GO PATS!!

This is what Sunday is all about!

Another Random Update

It's been a while since I've posted anything.. thought I'd post a quick update. Livi has 10 teeth now... 2 molars, which is probably why she was on such a major sleep strike recently. She's still not sleeping great, but it's a bit better. She's repeating more and more new words everyday - we have to be VERY careful about what we say! She still loves to read books, which is great. She'll sit and look at books for 20 minutes or so by herself sometimes! Um, what else? Oh, I'm pretty sure she's gotten taller - she seems to have go-go gadget arms (some of you will get the reference!). I'll post a picture or two later.

I think our Bumbo is broken

Previously I commented on how the effectively sit in a Bumbo as our daughter, Olivia demonstrated. I just came across an even more ingenious use of the Bumbo. Go to http://www.ready-set-bumbo.com/ and watch the 3 videos. Absolutely hilarious. Gotta run, Livi is waking up from nap.

GIMP

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a great Open Source photo editing application. We use it for our photos, mostly for file resizing, but tonight Jen asked about how to make the photo black and white to give it that artsy feel. I didn't have a lot of experience using this application so some of the lexicon within the program wasn't immediately intuitive to me. Looking for a quick answer, I found the tutorials page hosted on the site and found a tutorial for "Selective Colorization", which makes the photo look like something you'd see on a Hallmark card. I applied the technique to one of my favorite photos from Olivia's Birthday party and I think it came out great.

This came from our digital camera and although the effect is great it definitely makes me want a dSLR. Someday....

Expect a few more pics like this as I play with other tutorials.

Hmm, haven't been here in a while

Things have been pretty busy the past few weeks. The weekend of the 15th of September we enjoyed a Family Fun Day with my company at Canobie Lake Park, Salem, NH. Olivia is still a bit small to enjoy the rides, but she loved the music stage. She spent quite a bit of time just dancing and having a grand old time in front of a crowd of hundreds of people. Some proof is included:

Two weeks ago I had to go off to Texas for business for a week and that completely upended Olivia's routine as well as Jen's. Things have somewhat settled back into, umm...., normal. Although, sleep has continued to be an issue for us. We purchased a book called "The no-cry sleep solution for toddlers and infants." Wish us luck.

Olivia continues to grow and amaze us. She's starting to form more words from what she hears and anything that has some sort of emotional response she retains and reuses. An excellent example of this comes from her learning how to say "Kenny" who she is definitely enamored with. Kenny (actually, the entire Twomey family) is also really good with her too.

Mimi has also been MUCH, MUCH more tolerant of Olivia and even lets Olivia give her hugs from time to time. Yeah sure there's a lot of meowing and whining, but she doesn't swipe at Olivia which is very important.

The lack of sleep is a tough pill to swallow, but everything else about our precious, little peanut is perfect. We are blessed to have her.

Random thoughts

Olivia's 7th tooth broke thru this morning (or sometime last night). I hope that she'll sleep well tonight! She's getting so big. Her new favorite food is apple... She thinks it's so cool when I hand a whole peeled apple to her. Of course, she literally "eats" it for a good hour. She gets really mad when I take it to wash it after she has dropped it on the carpet or something. Today we had our friends Bethany and Kaden over. Livi and Kaden had a lot of fun playing together. Olivia was feeding him goldfish crackers. So cute! She has also been very into giving kisses, and blowing kisses. Noel and I (and Grandma, and Auntie Momo, and today Kaden and Bethany) are really enjoying being showered with her affection! She's such a blessing.

Sorry for all the random thoughts. I'm tired! :)

What, Mom?!?

Isn't she a little young to be giving me this look? :)

An update

We were talking today about all of the words Olivia can say, and decided we had to list them somewhere. I know this is probably way more interesting to us than to most people, but that's okay! She says... Mama, Dada, cat, kitty, ball, key, duck, what, that, okay, up, and all done. Some of them are very clear, and others not everyone would recognize yet. She also uses some sign language. She can sign for more, bath, all done, milk, and help. When she is frustrated, she tries to use all of her signs to get her point across!

Olivia has also REALLY started climbing. One of her favorite things to climb on is the riding toy Noel and I got her for her birthday. She stands on top of it and dances or does "touchdown" (Yes, we are getting her ready for football! She "tackles" too, and we're working on "fumble". Go Pats!)

The life of a modern baby

A Birthday Montage

by Captain Zoom (It's 15MB but totally worth it)

More pictures and video to come...