11 Months

Olivia has grown A LOT this month. She. . .

• is such a tease. One thing she loves to do is shake her head and body and then freeze in place to try and surprise us. Then she giggles when we start doing it with her.
• wants to walk SO BAD! She makes us take her for laps around the house.
• loves books. Now she'll hand them to me to read to her and when I'm done, she'll take the book, flip it over and look at it for a second or two and then hand it back to me to read again. We do this a few times and then I have to grab a new book to keep from going insane.

• has been wearing 12 month clothes for weeks.
• has done really well at not terrorizing our Christmas tree, so far [knock on wood]. She just touches the branches curiously and then goes on to something else. But we still have nearly a month to go before it comes down, so she's bound to get comfortable with it by then.
• is beginning to branch out to a variety of foods and textures. It's exciting to be able to feed her less "baby food" and more from my plate. 
• gave me a kiss. It was wet and slobbery, but one of the sweetest things she's ever done. She came at me with her mouth wide open and laid one on me and then another and another..."Mwaa, mwaa, mwaa!" She blew her first kiss today.
• is learning lots of new words. She can sign more consistently, and eat, drink, hi/bye, mom, dad, all-done if she feels like it. She can say mom, dad, hi and the new word for the month is a-nen (amen). Over the last week and a half she has said it after we pray, when we're getting ready to pray, and now she even says it when one of us is just folding our arms. The other night Richard had just finished reading her a bedtime story and I was coming in to say prayers with them. Routine and repetition is a beautiful thing, because as soon as I knelt down beside them, she folded her arms and said 'anen.' I wanted to cry, it was so sweet.
• likes to stick her finger in her nose and ears and is trying to figure out what they're all about. Daddy taught her to blink her eyes and furrow her brow.
• learned pretty quick that teeth are sharp. We were in the store and all of a sudden she burst into tears. Then she held up her thumb with two little tooth marks. It was funny and sad at the same time.
• Favorite quote about Liv this month. . ."Her burps smell like blueberry milk." --Richard