Olivia's Fourth Month in summary

Before we get into pictures, I'm still figuring out collages and other things, so some of these are quite pixalated...I'll figure it out and fix it eventually! On February 28th Olivia had her four-month birthday, and celebrated by going to the doctor to get shots and running errands with mom. I'll note that the next morning we flew to Anaheim to go to The Happiest Place on Earth! (blog coming soon) so we were quite busy. At her appointment, Olivia weighed 13 lb 10 oz, and was 25 inches tall. She's still right around 50th percentile, for everythnig, but was slightly taller, more like 70th percent. Now for the stories from this past month... Olivia's fourth month went by very fast. One of the coolest things we did was go through my mom's box of kid's clothes and find two of my outfits from when I was a baby. First is my coming home from the hospital outfit. This is also my favorite set of pictures today, she just has the cutest faces! This second set of pictures is from another outfit when I was a baby... Olivia had quite a few developments this month as well. The most fun for us to measure is that she is always sticking her hand in her mouth! She usually gets at least 4 fingers, and sometimes gets more than that! She's also started sticking other things in her mouth, and has growing control of her hands. She's just beginning to be able to grab something she's looking at, but she keeps working at it!

I've commented before about Olivia's habit of playing with her feet. I took a few minutes to photograph it this month.

Next is a few pictures before we went to a gymnastics meet of Olivia's beautiful and fun O&B tutu. We've enjoyed it already, and Olivia loves to grab the tule and try to eat it...I think that means she likes it!

Olivia discovered the phone this month! The progression of these pictures goes

1. ooh...nice

2. I can eat it!

3. Don't Look At Me That Way!!

4. I know how to use it, I was just testing you.

Olivia also got to meet her cousin Ruby this month when we had a Wellman side get-together. I didn't bring my camera, so I was very glad to have Alex's phone to take some cute pics! I love how sweet Ruby was being with the baby, and they were both enamored with eachother.

We also discovered a new personality trait this month...diva! Olivia pulls off the high-maintenance quite well in these next couple pictures. It makes me think she knows how spoiled she is and is already starting to take advantage! But seriously, I love her face in these pictures, and she was a real sport while Mom tried on all sorts of ridiculous things in preparation for our trip to Disneyland.

The last collage comes from her 4-month photo shoot. It didn't go especially well, but when I look back on the pictures I realize that it doesn't matter, I still got a lot of wonderful pictures! I love her faces, and I had to put in the spit-up picture in, and I'll note that it was the first picture taken. She spit up as soon as I pulled out the camera, which is pretty typical these days. She always seems to have some spit-up waiting for each new outfit and whenever I'm in a hurry! Oh, the joys of parenting!

Alex and I couldn't ask for a better and more sweet beginning to our parenting. Olivia is so wonderful, and I love each day learning with her. I hope to do her justice in parenting, and really appreciate the help from all of our families and friends with advice and love.

Coming up...Disneyland!

Valentine's Day

I'm back! You didn't get away from my ramblings that easily :) As you'll be able to see over the next few days when I catch up, February and March were incredibly busy, and I'm just now getting the breathing time that I need to recover, let alone post about what has happened!

Valentine's Day 2011 was a great day. It started the night before, because Alex had to work all day on V-day. The night before, while I was working on homework (did I mention that I took 18 credits this term?!) he surprised me with a lovely dinner of lasagna, salad, and garlic bread. We had an at-home date and watched The Wedding Singer, which I had never seen before. I also want to point out our matching water bottles :) We are huge nerds...

You might also want to glance above at the dying flowers on the table... they were a surprise a few weeks before, and they stayed beautiful for a long time...just not that long!

The next morning we woke up late and I dressed Olivia up for her first Valentine's day!


She wasn't thrilled about the photo shoot, so that's the only pic I got without her pacifier (we call it a plug) in.

Olivia and I went on a shopping excursion in the mid-afternoon to get the needed ingredients for my Valentine's Day dinner. It was a pretty long trip, and it was pouring rain, so Olivia was quite tired when we got back!

I spent a whopping 2.5 HOURS in the kitchen (probably not that amazing, but I'm more of a 10 minute meal person, so it was a lot for me! after taking the time to make an Excel spreadsheet of the times that I needed to do each step. It was quite a chore to choreograph 3 meal parts and 2 desserts to be done at the right time!

