, and kitchen boxes are stored in those closets.  We plan on repainting both rooms at some point.  We want to leave them as nice guest rooms when we move out, so we have ideas.

I plan on filling this jar with buttons

I wasn’t going to take a picture of the bathroom because, well…bathroom.  However, that shelf in my room and the hallway?  It’s in the bathroom because that’s where the original house ended.  But, they didn’t encase that one.  So this is what’s underneath the wood and drywall:

Original Timber and Plaster-work. See the chisel marks?

Neat, huh?

Anyway, that’s the skinny on where we live.  I’ll try to get more pictures in the coming weeks of the horses and the rest of the farm.

So I leave you with this.  This has been my gentle reminder throughout this whole move and Stephen being away and Olivia adjusting.

Always

I’m not ashamed to admit I have a new obsession.

I mentioned before that my grandmother taught me how to knit over the holidays.  And a few months later, I taught myself crochet.

I’m addicted.

[and]

Thanks to my grandmother and Stephen’s grandmother, I have a fantastic start to a great yarn stash.

[and]

thanks to Eb@y, I found these bamboo babies for a dollar…

So far, I’ve only made two things.  A beanie for Stephen and a headband for me.  I only know basic stitches and how to increase/decrease and do a little ruffle.

[however]

I’m about to start on two projects with no pattern except what’s in my head.  And I’m nervous but really excited.  The non-pattern crafting is fun.  Even if you totally mess up and have to toss it or redo it, it’s fun to embark upon because, when it’s done?

It’s [all yours] and the pride is awesome.

There are so many things I want to make and learn and do with this pile.

What would you make?

This past weekend felt like a vacation.

Saturday was Stephen’s birthday and, with some help from friends and family (thank you!!!), it was an [amazing] weekend.  We played video games.  We had dinners with families.  We had a date night.  Olivia ate lemons and chili stew and cole slaw and pancakes.  She only woke up twice each night.

Such a wonderful, amazing time celebrating my husband’s birthday.  He thanked me over and over and I just felt so good to be able to give him a stress free weekend.

Happy girl for daddy's birthday

Let's give the baby a lemon!

I see you, mr. birthday pancake. Let's do this.

Sushi!

After dinner snazzy drinks - mine is the Chocolate Cosmo...on the right.

Dessert. Espresso Chocolate Souffle w/ an espresso shot.

The birthday boy in his newly crocheted hat his wife made him

Someone was given a chainsaw by her Papaw (who's a tree trimmer)

For more info on the Finding the Happy Project, including the rules, read all about it here.

Don’t forget to grab the button and come back every Monday to put your happy in the comments!

I meant to post this yesterday but I ended up editing nearly 200 photos of Olivia that have been backlogged on my camera for ages while Stephen entertained the munchkin most of the day.  For that, I am grateful.  Sooooo, this post also counts as my Finding the Happy post because what’s happier than a 10 month birthday?

This time last year?  I looked like this.

Fast forward one year.

Olivia is ten months old.

Gone are the single digit months.  Pretty soon it will be single digit years.

When did that happen?

And who gave her permission to grow this fast?

She’s a little ham for the camera and a bit of a diva.  It’s impossible to get her to sit still long enough to take a decent photo of her and I’m still learning how to properly manipulate my camera.  So I just keep shooting, hoping a handful aren’t blurry and pray photoshop takes care of the rest.

A lot has happened in the past month.

Olivia has three teeth, her middle bottom two and the very beginnings of her top right one.  The amber necklace we bought her seems to be helping as the recent two teeth haven’t been [nearly] as bad as the first one was.  She’s still a wimp when it comes to her teeth.  Just before they break the surface, she’s whiny and grumpy and doesn’t sleep well and is clingy and just generally heartbreaking.  I don’t blame her, though.  I’d probably be the same way.  Toothaches are no joke.

She’s beginning to understand relationships between things now.  For instance, the other day, she had a farm animal in one hand from a set and she was looking around.  I tried to hand her a cup.  She grabbed it, looked at it, threw it down, and found another farm animal from the same farm set and banged them together with a huge grin.  She bangs things together that she [knows] go together – cups, animals, legos, kitchen utensils, etc.  It’s really fun to watch her look for the matching piece, then clack them together, and look up at one of us with a big grin.

She’s cruising now.  She goes up and down the barrier we have erected in the front room in a [fruitless] effort to keep her from the entertainment center and all its delicious cords and buttons.  She stops and bounces when we ask if she’s going to dance.  She yells at the toys on her exersaucer then attempts to eat them.

