Olivia: 10 months

Olivia Grace is 10 months old! She weighs about 18 lbs. and is 27 inches long. She still has beautiful, big blue eyes and her hair is getting lighter everyday. She's crawling everywhere and getting into everything. She can stand on her own for a second or two. She pulls up on whatever she can reach and is cruising along the furniture. She'll be walking in no time! Olivia's sleeping is getting better. Last month, she was still waking up twice during the night but recently it's just been once. Olivia has graduated out of the baby bathtub and now takes her bath sitting right next to her big sister in the tub. They have a blast splashing each other! Olivia is still a breastfeeding champ. 10 months and going strong! She also LOVES food. She hasn't really rejected anything so far but her favorites have been bananas, cheese, ham, chicken, apples, carrots, and tons more! She's a good eater! Olivia adores her big sister and the feeling is mutual.

Happy 10 Months!

Olivia: 9 Months

Olivia is 9 months old! She is pulling up to stand now and crusing a little bit while holding on to something. Her crawling has gotten so much faster and she can get where she needs to go. She 4 teeth on top and 2 on the bottom. She's loving finger foods- she's had ham, turkey, cheese, egg, strawberries, bananas, apples, and carrots in bite size pieces. She's not a big fan of purees that aren't fruit so we're trying to the bite size pieces of veggies now. Her hair is pretty much always in a waterspout now because it's gotten so long. She's still wearing 6-9 month clothes but I think we'll be moving up very soon. She weighs between 18-20 lbs. and we think she's just perfect!

Olivia: chompers

The past few weeks haven't made for good sleep around our house. Olivia was up every hour or 2 all night long. Very exhausting! Well I took a peek into her mouth on Tuesday morning and discovered the culprit for the lack of sleep. FOUR top teeth are coming in all at the same time! Two of them have broken through and the other two are very close. No wonder she wasn't happy. During our sleepless nights, I finally ordered a Baltic amber teething necklace. I had heard so many great things about them and figured we didn't have anything to lose but maybe a little sleep and comfort to gain. The necklace came in the mail yesterday. So far, so good. If nothing else, it looks adorable on Olivia!

Olivia: 8 months

Olivia turned 8 months old this month! She's growing oh so fast and developing such an amazing personality. She can crawl! It's not perfect yet but she can definitely get to where she needs to go and fast! She enjoys eating pureed foods twice a day and loves finger foods- puffs, yogurt melts, and fresh bananas and strawberries. Her sweet smile brightens our days!

family: Christmas 2012

The decorations have come down but the memories that we made this Christmas, will last forever. Christmas is a totally different experience when you have your own children. Watching the joy and excitement is just priceless. Julianna "got it" this year... she was so thrilled about everything Christmas related.

We taught her about the real meaning of the season and she kept singing Happy Birthday, Jesus over and over. We took her shopping with us to buy Christmas gifts for a family that our church group adopted. At first she was confused and thought the gifts should be for her but we tried to explain to her that we were giving them to someone else who didn't have anything and she got all excited about choosing things for the children. As much as she could understand at nearly 3 years old, she did.

She got to tell Santa what she wanted this year and watching her little face light up when she saw exactly what she wanted by the tree on Christmas morning filled my heart with happiness. Even though the past few months have been very hard on our family, our faith in God has pulled us through. We were very blessed to provide a nice Christmas for our own family as well as for another one.

Little Olivia celebrated her very first Christmas. She seemed to love her gifts but she especially loved the bows, wrapping paper, and ribbons. I can't wait to share many more Christmas memories with my sweet daughters and husband!

Julianna: potty training // victory at last

I reported a few months ago that my sweet toddler was smarter than me (or so she thought). Potty training wasn't going well. She even tricked me into believing that she'd used the potty by pouring water into her free standing potty and saying, "Look, Mommy! I peed!" Such a smart, dishonest potty trainee.

So basically I threw in the towel. Oh well if she wasn't potty trained by 3. I knew at least she wouldn't go to elementary school in a diaper so I decided to just relax and let her do her thing.

And that she did! The week before last she kept asking me to change her diaper every single time she peed. As soon as she went, she came to find me and asked me to put a new diaper on her. I did for the first 3 times and then I we just went for panties. We had an accident or 2 that day but overall it was a success. Basically she just decided she was ready and she led the way... we just followed and encouraged her with claps, hugs, dances, stickers, and a few sweet treats along the way.

About a week and half later she's in panties all day except for a pull up/diaper at naps and bedtime. She's got it down for the most part. Just working on the tricky #2... if any parents have advice in that area, please send it my way!

Victory at last and half as many diapers. Yiiiiiipppppeeeeee!

Sticker chart! We ran out of stickers quickly!

A sweet treat to celebrate our potty training successes!