Milestone Mayhem

Olivia has been the milestone master this past week. She has decided to do everything all at once..

Last Sunday she started to wave hello when we said hi to her. Then she started clapping!! (excuse the beginning part of the video - my camera is not always cooperative!)(and yes they are wearing christmas pjs - we did a photoshoot!)


The next day I noticed she was getting her very first tooth! That popped through within a day and now she has her second one coming in!

The past few days she has been taking off on her push walker as if she's a pro. I think she really wants to chase Zachary around on foot.


She climbed up all of our stairs (with me behind her of course).

She LOVES finger foods and barely eats her purees anymore. The other day she had half of a piece of pizza!

She also discovered how much fun unrolling toilet paper is...

Big Things Are Happening

This:




and that:

more on both of those to come...

Get In Mah Belly!

Olivia has been pretty hungry lately. The other day I caught her trying to eat herself alive!!!


Here she is munching on some fingers.




Then she tried out her whole fist.


Then she dined on some piggies!

For fear that I would lose my baby to self mutilation I decided to let her try some rice cereal tonight. Her first solids, oh my!!

"you want me to eat what??"

"well alright, i'll give it a try"

"the spoon looks pretty fun!"

"mmmmmm"

"they tricked me, that was terrible! bring me a bowl of toes, stat!"

"growing up isn't all that fun afterall"

P.S. The blog nazi's took away my pretty background. I will work on making it lovely again. For now, enjoy this very green scenery.

SMILE!

When I got pregnant with Zachary I mentioned a few times that I hoped I was pregnant with twins. I figured if I had twins I would only have to be pregnant once and our family would be complete. A bonus would have been if the twins were one boy and one girl. Well, I didn't get my twins... or did I?

The more pictures I take of Olivia the more I see Zachary when he was a baby. I'm going to start saying I had my twins, only 2 years and 8 months apart.

Miss Olivia's 1st "smile" - captured.

Zachary - a little more grinny

1st Dentist Visit

Today I took Zachary to the dentist for his 1st check-up. I am absolutely in love with this dentist. They took their time explaining every single step to him before they even started. He was completely at ease with the Dental Hygienist and she made the whole visit as special as she could.

I also love when I'm encouraged to take pictures!


They had these sunglasses because of the bright light. I was amazed that he actually wore them for a little while!!!


He was a little uncomfortable when she was in there flossing, but who isn't?

He laughed the whole time she was polishing his teeth. At one point he had both of us cracking up because he was being so silly!

This is the picture they took in the office and gave me.

Z's teeth are in great shape! No cavities and she said that since he's so good at rinsing and spitting we could try regular toothpaste for him soon :)

Thomas Tushy & Old Friends

I'd really like to know where the little boy that ran around my house today came from! The one who peed and pooped in the potty all by himself and then decided that yes, he did want to wear his big boy underwear!

Zachary is well on his way to being potty trained and I can't give one bit of credit to myself or Rich. I mean, we didn't deter him but we certainly weren't "training" by any means. He has been telling us when he wants to go and sometimes we just find him naked in the bathroom sitting on the potty. I am such a proud mommy! He really amazes me more and more each day.

Of course I had to get a shot of him in his Thomas undies for the photo album. I think his girlfriends will really like this one :)


As cute as that picture is, it makes me feel a little sad because my baby is really getting way too big, WAY too fast.



Remember this cutie below?? Yep, that's Z's old friend Charlotte that he used to play with almost every single day when we lived in Baltimore. We finally met up with them today for a play date at Oregon Ridge (after 9 months of not seeing one another).



The kids took some time to get caught up and have a snack.



My handsome boy with a very cold nose! He refused to wear a hat or his hood, I wasn't being negligent.

Back to the potty business... Z wore his underwear to the playground and then to Walmart without ONE SINGLE ACCIDENT. That was from 9:30am until 1:30pm and then he told me when he had to pee when we got home and darn if he didn't almost fill up his whole potty!!!!

Oh, I'm so proud, can't you tell??????

1 Year Ago - Comparison

I absolutely love looking back on old pictures to see how much Zachary has changed. Today, I was BLOWN away by how different he looked a year ago...


This picture was taken today.


He has changed so drastically! I can't believe he went from a roly poly, bald, toothless baby to such a handsome little guy! I am one proud and nostalgic mama right now. Where did the time go? A couple more weeks and my baby boy will be 2...

Escape artist lands himself in a bus bed

How did this day get here so quickly??? Zachary has been climbing out of his crib with ease the past couple of days so we decided that in interest of his safety we better break out the toddler bed.

It was a bitter sweet evening for me. Seeing the crib taken apart and moved made me want to cry my eyes out. On the other hand, seeing Zachary in a bus bed made by my Dad 14 years ago is AMAZING! I know he's so happy seeing another grandson use this bed.

Zachary LOVES it!

We are going to get letters and add his name on the back.