She knows her name, which is amusing.  If you say, Olivia, she will look at you, grin, then go back to what she was doing.

Eating is going wonderfully.  She eats everything we put in front of her and has a blast doing it.  She loves eating with us and eating what we’re eating.  She loves to squish it in her fingers, be fed by us, shovel food in her mouth, and throw it on the floor for the dog to have.

Max has decided she can stay.

She’s had just about everything you can think of – veggies, fruits, pastas, meats, cheeses, eggs, hashbrowns, chili, curry, pilaf, risotto, amaranth, yogurt, cheerios, polenta, soups, salads…the list goes on and on.  And we’re having a blast exploring food with her.  Dinner is so much fun with the three of us…and Max hanging out under her high chair.

She is also babbling.

And speaking [words]

Check it out at 45 seconds and again at 55 seconds…

That? Was “daddy” …. TWICE

My heart….oh my heart…

So much in just one short month.  Only two left before the BIG ONE.

Happy Ten Months, baby girl…. Your daddy and I love you [so so much].  You are our heart and our everything.

You ever have that moment when you hang out with someone and conversation just flows naturally as if you’ve known them your whole life and you’re just picking up where you left off last time?

I had that moment Wednesday when Olivia and I drove up to South Carolina to visit Keli and her two adorable little girls.  The thing is?  This was the first time we’d ever met in person.  And we never stopped talking to each other all day long.

The babymeat was awesome.  Although, I think Olivia’s head was the largest one there…

When Lucy hung out in my lap for a minute or two, Olivia was a crazy little babble-mouth to her.  She yammered on and on and reached out for her face and her hair and her face….and her face…

And Olivia was thoroughly confused/obsessed with Lucy’s jumparoo as she doesn’t have one.

Emma was tickled to death to have a mobile, interactive baby in the house and proceeded to show Olivia all of her toys (including the ones in the goodwill bag) and exactly how they work.

It was such a beautiful day, too.  So we wrapped up the munchkins and all of us went for a lovely walk through their neighborhood.  I love their neighborhood.  It’s quiet and pretty and somewhere I’d want to live.  It was such a perfectly perfect day…

Want to read more and see MUCH better pictures? Read Keli’s version!

Yesterday?

Olivia went to the park for the very first time.  Why we’ve waited so long to take her up there, I have no idea.

But she got to swing and play in the grass and have a picnic and it was

awesome

My heart pretty much went BOOM at this one

For more info on the Finding the Happy Project, including the rules, read all about it here.

Don’t forget to grab the button and come back every Monday to put your happy in the comments!

After I wrote that post the other day about her being “perfectly capable” of sleeping through the night, it was like a huge weight was lifted.  Yes, it was tiring but we could do it and get through it and there would be another side soon.  I did some reading online about various bedtime routines and examined our own routine to see if anything needed changing.

We changed a couple things.

We stopped using her Sleep Sheep.  Now, I love that Sleep Sheep and happily recommend it to any parent.  We used it religiously when she was a newborn in her bassinet and pack n play to help soothe her.  It works wonders.  However, after almost ten months of using it, she’s now accustomed to it and was starting to need it to fall back asleep.  If you don’t own one, the sheep plays four different environmental noises for 43 minutes then turns off.  I would change two things – I would make the music fade out slowly and then be motion/sound activated to turn back on again.  As it is, it just cuts off and that’s it.  Now, she just has the low persistent hum of her humidifier.

We started rocking her for longer when she drifts off to sleep in our arms.  I read that if you keep rocking for about another 10-20 minutes until they are good and deep asleep, the arms to bed/crib transfer will go much smoother.  Seems to work with her nicely.

Stephen does a lot more of the rocking and going in to check on her when she wakes up and cries.  We are thinking that, when she sees me, she immediately thinks food.  If Stephen can’t get her back to sleep and she continues to cry or does her hungry cry, then I nurse.  This gives me a break and gets her used to falling asleep with Daddy.

We started doing all of this middle of last week.

Saturday night, she slept 13 hours straight.

Last night, she slept 11.5 hours straight.

We are thrilled, happy, rested, and nervous.  I will take these victories and continue with our new routines, but I am always prepared for regression.  Prepare for the crying, hope for the sleeping.

For more info on the Finding the Happy Project, including the rules, read all about it here.

Don’t forget to grab the button and come back every Monday to put your happy in the comments!