Eleven Months and Counting

Olivia practicing her walking skills with her baby stroller for assistance.

She's getting braver...

... and more excited...

... and then she just glows.

One month from today, our Baby Girl will be a year old. How can this be? Time really does fly when you have kids. These past 11 months have been a whirlwind but so much fun. Olivia, naturally has grown from an extremely dependant infant who couldn't even crack a smile to - dare I say it? - an independent little girl who rarely is seen without a smile or heard without a giggle.

She's learned so many tricks along the way. Sure, the first ones like finding her thumb were relatively easy but they were just as exciting as the big ones like crawling. Gosh, and it seemed like from the second she started crawling, she moved onto pulling herself up on everything she could get her hands on: a chair, a table, a loving parent's leg. And now Olivia is walking. Yes, WALKING! Granted, she's still getting the hang of it and sometimes stumbles this way and that like a drunken sailor, but she is walking several steps at a time, sometimes crossing half the room before taking a little tumble. She's only down for a moment and then she pops up again and is off for more. Sometimes she stops and applauds herself. Sometimes she stops for a break or to pick up a toy that has gotten in her path. With each step, her confidence grows.

Her vocabulary is also growing. Of course, her first word was "da-da," which despite my pleadings was all she would say for what seemed like forever. Then she moved on to a very excitable, very high-pitched, "Hi!" Then finally, "ma-ma" or "ma-ma-ma." I think somewhere in between those three she said "blah-blah-blah." She's also said "kitty" "hey" and one day we swear she said a complete non-baby-babble sentence. We know this can't be but here's the exchange we both heard plain as day a few days ago. Olivia and Daddy were upstairs for a few minutes before Mommy joined them. When Mommy got upstairs it looked like Livi's room had exploded, so I joked, "Who made this mess?" Without skipping a beat, Livi said something and David and I both swear this was what she said: "Daddy did it." Is sounded exactly like it. We died laughing which of course got her laughing and that is always the best.

One of the other big changes in Olivia is that she's pretty much off of baby food. She already has a mouthful of teeth - at last nine are fully in, including a molar and more are starting to pop in. So chomping on food is no problem for our girl. She loves to eat. She's eaten - and likes - just about everything: Chicken, turkey, mashed potato, steamed veggies, hamburger, hot dogs, pasta, all kinds of bread, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, cheese slices (cheese is a favorite in case you couldn't tell) fruit of all types, pickles (she LOVES pickles) and yogurt (another favorite). Did I mention Cheerios. Those are like baby crack. She has also been using a sippy cup for months for water and doesn't care for juice. We're planning on trying to get her to take her formula from a sippy cup this weekend, prepping her to make the transition to whole milk after her first birthday. It's all happening so fast.

Now we're knee deep planning her first birthday which will be at a beautiful lakeside park here in Tarpon on March 6. (She's such an outdoor girl.) Invitations will be out soon. We can't wait to celebrate her first year!