Wednesday Afternoon

We went to the park this afternoon to a) enjoy the gorgeous fall colors before the next storm most likely blows them all away and b) test out our new camera lens. Olivia loved walking around on the gravel trail. She still uses her arms to balance herself upright, so it's pretty funny to watch her stroll along.


My two favorite pictures of the day:

Walking!

Olivia went from taking a few steps to full-on walking over the weekend, and it's been pretty fun to watch her cruising all over the place. For some reason, she loves to hold onto things while she roams around.


Of course, a girl on the go must properly accessorize.

Why is it that she wouldn't wear this headband when she was pretty much bald and it actually looked cute on her? Now she's obsessed with it and insists that I put it on her.

I was dying to get Olivia a kitchen after she had so much fun playing with my niece's, and Doug told me that she could have one "when she started walking". I'm not entirely sure why he decided this, but true to his word, when I came home on Saturday he had gone out and bought one. This is Olivia's reaction to seeing it all put together for the first time. I'm pretty sure it's a hit!


I went to an all-day photography workshop on Saturday, which was awesome! It was the longest I've been away from O since she was born (crazy), and it was so nice to have an opportunity to learn without the distraction of a toddler! I'm working on becoming a better photographer, and am now no longer allowed to shoot on auto mode. So expect lots of pictures over the next few weeks as I practice my new skills :).


P.S. Here's a clip of Olivia walking around the house the other night. It's really not a great video (it's hard to capture a moving kiddo in poor lighting!), but I know that some of my family is very anxious to see her up on her feet!

Halloween Begins

Olivia has been pretty excited about the "dee" (aka "bee" - all b's are d's according to her) costume hanging in her closet. We finally got to break it out this morning for a Halloween party with our awesome Stroller Strides group, the first of FOUR parties she'll be attending this week. At least we're getting our money's worth out of her costume, right?

Once we got to the party, she couldn't have cared less about the other kids in their costumes or the fun craft they had planned. The girl had one thing on her mind: FOOD. She spent most of her time standing at the table, trying to get the goodies off & saying "cookie" and "treat" to anyone who came near the table.


Success.


We attempted to get a photo of all of the kiddos in their costumes. This is the best I could do!

Pumpkin Patch - Round 2

Since it was an absolutely perfect fall day, we went back to the pumpkin patch with Doug & his mom to get our Halloween pumpkins. I had high hopes of getting some cute photos of O and our family, but she wasn't exactly cooperative. We're definitely hitting the full-on toddler stage. Olivia's new favorite words? "No" and "don't". Funtimes. It's a good thing that she's so stinkin' cute!

Here are the few photos that I managed to salvage (with a bit of editing)!












And now, here's the reality of how most of our pictures turned out. I was showing them to Doug and told him that the pics we got were almost all outtakes, and he suggested I post them. So here's a look at what most of the afternoon really looked like...

Wow. Pretty.


I don't want to be on this pumpkin!


Ugh, another photo?


Shoeless. In the muck. Sweet.


Happy Fall!

A Star Is Born

A friend needed a baby to make a total mess out of some carpet for an advertisement, so of course she thought of miss O to fill the role. The plan was simple: Olivia had to play with some toys, and then eat ice cream and smear it all over the carpet. Of course, working with a one year old is never that easy!

Here's how our morning went...

Getting the star ready!


All clean and pretty...




She was VERY interested in the cameras and filming equipment, and of course wanted to play with that instead of her toys.




It, surprisingly, took a bit of coaxing from Doug to get her to eat the ice cream.




But once she got into it (and after throwing quite a fit) she loved it!






The carpet carnage.


Olivia's "appearance fee" was a thorough carpet cleaning of our entire house, and I'm happy to report that the chocolate seems to have come out. Her sweater, however, is not looking so good. I'm off to see if Oxy Clean can work its magic on this one...

Of course, I'll post a link to the commercial when it's all put together!

Quack Quack

Olivia recently learned how to quack like a duck (although it honestly sounds more like a grunt), so we headed to Bellevue Park to check out the real deal. She loved them!

Pumpkin Patch

My mom came up for the weekend (yay!!!), so we headed out for our first pumpkin patch visit of the season.

This, my So Cal friends, is what a REAL pumpkin patch looks like. (Last year Doug thought that it was hilarious that I showed up to the mucky pumpkin patch in leather flats, not realizing that pumpkins don't naturally grow in parking lots and hay bales like they do in California).




Grandma and her girl.


Olivia was a bit weary at first, but then once she realized that she could crawl around in the muck she was all over them!




This one?


She also thought that they made a great horsie ride.


On a related note, I got some fun pumkins while we were there to add to my front door Halloween decor :). Can you tell that I'm pretty excited about trick-or-treating this year?


Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend! Thanks SO much for visiting, Mom!

P.S. I'm pretty much trying to blog at least once a week now... with Olivia getting so mobile it's getting harder to a) carry a camera and b) capture her not moving!

Weekend Update

After what seemed like a very loooooong week with a crabby child (severe stage of separation anxiety + waking up at 4:45am daily = cranky Olivia, which also = cranky mommy), we had a great weekend to make up for it! Friday night I went out for a "mom's night out" with some new girls I've met through a playgroup, yesterday we had brunch with some friends from my UCSB days, and today we went to a 1st birthday party. Pretty fun stuff!

Anyhoo, here's a mish-mash of photos from the week...

Doug started back at UW for his 2nd year of the MBA program, so I insisted on getting his picture before his first day. He wasn't too keen on the idea, but I convinced him to let me take one with him & O.


Olivia has figured out that when the camera comes out, she should smile. This is her sweet new camera face.


Another version, just in case you need a close-up view.

(That nice gash on the right side of her nose is the result of taking a header into a drawer knob. Ouch. I think that this and a few other falls have made her a bit timid about walking a whole lot.)

And I finally captured a picture of her tooth! Just one so far.


Today was Olivia's friend Beckett's first birthday. They were brave and planned a beach bash, and luckily the rain held out until just after the cake was done :).

Buddies.


The birthday boy and his lovely family.


Doug took Olivia down to the beach to feed the ducks. I thought that they looked so cute...


Then I walked around to get another view and this is what was REALLY going on...

Just like her momma, girlfriend can't pass up a hunk of bread.

O's new favorite game is peek-a-boo. It's pretty adorable!


She has also decided that just about everything can be used as a telephone.
Herro?


I'm totally loving the pigtails.