Before we left for preschool this morning, I put Olive in the car, ran back into the kitchen and told Lila to run down to the car. As she went down the stairs, I heard Lila say, "Oh hi Olive! Oh haha dat's not Olive; dat's Baby Chloey!"
Should I be concerned that Lila was not at all concerned about the position the baby doll was in when she thought it was her baby sister?
Olive's mom finally got her act together and took her seven month pictures!
She is looking very snazzy in her Luluboo merch.
Olive is crawling now; almost three months ahead of when big sister did. So that means everything on the floor is ending up in Olive's mouth. Not that there's anything on my floor...other than peas, hair, dust, pieces of rug that Olive has ripped off, broken macarons, crackers, etc. It also means that she tries to crawl into spaces where she doesn't fit...like the two inches between the refrigerator and the wall. That one made her pretty mad. At least she's pretty.
Now that Olive is a big six month old she is able to play around with Lila a lot more. Their new favorite activity is going into the basement and jumping together in/on their various jumping apparati.
Olive is six months old! And it's becoming increasingly more difficult to get her to sit still.
I have no idea how much she weighs or how tall she is because her appointment got pushed back. Sorry Olive! Olive loves rolling around and is almost crawling. She can move backwards pretty easily. She loves eating her oatmeal, and I guess since she's six months old, we have to start her on baby food. I hate feeding babies baby food. Just eat the chicken I made everyone else.
Olive is a really happy and relaxed baby, except when teething gets really bad, then she only wants to be held. She loves playing in her exersaucer and her JumpeRoo. We love our little Ollie Boo Boo!
When we were dating in college, I always went to visit Johnny in North Carolina for the Fourth of July. We thought we'd continue the tradition and take the girls to visit Grammie and Grampie this year. Now, for some odd reason there are no direct flights from Kansas City to Raleigh, so we had a connection in Baltimore. Not a big deal, thought we.
We got to the Kansas City airport around 10:30am for our noon flight. Got a nice coffee, a blueberry muffin. You know, just living the life. I will interrupt here and say that Johnny told me Olive was dressed like a clown for this flight.
We arrived in Baltimore around 3:00, preparing to get on the quick 45 minute flight around 5:30pm. Lila and I decided to stand in line at the airport Chipotle while Johnny and Olive held down a table for us, making friends with an elderly couple going to visit their grandkids in California. While in line, Lila informed me, "Dat yady yooks pretty in her hair brush." I translated for the woman, "My daughter thinks your hair is pretty." We ate our dinner, and checked the departure monitors, noticing that our flight was delayed an hour. Bummer, but no big deal. We went to find our gate and settled down for a bit. At this point, it started hailing really hard. I suppose that should have been a red flag.
Rumors started floating around the gate area that there was a bad hurricane along the East Coast. Fabulous. Before we knew it, the flight was no longer delayed until 6:30 but was now 8:30. A girl sitting near us was growing angry and decided that she was going to go rent a car and drive to Raleigh. "Anyone who wants to can join!" she declared. Johnny and I thought about it briefly, but then decided the five hour drive wasn't worth it; our flight would get in around the same time anyway. Ba ha ha! It's funny, now.
So about three hours into our layover, Lila was really doing an excellent job. She traded off her time between playing on the iPad, pretending with her Disney princess dolls, watching cartoons, and running around in circles. Johnny decided to take Olive on a walk to see if he could get her to take a nap. While he was gone, Lila was squatting on the floor, looking at something, and then whined to me, "I have to go tinkle!" Now this was odd because Lila is not totally/anywhere near being potty trained yet, and she had a diaper on. So I kind of said, "Ok well just go," but I looked at her and realized that she had just gone and it had somehow come out the side of her diaper and completely soaked her leg.
I asked some nice ladies to watch our stuff, and I ran Lila into the bathroom. Johnny had taken the diaper bag and the stroller, so I literally had nothing to cover Lila's butt with. I stripped her down and held her as covered as a could and waited at the entrance of the bathroom in order to flag Johnny down. He showed up pretty quickly and handed off a new Pull-Up. Unfortunately, all of Lila's clothes were in a checked bag getting rained on outside (Fast-forward: I'm OCD about packing and put all of the girls clothes in labeled Ziploc gallon bags, so even though their suitcase was COMPLETELY soaked, all of their clothes were dry. Take that Southwest...and the hurricane.), so Lila had no clothes. Johnny then went on another walk around the airport with the new mission of finding child pants.
Meanwhile, Lila ran around the airport in just a Pull-Up.
After about 30 minutes, Johnny finally returned with the only child pants in the entire airport.
"Crabby in the Morning"
Though happy with our new pants, our happiness was soon dashed when we realized that our flight was being pushed back to 10:30 and then 11:00. We continued to hang out at our gate which was conveniently located by one of the airport bars. This location provided interesting companionship in the form of old people who had had too much to drink. Remember the old couple from dinner? Well that man sauntered over from his Bud Light at one point to check on Olive and actually kissed her on the head. Now I'm not overprotective of my kids with strangers, but I think that might have been a step too far. There was also an older woman who insisted on holding Olive for a few minutes while regaling Johnny with tales of her bad back and bronchitis.
By 10:00, we had one diaper left between the two girls, Olive still hadn't slept, and I was entertaining Lila by walking up one moving walkway and back on the other one ("Tick tock it's yike a clock Mama!"). It was at this point we realized that if we had rented a car at 4:30 we would have been in Raleigh already.
