New Pooper Scooper in Town

Ollie is obsessed with dog poop. You would think the smell alone would deter him but for some reason he can't stay away from it. He wakes up in the morning and looks out the window to see if Rocky has left any presents and says "Oh! Poo Poo!" and points at it until I come and look. Our morning ritual is to go outside and water the plants in the courtyard and pick up the dog poop before he gets to it. This morning while I was busy watering the plants I heard some clanking around the corner and found Ollie determined to go and pick up some poop all by himself. Is it strange that it made me proud to see him carrying the pooper scooper? I guess it's because I've worked so hard at teaching him not to touch poop with his hands (yes we had some incidents!) probably shouldn't be confessing any of this but at the end of the day he is still a baby that is learning all the do's and do not's in life and this is progress! Such an independent little man, out on the prowel looking for some poo poo.

Let me do it by myself!

Ollie is becoming quite the little independent guy. He like to figure things out all by himself now and doesn't like to have me help him. His favorite toys are simple little things like his toothpaste- the entire shower is full of toys and he cares nothing for them, he just wants to sit there with his toothpaste screwing and unscrewing the cap, taking it on and off, over and over again and it seriously entertains him forever. He never gets tired of it, and he gets mad if I even suggest putting it down to play with other toys. Last night he decided it would be fun to crawl into his car seat and play in it for a while, and today he decided he wanted to get in his high chair and try to figure out the buckles. So I lowered it down for him so that he could get into it all by himself- that made him so happy, he was so proud of himself crawling up into it all on his own. And then he played around trying to get the buckles to work. I don't know why I thought it was so cute, guess I'm just proud of him for being his own little self and already his Momma thinks he is genius!

He couldn't be any happier!

 

Nearly Recovered

The last few months of my life have been somewhat crazy. I know there is always something going on to keep me busy but it has been a while since I have taken so long to recover, so it must have been more overwhelming than usual for me to want to crawl in bed and sleep for a week or two- hibernation sounded really good! This is why there have been no posts in a while, but tonight I am finally feeling my life coming back into control, mostly because I finally woke back up and decided to take control and put things back into order. So what has been going on:

Ollie- first I have to write about this precious little boy of mine. I quit taking pictures of him every month next to his teddy bear once he hit one, but I realized that ever time I posted his picture I got to write about him- meaning his development, personality, etc. instead of just the events happening. I miss that because I want to look back and remember the little things, when they started, etc. So as of late here is what I can say about Ollie. He loves to imitate anything you do, and he loves to make you laugh and sometimes these two go hand in hand. Like making a funny face and then laughing at him when he tries to make it himself! It can be a bad thing though, like the other day I couldn't find my keys and I was running late and feeling all this stress to get out the door so after much searching I started stomping around the house angrily saying "where are the stupid keys?!" and then I heard Ollie come into the room and yell out behind me gibberish into the air as loud as he could and I realized he was imitating me- part of me laughed because he was so funny and then I realized how pathetic I was for letting him see me get angry over keys and prayed he would forget how to yell into the air! He has also become quite a Momma's boy. This is both a good and bad thing. It melts my heart that he wants me all of the time, and it breaks my heart that he cries when I leave now, but most of all it makes it hard to get anything done when he wants me to hold him all the time! So as much as I love cuddling him and appreciate that he feels such a need to be near me, it can't be a good thing that he can't just play with his toys every now and then. That is when I think of how much fun it will be for him to have a little brother or sister- life is a lot less boring with siblings. I still laugh when I think about how I had friends that would come over and just sit on the couch and watch the chaos going on in my house full of 8 kids. To them it was better than watching tv- always someone to entertain us! Still praying for our next little miracle :)

Time to go to Work

Ollie is good at rearranging things. Today he brought the scale from the bathroom into the office and decided to weigh himself. Pretty sure he learned that one from Matt who like to weigh himself at least five times a day. I wouldn't call him obsessed with his weight or anything it's more like a game for him to know how much he weighs in the morning, after a workout, before he goes to the bathroom, after he goes to the bathroom (he's going to love that I wrote that! Haha!) And then he always makes me guess what he weighs, not just one guess and then he tells me, I have to keep guessing if I am wrong but I'm usually right! He's going to have to stop it though because I don't want Ollie thinking he has to weigh himself all the time. I think he does it right now because he loves anthing electronic so seeing the screen light up is fun for him.

After his weigh in he picked up the keyboard I gave him (trying to distract him from banging on mine) and decided to take it out of the office for some privacy so he could work. Love the expressions, I wonder if I make faces when I'm typing away?

