Happy 4th of July!

Olivia celebrated her last first holiday, the 4th of July!  We got a bunch of fireworks (way more than we needed) and stayed up way late one evening to set them off.  Bob's family was in town for a combination birthday party/4th of July BBQ and everyone gathered around to see the show.

Olivia was very interested in the fireworks until we shot off one of the noisier ones.  Then she started to cry, she didn't like them at all.

We tried again on the actual 4th of July, and she was much happier about them.  Shelli happened to be in town, so she stopped by for an explosive time! (Good pun, eh?)

That night tons of fireworks were going off and Olivia woke up.  There was no chance of her going back to sleep with all of the noise, so we stayed up and watched fireworks from our deck.  She loved it!  She clapped after the big ones went off.

Not the best picture, but it's all we've got.

Other than holiday celebrations, we've just been enjoying the beautiful summer.  Cassandra took the kids to Logan, where they got to go swimming for the first time!  

Olivia is so excited to be going swimming, she kisses Izzy the dog!

This pool was perfect.  She could crawl in and out of it, and she could be carried around next to all of the kids (!) through the deeper water.  She played and played in the pool until she was so exhausted she was yawning and rubbing her eyes.  She still kept playing though until we took her home!

We found this cool park near our house one morning, and we had the whole place to ourselves!  Bob and Olivia ran through the splash water toys and both got very wet!

Then Olivia played on the jungle gyms and swings, she loved it.

We've been going on hikes as well.  Bob usually shleps around Olivia and Cass carries Henry.  On this particular hike though, after we found this waterfall we kept going and Cass got quite tired.  So Bob carried both babies for another mile up and all the way back down.  He-man!

Olivia loves playing and moving around!  She has become incredibly proficient at pulling up and cruising around.  If there's anything that stays still for a moment (bags, coffee tables, dogs, our legs) she will pull up on it and walk back and forth.

She is obsessed with drinking, especially water.  She loves figuring out how to use new cups.  Here, she has her very own camelbak bite valve cup.  She is so excited to drink from it the first time.

She loves her brother.  She continues to love patting his head and feet, kissing him, and poking out his eyes.

She so sweet.  Her babbling has taken a more purposeful tone.  Instead of flipping through different sounds, she says specific 'words' like dada, eh, and plah.

Olivia, Trouble Monster

Olivia is the craziest baby right now!  Everytime we turn around, she's found some new trouble to get into.  Here, she's crawled into the pantry and is trying to get herself a soda.

On this particularly hot day, she snuck into her closet and wanted to unpack all of her and Henry's diapers.  Don't you love that little naked back!

 

Since she has learned to feed herself, she is employing those skills everyday!  She loves picking small things up and putting them straight in her mouth.  She loves eating hair and fuzz from stuffed animals, and dirt and removing doorstops and eating those.  She is good at sharing though; she's pictured here offering a bite of the piece of grass she found.

With her getting into trouble all the time, it became very difficult to get anything else done, especially take care of Henry!  So we invested in a playpen, which we affectionately refer to as the Baby Cage.  She loves crawling in and out, and doesn't mind it too much when we lock her in.

Olivia loves stuffed animals!   We realized we hadn't posed her with her dog in a while, and she quickly attacked it with kisses.

She's always quick to share. Would you like to kiss the puppy?

And like all babies, she's obsessed with tags.

She still obsessively rubs her eyes when she is tired, it's cute.

She's also learned to clap, which she does seemingly randomly.  She claps when she wants to be picked up from her crib, when she bonks her head, or when she's in trouble for yet again trying to unplug the computer.  The only time she doesn't clap, is when you want her to.

For Father's Day, Bob bought Olivia a present (he got confused), a six-foot tall bear.  Olivia loves attacking it with hugs and kisses and crawling all over it.

The bear is so big, you can't even see it all here!

We've been enjoying the hot days of summer!  Sometimes we eat popsicles to cool down.

Or we play with Baby Henry to pass the time.

Don't forget to give the dog a kisss!

We recently went to the zoo with the whole family.  Olivia liked the jaguars, giraffes, gorillas, but most of all she liked watching the children.  Fascinating!

She went to the doctor last week for her 9-month checkup, and she's doing great!  She weighs 24 pounds (>95%), and is 29.5" long (95%).  She's started eating dairy products.  She loves yogurt and ate so much cheese in one sitting that she was constipated!  (We learned our lesson on that one.)

Olivia has such a great and fun personality.  She is a ton of work, but we wouldn't have it any other way!

Olivia - 9 months old and loving it

Olivia is 9 months now, can you believe it?  Since she has learned to crawl, she has been enjoying life with gusto.  She has found thousands of predicaments to get into and messes to make.  Also, she seems to be losing some of her baby fat rolls with all of her activity, we will miss them!

Olivia loves books.  She likes flipping through them and jabbering, as if she's reading them aloud.

She loves her baby brother Henry.  She likes kissing him and climbing on him, and stealing any toys or blankets he may have on him.

She's using her two tiny teeth to eat little bits of things (like bananas).  She loves feeding herself and feeding the dogs...

She is so adorable, and loves to play little games with people.  She'll hand you toys and things and she expects certain reactions and giggles if you play right.

Sometimes she doesn't like the way you play, and she'll let you know!

When she wakes up, she's usually pretty content and will chat and laugh until someone comes and gets here.  We thought she was sleeping and when we snuck into check on her, she had disassembled her bumper pads and was eating the ribbons!

She hates her sunglasses!

Now that Henry is bigger and we finally have warm weather, we have started going on hikes and adventures with the kids.  We spent a few days at a cabin in southern Utah with some friends and we went on a couple of hikes.

She has a great time riding in the pack.  With her sunhat on and some serious sunscreen, she's ready for any kind of weather!

We went to Zions and hiked to Angel's Landing.  Olivia fell asleep for half of the trip, but she had a great time nonetheless!

We're taking her for her doctor's checkup this week, and we'll be interested to see what her stats are!