We FINALLY got on the plane at 11:00 and took off around 11:30. Both girls slept on the short flight, thankfully, and I was patting myself on the back for surviving a harrowing layover without a single meltdown, Lila or Mommy. As we landed and I was pridefully unclipping my little angel from her carseat, Lila totally lost it. I mean went bananas. It was almost one in the morning, and she was completely hysterical. She sobbed from the airplane to the baggage claim to the car, "I don't want to get in dat white car! No fank you! No fank you!", to Grammie and Grampie's house. It was almost two in the morning by the time I got her in her bed. At this point Johnny and I are whisper yelling at each other about where the other one put the diaper bag and so on.
Long story short: we survived. So if you ever have a two year old and a baby on a flight that connects in Baltimore, I suggest you bring an extra pair of pants.
Olive loves America! And she thought she would show it off in her five month photo!
Olive is rolling around and chewing on anything she can get a hold of. She smiles at everyone and laughs particularly at her big sister. She also knows when the United States became the United States.
I wanted to make matching 4th of July outfits for the girls this year, and I also wanted to practice my new found applique skills. But who wants a lame old firecracker shirt that says "Baby's First Fourth"? Certainly not the Hutsons. And fabric with Hello Kitty dressed as the Statue of Liberty? Excuse me? Definitely not American. So we decided to go as American as we could possibly go. George Washington.
My mom commissioned me to make a quilt for Olive to roll around on at her house. And since I have nothing to do and no one to talk to past 8:00, it got finished pretty quickly.
It's the same pattern that I used for the quilt in Lila's Big Girl Room...that we actually call "Little Guy's Room" because he's the one who slept in there, but now Lila sleeps in there. Lila's room is where Olive sleeps. Everyone on the same page?
Olive is very lucky that she got Daddy's blue eyes...and Mommy's eczema ridden skin...that Daddy calls "Lizard skin."
So every once in awhile I do chores like vacuuming my room. While I was recently vacuuming, the girls were playing in their room. This is what I found when I went to check on them.
Lila continued to add more and more blankets each time I came in to check.
Notice the pillow.
(Ok I will admit that I added the pillow...but it was at Lila's request.)
And more blankets.
And even more.
And one more.
At this point I informed Lila that Olive was getting too hot and we needed to take the blankets off. Lila responded, "Mom you go away?"
I took all the blankets off, reminded Lila not cover her up again, and went back to finish vacuuming. About two seconds after I walked out of the room I heard the familiar slam of the girls' door and the silence of two year old delinquency.
By the time I got back in, Lila had somehow found even more blankets and covered the Boo Boo even more completely. I laughed and then put Lila in time out...because I'm the mom and I can do that.
The Boo Boo turned four months old! ...three days ago.
She is the smiliest baby I have ever seen. She LOVES playing with her sister and loves to roll around on the floor all day.
She is starting to chatter all the time. Lila always did more of a sing songy "AhhhhHHHHHhhhhHHHH." Olive's is more of a very vicious and determined, "AHHHHHHHHHHH, GRRRRRRR, AHHHHHHHH."
She can roll over, sleep through the night (when she feels like it), smile, laugh, suck on her hand, and be the cutest baby this side of the Mississippi.
So Johnny's Aunt Louann is super talented and crocheted the girls these gorgeous dresses.
We've had a ridiculously cold spring, so I knew they would be able to wear them before it got too hot. Lila, however, chose the only day where it got over 80 to demand that she and the "beautiful baby" wear their "pretty dresses."
Not only did Aunt Louann make those adorable dresses, but in her free time, she also made the girls a little monkey and a little giraffe. Lila LOVES them.
Olive loves to lie on the floor and kick around. She's starting to get on a schedule with eating and napping and does a great job sleeping at night, usually only getting up once. She had to get her first shots at her two month appointment, which is always so sad. She fell asleep right after them, but when she woke up, she was sooooo upset. Neither Lila nor Little Guy seemed to be as affected by shots as Ollie Boo Boo.
She's a very good baby during the day but is extremely cranky from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and demands to eat pretty much the entire time. She'll then give us about 4 or 5 hours of sleep before she wakes up to eat again.
Note the toes in the picture above. "I see it Mama!"
We love our little Ollie Doodle. And she's not all starved looking like Lila was at one month old. Sorry about that one, Lila. Have another Pop Tart.
Lila did a very good job sitting through the first part of the service.
Olive wasn't exactly sure what was going on, but she stayed awake for the entire thing.
Our pastor, Tony, did a wonderful job baptizing her, and he even included a few bible verses where the word "Olive" is used. Lila did a great job too. She waved to everyone and only tried to sit down on the stage once. I think she gets her love for the spotlight from Johnny.
My grandmother and grandfather were both able to attend, and my grandfather was able to come up front and pray for Olive.
We were very grateful to have so much of my extended family there to support Olive and her walk with Christ.
Thank you to our church family for agreeing to come alongside her as well!
I always thought I'd be that mom with four boys, driving around to football practice all day long. But now I can see that I was definitely meant to be a mommy for girls...I just hope they don't want to play football. And yes we know we need to start wedding funds...oh yeah and college.
Lila's been very loving to her "new baby Ahyive."
She's very comforting to her. She was holding her the other day and Olive started crying. Lila immediately started quietly saying "Shh...shh..." and gave her a whole bunch of kisses. This is, of course, only if Olive isn't keeping Lila from doing something she wants to do. In that case, Olive will most likely get a book to the head.
Whenever Olive does tummy time, Lila likes to participate.
Are you gagging at the cuteness yet? I'm sorry; I'll stop.
I was a little nervous about Lila coming to the hospital to meet Olive because I wasn't sure what her reaction would be. I thought she might be scared seeing all the hospital stuff or be mad at the baby or say she had to return a movie and leave or something.
But she was so excited to see "New Baby Ahh-yive."
She kept petting her and telling me who she was and that her eyes were closed.
Now she did refuse to take off her coat, but I think we can work with that one.