The finished meal was apricot chicken, garlic lemon green beans, and roasted rosemary/thyme chicken. It was amazing, if I do say so myself! Also, the new flowers on the table were delivered to me, still in my pajamas, in the morning after Alex had left for work. It was very sweet, and showed his preparedness!

For dessert we had strawberry shortcake and proliferoles (I think that's how you spell it). The hard thing about dessert was that I decided to hand-make everything, which included the whipped cream! Alex and I don't have a mixer, so that meant half an hour of whipping....let's just say my left wrist is very strong now! The proliferoles were great, if you don't know about them, they're a pastry-like thing (super simple to make), split in half, stuffed with ice cream, and covered in melted chocolate...MMM...just talking about it is going to make me need them again!

That was Valentine's...can we do it again? I hope you all had as great of a day as I did!

Dedicated to my Love...

Alright, I'll admit. I'm a total chick. I cry during sappy movies, occasionally (today) record a Lifetime movie just because I know it will have a girly ending, and I love romantic surprises. I'm not sure Alex knew exactly what he was getting into when we started dating, but I'm dedicating this early Valentine's Day blog post to the wonderful man I am so excited to marry this fall.


I would be lying if I said we have a fairytale romance. However, he treats me like a princess and often goes out of his way to make me feel special. Whether it be picking up flowers as a surprise or doing the night-time feeding just to let me sleep, Alex is always thinking of me and I love him more than I can say.

Our little family has had a whirlwind year. Alex and I were both attending Oregon State until he graduated in June. We spent the summer beating the heat and having a blast at many family get togethers. As is quite evident in the above picture, I grew in width most of last year until October 28th when our beautiful girl, Olivia Rylen, joined our family. Alex started his job and we learned about our job as parents, and just had an adventuresome fall. In November my little sister Tasha got married, so Olivia and I took our first trip to Utah over Thanksgiving. Alex couldn't go with us (work) and that was the first time I truly recognized all the things he does for me every day. Christmas was another big day, Olivia had her first Christmas (she slept the whole time ... ) and Alex asked me to marry him (OF COURSE I said YES!). Since then we have been enjoying the craziness of planning a wedding ... OK mostly I have been enjoying it and Alex has learned just to say he loves it and give me a courtesy glance at the computer whenever I have some new hairbrained idea (P.S. Thanks Dad for teaching me a word like hairbrained).

It's true that sometimes I feel like we're in too deep (haha get it?) with all the things we have going on. I'll admit that right now I'm sitting in a very unclean living room with dinner dishes still on the floor and an unfinished craft project on the table that will probably stay there for weeks. However, every time I feel stressed, I just have to think about the other things around me and I feel much better. For example, tonight Alex made that great dinner that's still on the floor, and he's sitting on the couch right now putting Olivia to bed. How could I not love every minute of this time?

Alex, I love you. You are the best dad and fiance I could ever ask for. I'm so excited to spend the rest of my life with you. Happy Valentine's Day babe :)

My smart little girl!

Didn't want to forget this...

Olivia successfilly fed herself today! She just fiished her bottle, which she held up completely by herself! It's not the first time she's done that, but it is the first time she has pulled the bottle out halfway through, raised her head up, and burped by herself! I literalyy didn't help at all except by puttinh the bottle back into her mouth. She immediately grabbed it again and finished her meal!

New Hobby!

Reasons this post doesn't make sense:
1. I'm not a hobby person. I have Olivia, school, wedding planning, teaching piano, and the house to keep me busy, so I've never really taken the time to develop a hobby.
2. I'm NOT a crafty person. I tried my hand at sewing in high school (2 prom dresses, a homecoming dress, a couple quilts), but am a total perfectionist, so I just stopped. Beyond that, I haven't ever even tried anything crafty
3. I'm not a creative person. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of things that I am, but creative is not one. I love lists, organization, and getting things done efficiently

So imagine my surprise when about a week ago I found myself browsing on the internet looking for how-to's on making hair bows! There are a few reasons this does make sense:

