Valentine's Day Suprises

The day before Valentine's we had a surprise delivery thanks to my dad. He sent a bouquet of roses to his Valentines in Arizona. (Actually the roses were mostly for my mom because my mom and dad were arriving for a visit on Valentine's Day, and he added the rest of the girls to the list.) We did enjoy the surprise!

Note to Jenna's future suitors: She LOVES roses!

The roses came with a box of chocolates and Li'l Robby added the "I Love You" made with candy hearts. We hope everyone had a wonderful Valentine's Day like we did!

Olivia is one month old!

And what a fun month it has been. Last night we had some fun setting up our own photo studio right in our living room. One sheet, one lamp, and one camera (plus some photo editing on the computer afterwards.) So here are our one month old celebration pictures!

I think all children are angels dropped straight from heaven.

My first month

This is Olivia... I wanted to fill you in on my life thus far. Things have been quite nice over the last month. I have had plenty to eat and I get to sleep where ever and when ever I feel like sleeping. I am growing just like the doctor wants me to grow. In fact, Daddy says that I increased in weight by one third in the last month since I have gained over 2 lbs! Can you believe that?!

I must admit though, that this body does take some getting used to. Take using eyes for instance, my eyes seem to have minds of their own, and it takes all my concentration to get them to work together. It's getting easier, but occasionally one will still move where I don't want it to go and everything gets all blurry. Something I didn't expect about having a body was being jolted awake by cold wet things being wiped in very sensitive spots! Is it really necessary?! I don't like it at all. Sometimes I retaliate by emptying my bladder and making a mess. Mommy is getting fast enough that I don't usually catch her, but I still get Daddy often.

I am learning to like other things. Mommy and Daddy give me something called a tub bath. At first I really didn't like it at all. Getting wet made me cold, and I really hate having that wet cloth wiped across my face. Cold and wet are not my friends. Mommy has been perfecting her baby bathing techniques, and now tub baths aren't quite so bad. They are still not my favorite, though.

One thing is for sure, everyone here really likes holding me, especially my brother and sister. My big brother is very gentle and kind, and he likes to stroke my head (I really like that!). My sister likes to hold me, too, but I am glad that Mommy helps out because sister can be a little energetic at times. I wish I could move around like them. They can run and jump and dance. I can only erratically wave my arms and kick my legs. I haven't figured out how to coordinate my limbs yet. I've got a lot of growing to do, haven't I?!

Before I go I want to show you a few pictures. Mommy says that we are going to take pictures with my teddy bear every month. I am not sure that she got what she wanted, but I tried really hard. (Of course, the pictures would have been a lot cuter if Mom hadn't put a wrinkly sheet up behind me!)

She said that I would look really cute propped up on my teddy bear like this.

Do you know how hard it is to lift your head up when you are my size?!

Not only that, but Mom wanted me to lift my head, focus my eyes, and be cute all at the same time! That takes a lot of work!

Since I was struggling to do all three things at once, Mommy tried a different pose. I didn't think it was very flattering, and I told her so.

Is this cute?!

Hey! You can't say I didn't try!

Well, my eyelids are getting heavy, so I think that I will go have a snooze now. Hope to talk to you again soon.

Weekly Weigh In

Well, just had to do a new weigh in pic this week (We won't be able to do this much longer because she is going to outgrow our homemade baby scale). Olivia is growing fast! She is now about 8lbs. 2oz. (Give or take a baby kick, wiggle, or fidgit). This is probably the only time in her life that she won't care if we discuss her weight!

Actually what astounds me is that she is just now one ounce shy of Little Robby's birth weight. It's been a while since I held a baby this size. I was holding her today and thinking... is it really possible that a baby this size could have been in my tummy?! Amazing!

Sisters

Can you tell that Jenna likes being a big sister? Actually I think that she wants to be the second mommy right now!

Cuddly Baby

Okay, so I have have to admit that Robby and I do disagree on one thing... who gets to hold the baby! When she is this sweet we can't help but both want to hold her at the same time. Maybe we need to pray for twins next time then we can each have one to cuddle! (J/K)

Weighing in

So we were curious to see how much weight Olivia has gained in the last week, and we rigged up our own baby scale. One digital kitchen scale, one cookie sheet, and one towel and ... Voila! A baby scale! We even zeroed the weight out so that the cookie sheet, towel and diaper were not included in Olivia's official weight seen on the read-out. So she's now...

