I can't believe Olivia has been with us for a whole year! Time has flown by and she has been SUCH a blessing to our family. I don't know how we would've made it through this past year without her. I look forward to seeing her sweet face every morning when I wake up and I love that I can stay home and take care of her all day every day. We have become best of friends and I love it! Johnnie calls her my partner in crime :)
She is not interested in walking yet but she is making up for it with talking. Don't know where she gets it :) She is such a little chatterbox and she knows so many words: mama, dada, mommy, daddy, king, kitty, no, no no, no no no no!!!!, she doesn't say yes but she shakes her head yes, shhhhh (and she puts her finger over her nose instead of over her lips), baby, ball, she barks when you ask her how king goes or anytime she hears or sees a doggy, birdy, tweet tweet, moon (she has a new fascination with the moon and we now have to go tell it bye bye before we go to bed), hi, hello, bye, bye bye, eye, teeth, shoe, toes, beep, uh oh (she says ah ooo), cake, mimi, poppy, nana, pawpaw, Zach, nanny (what she calls us all when she's too lazy to think of who we are).
She also has so many favorite things. The top of her list is probably motorcycles. She LOVES them and the sound they make and she will imitate them by running through the gears (uhhhhh, uhhhhh, uhhhhhh, uhhhhhh). Her Poppy gets out his and Zach's motorcycles for her and she has gone for a few rides with me and Poppy on their street. So anytime she sees a motorcycle she squeals with delight and makes the sound and points and gets super excited. She also is in love with waffles and pancakes. She would eat them for every meal if I would let her. She's going through a stage where she is refusing most of her other foods. I stopped giving her bottles right after her birthday and also switched to cut up veggies and fruits rather than baby food and she was doing so well, I was so proud! She would eat diced carrots, peas, green beans, pieces of banana and grapes, etc... She loved all of it and then all of a sudden after we got that stomach virus and none of us had appetites, she never seemed to get hers back. Unless you give her a waffle or pancake and she will devour it. She loves drinking her whole milk but prefers a specific type of sippy cup. She loves the one made by munchkin that has a straw. She can put away quite a bit of milk and will also drink apple juice and water. She started refusing most of the fruits and veggies so she was just eating pieces of grilled cheese sandwiches, of course waffles and pancakes, oatmeal, and any sort of gerber graduates snack, cookies, cake, she really loves those organic elmo crackers and oatmeal cookies. So I had to go back to baby food just to get her fruits and veggies back in her. She doesn't seem to mind that so we'll try again with the big girl foods later on.
She has not taken any steps on her own but loves to push around her baby stroller and this other walking toy she has and I set up big toys all over the living room so that she can make it from one side of the room to the other without ever having to crawl. She can just go from the couch to a toy to a chair to a toy to another chair all the way to the window she likes to look out. And she will let go and stand alone and that makes her giggle. Then she will either fall to her bottom or lean forward back onto whatever she was holding on to. She really likes walking while holding on to someones fingers so I don't think it will be too much longer before she takes off on her own. Yikes.
We made a huge deal out of her first birthday and everyone had the best time! Her and Preston share a birthday so they shared a party and it worked out great. We had it at my parents house and they worked so hard to make sure everything was perfect. They fixed up my paw paw's old john deere trailer so they could pull it with the tractor for a hayride and the kids loved that. We had Country Critters come out and bring a petting zoo and pony rides which was a lot of fun. Then we had barbeque for dinner, cake for dessert and roasted marshmallows for an extra treat. Thanks to everyone who came and made the day special for Olivia and Preston!
this is the trailer that converted into the "big red barn" for the petting zoo
Olivia riding Wildfire the pony
Preston going for his pony ride
Nathan
I love this picture of Hannah!
Olivia and her Nana
Meredith did an AWESOME job on the cakes. Olivia's fave farm animal is the duck and Preston's is the horse so that's what kind of cakes they got. They were HUGE cakes. Olivia's was chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and Preston's was yellow butter cake with chocolate frosting - they were so good!
This is Olivia's little smash cake - SO CUTE! Again, thanks to Meredith - www.cakesbyauntiem.blogspot.com
These farm animal cookies were our party favors and they were DELISH - again, thanks to Meredith!
Olivia staring at her smash cake as everyone sings to her
thinking about blowing out her candle
blowing
starting to tear into her cake
smashing and eating!
everyone singing happy birthday to Preston!
Olivia got SOOO many bday presents - here she is kissing her baby
kissing another baby!
she got a Harley Davidson rocker from my parents and she loves it!
hayride
I love this picture of Preston on the tractor!
Olivia loves her Poppy so much!
Aaron and Michael roasting marshmallows
We were all so thankful that the weather was perfect and that everything worked out so well. The party started at 3:30 and people were still partying well after dark! Nathan talked Kylie into staying the night with us at my parents house and the two of them had so much fun the next morning riding down the sidewalk on this little John Deere Buck which is just a little plastic ride on toy. I got that on video and will have to figure out how to put it on here because it is too funny!