At the end of the day my job is to get all the things he re-arranges back into their proper places. The scale out of the office and back to the bathroom, and the keyboard out of the bathroom and back to the office. All in a days work!

I Work Out!

Ollie loves to immitate whatever we are doing, he also loves to pick up anything he can get his hands on. Tonight he picked up Matt's push up hand bars from under the bed and inspired Matt to do a little workout with him.

 

What a strong little man he is carrying them around!

Matt's very own personal trainer...

When he was done with his workout he found Mom's hat and decided to try it on. Not every guy can pull off pink, but I thought he looked pretty cool ;)

 

Oh yeah- I work out!

Ollie's Valentine's Cards

I wanted to do something special for Jess for Valentine's Day so Ollie and I worked on a package for her so she would know how very much she is loved. One of my bright ideas was to dress Ollie up and take pictures of him with a bunch of stuff we were throwing in the package. I thought they turned out cute so in the end we also used them to make some home made Valentine's cards with love notes on them- one for every cousin and aunt and uncle, grandmas and grandpas and friends, and then he also delivered a card and small box of chocolates to each of his three little girlfriends at church. It was a lot of fun (even if we didn't get it all done by Valentine's day, but that is a different story.) As usual it ended up being a much bigger project than I anticipated, but it made Valentine's feel all the more special this year. Making the cards felt like the days when I was young, picking out which card I was going to give to each person in my class, trying to make sure that the card said just the right thing! Here are some of his card pics:

 

 

 

 

   

  

And here is the rest of the story...To get those pictures I had to take over 300! I started out with just Ollie and me in the morning, he was in a great mood until I put on his clothes and tried to button that top button and get a tie on him. All he wanted to do was play with the props and I couldn't get him to look at the camera for the life of me, and then he was done being squeezed by that tie!

 

Fast forward to the afternoon- second atempt, new location...still distracted...

 

Third attempt, this time I had Mom to help and it made all the difference, she could distract him. He still wanted to play with things and we struggled to get him to look at us but it still made for good shots. I didn't even try to put a tie on him, in the end all he really wanted to do was take those balloons and attack Mom- at least we all had some good times with that. Love this little guy!

And who can resist those lips??

 

 

 



Bachelorette Party

The day is fast approaching when Jodee will no longer be a Miss but a Mrs. while I have been busy working on decorations for the reception Katee has been busy getting a Bachelorette party pulled together- tonight it all paid off. We got to put aside all the other stuff and just got to play! Part of me is sad that this is the last Bachelorette party for the Seesters- but we went out with a bang and I'm pretty sure I was laughing all night long. Here is to Katee for putting it together and Jodee for getting hitched so we have one more reason to party!

Good Food and Katee had it all laid out on black paper with writing in colored chalk- so cute!

Tons of good deserts- always need more Chocolate!

My favorite- Crush bottles with Love Potion #9 tags on them.

Started off the night with a good ol' fashioned arm wrestle, what bachelorette party would be complete without that right? (???!)

Usually I am pretty good at these things- don't ask me why my scrawny arms can hold up, I think carrying all 25lbs of Ollie all day long helps. But this time she really did have me, but in the end I held on so long that she finally just let me win to save us the pain.

All the party girls- Katee had tons of cute posters, chalk board signs and framed quotes. The tables had the black paper and chalk on them so we could write messages to Jodee, and Katee even took bottles and painted them with the chalkboard paint so we could write cute things on them too. She's always good at the details.

Couldn't be happier for this girl- she was glowing all night!

When we arrived at the party Katee had a table for the presents that had tags with some pretty creative names on them that we got to pick from and put on our present. Each tag corresponded with a song so when Jodee would open the present the song on the tag would be playing. Wish I could remember the one I chose!

Jodee opening the present from Marcee and me...we'll just let whatever was inside be her little secret!

 

Once all the presents were open and displayed on the laundry line it was time for Jodee's favorite thing- pictures! This is a tame one of the seesters- it got a little fun after that.

The whole group. Next on the agenda was a lip sync- we did a video (a few times actually) but I have yet to see it. Good times though- Leah and I were some kind of statues on the water fountain. Who can explain what happens when girls get together?

This was pretty much what we did all night long- Laugh!

More fun pics with the Seesters

Can't remember what this was about but...Carrie always makes me laugh!

Love, Love, Love these girls and so excited for Jodee, you deserve every bit of happiness!

Katee- you out did yourself, I'm singing this one for you...

"Katee likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time!"