About 7lbs. 10oz., give or take a kick, wiggle or other baby movement that made the reading change some.

This is one of my favorite pictures so far of her with her eyes open.

Bath time!

So Olivia had her first bath tub experience recently. We have done sponge baths up to this point, but I had to wait till Robby got over being sick so that he could participate in the first tub bath proceedings. Let's see what Olivia thinks...

Pre-bath baby...



Now for bath time! (The video is kind of dark because our camera does not do very well picking up interior lighting... no, we don't live in a cave. :))

Do we have to do this?!

Boy, I barely survived that ordeal!

Fresh, clean, and kissable!

Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?!

I will tell you that she liked her second bath much better. Unfortunately, we didn't take pictures of that one. Maybe it was because Little Robby and Jenna cheered her on the second time.

Meet Olivia

I thought everyone might enjoy seeing a videoclip of Olivia.

She is pretty sweet, isn't she?

Jenna's Pig

Jenna loves to draw, and will sneak paper and pencils whenever she can. I much prefer that she develop her artistic skill on the magnadoodle, though, so that I don't have to worry about artwork spilling over onto the floor. The day we got home from Utah, Jenna was thrilled to play with all of her toys again and was very enthusiastic about drawing on her magnadoodle. While she was hunched over her masterpiece, she exclaimed to us, "Pig!" She was so excited that she drew a pig, and we thought it was a pretty great picture. So, here is Jenna's pig...

I know, he's missing his front leg.

And I guess the squiggles off to the side are his slop. You have to admit, it's very cute!

Rocket Science

This post should have been posted weeks ago, but we had our surprise arrival so I didn't get a chance. Back at the beginning of January, Little Robby's science class did a model rocket launch. Each of the kids got to put together their own model rocket and paint it the way they wanted. Robby opted for a simple gold exterior for his rocket. They had been working on these rockets on and off for several weeks. When school started back after the Christmas break Little Robby told me of the scheduled launch day, and Dad, Jenna and I decided to come watch the fun.

The only disappointment was that the camera was almost completely out of battery power, and so we were only able to get one picture before it died. I had wanted to film the launch and then let Jenna give you a commentary on what happened. That would have been very cute! Oh well, I guess I need to do a better job about making sure the camera bag has a fresh set of batteries all the time. Even so, as spectators, Dad, Jenna, and I enjoyed it...

And Robby and his classmates had a blast!

She's growing!

Olivia says... "Life's good!"

"Mom and Dad got me a nice comfy bouncy seat that I love sleeping in."

"And I have plenty of yummy milk to drink! You can see it in my cheeks, can't you?!"

This is mom... I took Olivia to the doctor for her two week visit and the doctor thought she looked great! She also weighed in at 6lbs. 14oz.! She's packing it on. The nurse measured her at 20 inches long, but I will admit that their method of measuring is less than accurate. That's okay because I can tell you she has definitely grown!

Other Highlights from Utah

Until Olivia came along we didn't think that we would be seeing any real snow this season (except for the snow that was shipped in for the Santa Breakfast). Well, let's just say that Little Robby was in heaven! He loves the snow. I'm not sure where he got his "cold weather lovin' genes" from 'cause it certainly wasn't me! Li'l Robby would be so happy if we moved somewhere where it snowed on a regular basis during the winter.

He would have played outside all day if he could have.

"What fun!" he says.

I do have to admit that he looked pretty cute coming in with his rosy cheeks, though.

I had to throw this one in there because I thought my two little ones looked particularly sweet here. You wouldn't suspect that they had bickered at all in the back seat during the long drive there and back.

Olivia and her first teddy bear

We bought a teddy bear for Olivia, that we decided we are going to use to measure her from month to month. So here is our first installment of Olivia and her teddy bear.

By the way, have I told you yet that I'm in love!

Sweet, sweet Olivia

Okay, so I must admit that when there is a new baby who is so sweet, I just can help wanted to hold her, cuddle her, and admire her, but this time I have to be careful not to make Jenna feel like she has been dethroned.

But who can resist a cute face like this?