1. I've recently become a hair bow addict. I know Olivia is beautiful with or without them, but I just think hair bows "make" an outfit. I also like hair bows because regardless of blanket color (pink) or clothes color (usually pink), it's inevitable to get the question "so how old is your little boy?" every time I go to the grocery store.
2. Hair bows are nonexistent in stores in the Corvallis/Albany/Salem area. I'm sure there's some boutique in Salem that sells them, but none in Corvallis.
3. When you do find a hair bow at a store, it's EXPENSIVE! I'm talking $12 for one hair bow on a headband. I paid that once (Olivia's home-from-the-hospital bow), but don't plan on ever paying that again, and I think other moms in the area should have a more reasonable option if they have a bow addiction like mine.
4. Once I start something, I get into it full bore. It's not uncommon for one idea to turn into my whole afternoon if I'm not careful. And since all of my ideas are great ones, I guess that's not so bad. :)

So here goes... I'm making hair bows! So far I've learned to make two different kinds of bows, as well as a great technique for silk flowers. I've also discovered that I'm crafty enough to make a hair bow wall hanger (the wooden "princess", once it's finished will have ribbon hanging from it so that bows can all hang neatly without getting smooshed)!

I realize that I'm not perfect, in fact these three bows are the first three I've ever made. Also, the colors aren't great (Michael's clearance ribbon doesn't have a ton of selection). But now I know I can make beautiful bows, and I'm planning on starting a little at-home business to justify my new hobby!

Long story short...here's the picture of my newest creations!

3 months...again!

Caption: Aren't you dont writing about me being 3 months old yet?

In short, no. I just realized that I talked about Olivia's 3 month birthday without sharing any of the fun things she has just started doing recently!

First, her size. Holy Moley is she growing! She weighed in recently at 12 lb 8 oz, a whopping 4.5 lbs more than her birth weight! She's also grown 3 inches (is now 23.5"), and has a head circumfrence of 15.75" For those of you that heard last month, she measured at 24", but I'm going to safely assume that she hasn't shrunk, and one of the two measurements isn't quite accurate.

And now for the fun parts! I've gathered pictures to show her "firsts" over the last month

This is Olivia showing interest in toys. She started by swinging wildly at her toys and things that she likes, and by the end of January she was really using her hands quite well (usually demonstrated by shoving her entire left hand into her mouth :) ).

This is Olivia playing with her rattle! Yes, I'll admit that I put it in her hand, but she shook it around for a good 10 minutes before letting it go. And for those of you who are wondering, she didn't hit herself in the head, but I was watching carefully :).

Olivia's biggest hobby is watching TV. Turning the volume up and just standing in front of the TV with her is a great way to calm her down if she's fussy, and the closest she's ever come to rolling over was because we put her at an angle where she couldn't watch! I love this picture because at least 10 times a day, or pretty much whenever the TV is on, I catch her craning her neck all the way around to watch.

These are Olivia's soundproof ear muffs. We got them for her a while back, but she wasn't a fan of how huge they were. She's grown a lot, so we tried them on her again and she didn't mind wearing them at all! This allows us to go to as many OSU events as we want! Olivia has joined me and Grandma Terece at every gymnastics meet this winter, and the band is just a little too loud for her liking.

Olivia still enjoys sleeping with dad. These are my favorite pictures to take, I just love watching them sleep together, or Alex fall asleep when Olivia's wide awake still :).

Olivia's 3-month birthday present (ok it was just a good excuse to buy her a fun toy) was a "Jenny jump up" door jumper. I know she's a little small, as you can see by the fact that she's not quite strong enough to sit up and there's room for 5 of her in there, but I wanted to let her try it, and she absolutely loved it! After we cracked up for a few minutes watching her just smile and laugh at herself, we did add a blanket to give her a little more stability, but I just love the crazy faces she's making in these pictures!

New words: OK that's going a little far :) Olivia has started babbling a lot more lately though, and is especially loud when she's tired. She doesn't really cry (except when I'm too slow at feeding her when she's hungry), but she won't let you forget she's laying there, that's for sure! Having a baby who talks is new for Alex and I because for her first 2 1/2 months we rarely heard Olivia at all! It's kind of fun to hear her baby noises all the time, especially her laughs (which she gives to Dad much more often than to Mom).

During the last week of January, just before her 3-month mark, Olivia trained herself to eat every 4 hours. Before this she would often struggle even getting to 3 hours, but she made the 4 hour transition very easy! She also continues to sleep great, always for at least 6 hours at night, and often 8 or 9! I'm still occasionally guilty of waking her up when she goes more than 9 hours even though I know I don't have to :)

I think that's about it, Olivia is the most wonderful gift I could ever ask for, and makes every day wonderful. I'm so excited for every new thing she is learning each day :)