Snow Day!

One of the mommas in our awesome Bellevue playgroup has a family cabin on Kachess and invited a few of us out for a snow playdate. I wasn't sure how Olivia would react, seeing as I'm a complete cold-weather wuss and she'd never been in the snow, but I figured it would be a good adventure!

I didn't get too many photos because I was pretty busy trying to hold her upright in hard-packed snow, but here's a few fun ones from the day...

The adventure begins! With the help of Curious George on the DVD player, of course.

That's O and her BFF Maren. She loves "Maaawen".

Her initial reaction?
She absolutely HATED it!

That picture makes me laugh. Is that wrong?

She freaked out so badly that I had to break out the binky (which is now normally only used at bedtime) to get her to calm down. She's pretty much clinging to me for dear life here.


We headed inside shortly after for some food and playtime, which cheered her right up!
It was total toddler chaos.


Then we headed back outside for round 2.
Check out my little Oompa Loompa struttin' her stuff.


She quickly decided that she changed her mind... she actually loved the snow!








Happy trails...

1.29.11

It was an icky rainy morning, but O decided that she absolutely HAD to go outside. So I figured that it was high time that she experienced the joy of puddle jumping.



One happy kiddo :)

Technology

For the past few weeks, Olivia has taken forever to fall asleep at night because she's playing/jumping around in her crib and repeatedly throwing her blankies out and then screaming "blankie!" until someone comes and rescues them. The other night, I put her down, and then was surprised when she stayed quiet for a while. I checked the video monitor, and she was sitting up, but quietly messing around with something (I assumed it was her little blankie). Since she was quiet, I turned off the monitor and went on with my evening. A good hour later, I checked the monitor again, and she was STILL sitting up. Weird, I thought... so I went in to check on her.

Stinker had smuggled my iPhone into bed and had spent the last hour and a half watching Curious George and playing games!

Technology junkie.


P.S.
She's also discovered the joy of stealing food out of the pantry. We heard her say "cookie" the other day and found her escaping up the stairs with a full bag of Chips A'Hoy. And then the next day I found her drooling brown... girlfriend had shoved two chocolate caramels (with sea salt, my favorite) into her chubby cheeks! I can't keep up with this kid.

This Week

We've taken full advantage of a relatively dry week and spent as much time outside as possible over the past few days. Yay for sunshine! This California girl is definitely getting over the whole winter thing.

Olivia got to reacquaint herself with her old friend Mr. Crab (aka our sandbox).


Of course, she spent most of her time dumping the sand out of it.


Oh, the joy of window decals.


We also went to the park downtown to feed the ducks. Apparently, feeding the ducks really means stuffing one's face with the crackers.


And then running away from the ducks when they try and get in on the action.


After I took these pictures, we got in trouble because it is "illegal" to feed the ducks at Bellevue Park. I can see why, they're rather aggressive little things!

Buddies

We headed out to one of the local wineries in Woodinville over the weekend with some friends who have a daughter Olivia's age. We had a great time wine tasting, and the kiddos loved exploring new territory!

Olivia's necklace obsession is rubbing off on her friends...

1.19.11

We had our friends Ali & Maren over today for some park action followed by fingerpainting. Fun!

Olivia had a rather odd technique, and decided that she'd rather paint the back of the paper (and her face and her pants while she was at it).


Buddies! (For the moment, at least :). Olivia seems to spend half of her playtime running away from the other kids in fear that they might want to take her toys! We're working on sharing. It's tough.

1.18.11

Maybe it's the teacher in me, but nothing makes me happier than seeing Olivia bypass all of her toys in favor of snuggling up with a good book. She's getting to the point where she'll sit on her own for a few minutes and "read" to herself, and it's so cute to watch her!


"Oh David" has quickly become a current favorite.

Even up-side-down.

Another current Olivia obsession? Her blankies. She has three of them and insists on dragging at least two them all over the house at all times. And she has to have them all in her crib or she refuses to go to sleep and stands screaming "blankie" until she gets them all. Fun.

1.17.11

Doug has been sick, and therefore hasn't been able to play with Olivia, so she's resorted to wearing his stuff...

1.11.11

We had some snow last night, which is a pretty rare occasion in our area. I dragged Doug outside at 10pm, and he promptly chucked a snowball at me and then shoved another one down the back of my jacket. He's so nice & mature. But I did manage to take a few photos of the loveliness. I know that this doesn't look like much to my friends who deal with this all winter, but to me it seemed pretty magical...



I'm almost embarrassed to show these next two because, yes, we still have our Christmas lights up. I tried to get them down the other day but Olivia's hands got too cold (she still refuses to wear gloves) so there's still plenty of holiday cheer at Casa Perry!




Now it's raining and everything is turning to slush and I must admit that I'm a bit bummed that the prettiness is fading to normalcy... Thank goodness that we have plans for hot cocoa, cupcakes and story time with friends later this morning!

Recent Happenings

I've been spending every spare moment finishing up Olivia's first year book, which is why I haven't posted in a bit. I figured that I better do it now before any more time passes and I forget everything!

Anyhoo, here's the latest happenings from the Perry Three:

We finally broke down and got Olivia a haircut. It had gotten to the stage of beyond a mullet and her bangs were hanging in her eyes all day and she totally refused to wear any sort of clip or hairband.

Before:




During:


After!
It still looks a bit goofy because her hair curls in the back, but at least I don't spend half of my day trying to brush her hair out of her eyes.


Besides that, not a whole not is new around here. January is pretty much my least favorite month (pretty chilly and still a ways from any hope of spring!), so we've kept ourselves busy with lots of playgroups and adventures. Can I just tell you how much I love playgroup? We mommas get to sit and gossip and the kids get to play. Best. Thing. Ever.

Kitchen time with her BFF "Darter" (aka Carter. She adores him!)


Darter!


And yes, the "pretties" are still in full effect.


And she's also now added sunglasses to her daily fashion show.


Except the lenses are pretty dark, so she spends most of her time walking around like this.


And when she's not wearing her pretties she likes to stash them random places. Her favorite hiding spot seems to be inside of my boots, which feels really great when I shove my foot into them.


As soon as she realizes that I have the camera out she says "cheese" and makes this face. It's really quite lovely.


A few other random funny things:
- Every morning when I go to get her from her crib she pants like a dog, and then says "woof. woof. doggie". I have no clue why, but it's a pretty entertaining way to start my day!
- We had her 18 month checkup last week, and the nurse did all of her mesurements and left the room. Then she walked back in to re-measure her head to make sure that she was correct because her head circumference was so large. That's right, our child has an extremely large head. 97th percentile, to be exact! Even funnier, this same thing happened at our 15 month checkup. Her stats, for those who are interested: weight-23.5 lbs (25-50%) & height-31 3/4" (50%).
- Last night when I was folding laundry, she picked up a rag and said "towel," which isn't a word we have taught her yet. Then we were reading a book and she pointed to a picture and said "chicken," another word I didn't realize that she knew. The language explosion at this age is so amazing! She's a chatterbox (not surprising considering who her parents are :).
- When I was flushing her "stinkies" yesterday (probably TMI, sorry!), she waved into the toilet and said "bye bye stinkies". Pretty sure she's ready to start the early stages potty training. Any tips/advice?!?