Randi and Collin are on there now, so cute!

Hey Dad hurry up!

I am pleased to announce that he went right to sleep! Rich left the room and he was sitting up but we didn't hear a sound out of him afterwards. I really hope this transition is as easy as he is making it seem!

The blanket was Rich's idea of protection if he falls out. Too sweet.

Pee Pee on the Potty!

Not Rich, we're still working on that but my little almost 21 month old big boy decided to give it a go today and YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

**How many oxymorons were in the sentence above?**

We are in no way starting the whole "potty training" business at 21 months. For many reasons, most of it being that I'm lazy and don't feel like stopping at EVERY.SINGLE.BATHROOM. in the United States when I just want to go get a bottle of wine down the street at the local liquor store. (Man I'm a banner mom)

No but really, I do feel he's too young. We aren't discouraging it, obviously. Tonight before his bath I noticed his diaper was still dry from when I changed him 3 hours prior to that. I thought either A) he's majorly dehydrated or B) he's going to totally soil the bubbly clean bath water the second he gets in. So I merely suggested he sit his cute cheeks down on the cute little green toilet and GIVE IT A GO BUDDY!

Boy if he didn't make a face like he was really concentrating and, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh pee all over the floor! I didn't think to do a little, ahem, adjusting because frankly I thought he'd sit there wiggling his little tush for a few seconds and nothing would happen. Won't make that mistake again!

So of course I jumped up and down and screamed and called Rich to come and see that YOUR SON JUST PEED IN THE FREAKIN POTTY!!!!!!!!!! Zachary looked at us like "dude, it's no big deal. I've known how to do this my whole life I just choose to make you spend thousands of dollars on diapers to prepare you for future expenses I will be making you suffer through."

Now, I think I'll go scrub the bathroom floor and drink some wine to celebrate!

Has anyone seen mah bay bay?

Oy, so whoever this little boy is that has been residing here this past month can't possibly be the sweet boy I gave birth to 15 months and 29 days ago. That little squishy angel would NEVER hit his mommy & daddy, kick his doggies or throw temper tantrums, no way, uh uh. Contrary to the picture above this little boy is not so sweet and innocent all of the time. He has really learned how to push buttons, especially while mommy is in the middle of cooking dinner and the floor vents, trash can lid and silverware are TOTALLY supposed to be thrown across the floor in mommy's general direction. Oh and that little boy would also not make mommy chase him half way down the street EACH and EVERY morning when we're trying to go to the park for an enjoyable (um, screamfest) walk. I've put in a call to Mercy Hospital for a refund, they said they'd get back to me.


So on the eve of his 16 month "birthday" I'm praying to whoever is in charge of sleep that my child, will indeed, make it past the 6'oclock hour tomorrow morning!!!! Mommy & Daddy are TIRED AND CAN'T AFFORD ANYMORE RUNS TO DUNKIN DONUTS! (Really, it's our waists that can't afford it. Those damn munchkins are irresistable!)



Alright I must admit it, the kid does have some good things about him. His vocab is *almost* in the double digits. He really likes to repeat everything we say. We are slowly saying bye bye to our potty mouths (more Rich than anything, man he's like a sailor...hehe j/k)


He is also climbing on everything and anything, we think he has a career at Cirque du Soleil in his future. He has mastered eating with utensils. I'm not saying half the food doesn't end up on the floor but we think that's more on purpose than an "uh oh." There are more but my brain has been put on Duh Mode so I'll just say... As much as the little booger drives us up the wall he is also so very sweet. Who wouldn't enjoy a smack across the face and big ol slobbery kiss to make up for it in the same 30 seconds? This girl wouldn't pass it up if someone paid her!



Here are a few snapshots of the little Toddler/Tornado that we call our son:



Look at that hair, it's finally growing!

Why is the highchair on the floor like this? Oh, because apparently it's Z's Mt. Everest and he has conquered.

I believe this is called "I'm getting a one way ticket to MD School for the Blind - thanks Mom"


This might be the cutest rain coat I've ever seen! Dylan is letting Zachary borrow it :)

Check out the boots!

Ever see a Firefighter throw a fit? Here ya go!

Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow!

I got the cutest phone call in the world last night! My sister, Sarah, called me super excited to share news with me. I figured it was something about her house since she's in the process of putting it on the market. No, it was better!

Are you in suspense yet? My wonderful, smart and cutie patootie of a nephew is officially a reader! He just started kindergarten this year and they sat down to do some homework last night. I'm not sure of the details of the homework but it required reading a book together. Sarah said he picked Cinderella first but she swayed him to choose something with smaller words. So he settled on Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss. She said he did such a wonderful job sounding out the words and taking his time. I could tell she was beaming just from explaining it. Needless to say, I'm a very proud Auntie :) Way to go Collin!


Here he is ready for his 1st day of school. I can't believe how big he is!