MERRY CHRISTMAS!

In just a few hours, we're going to be leaving on a travel adventure with this little elf...

Can you tell how excited she is to see BOTH sets of grandparents and aunts, uncles, and cousins galore?

Since we aren't going to be home for Christmas, Olive got her present early:

A JUMPEROO!! She loves playing with all the toys and looking in the mirror.  She's too light to reach the ground so we have to put boxes under her feet.  She doesn't mind, though!

We'd been talking for months about doing a Christmas card and then all of a sudden it was the weekend before Christmas and we hadn't taken photos.  We threw together a quick photo shoot and then fired off the best pictures to Costco (thanks for the quick turnaround Costco!) many of you should be getting your cards in the mail any minute!  Here are some pictures that didn't quite make the cut, but are still adorable, obviously, because of their subjects.

Olive posing with her new Yeti.  I got him at a craft fair from a guy in town who makes monsters. She squealed with delight when she saw him and we had to take him home.  She LOVES him.

We're still not quite there with the whole sitting up thing.

Which resulted in some disastrous images.

We tried to get Ripley in on the fun, too, but he doesn't like posing with her!

I also tried some pictures by the tree (we took the plunge and got a fake one! It actually looks pretty good.)  This was the best picture I could get of her "sitting" by the tree.  She just wants to grab it.

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!! Wish us luck on the flight today!!

5 Months Old!

Can you believe she's already five months old?  Just look at that face! I can't handle how cute she is. Even on the rare occasions when she's driving us crazy.

I had brilliant plans to do this month's photo in the chair in her room because she's getting pretty good at sitting up (especially if she's leaning on something...don't judge - her head is SO BIG!), but the plan quickly dissolved:

Sliding...

Sliding...

Flip! and going for the light!

I love lamp!

This all happened in the span of about 8 seconds.

So then I thought - oh! we can prop her up against the poof in her room.  It worked well for the Halloween pictures!

This is the look of a baby planning something big...

Sliding...

Sliding...

Flip!

And so, in the end, we went back to what we know.  Lying on the floor next to bunny.  Of course, she didn't hardly hold still.  I think she learned this pose from all the yoga I did when I was pregnant.

We didn't do an official five month appointment at the doctor's this month, so I don't really know her stats.  I'm sure she's taller and her head is bigger.  When we went in for her ear infections she was just under 12 pounds (a slow weight gain from her four month appointment, but with her being sick, she hasn't been eating normally).  She's now pretty much out of her three month clothes completely and, as you can tell, NEVER HOLDS STILL.  She's developing quite the personality - laughing a lot, especially at us (like when I shout "OUCH" when she bites me...or if I swear when I stub my toe on something).  She has fully grown out of her hatred of the car (thank God!) and loves looking out the window when we drive places.  She's at such a fun age, especially because, aside from the sliding and the flipping, she isn't quite mobile yet.

Check out the progression!

 

See how she's rubbing her toes together? She uses them like hands and even grabs things with them.  Funny enough, someone else in this house also does this with their feet.  One hint - it's not me!

Thanksgiving

Hello out there! I know it's been quite awhile since I've posted on the blog, but it's been a busy month in the Naylor house.  Daycare is finally showing us just what a hotbed of sickness it can be and Olive has (sadly) had her first fever and ear infections, (not related to the fever!) and has had her nose sucked by the dreaded bulb syringe more times than I can count.  Of course this means that Andy and I have also been pretty sick over the past few weeks because these babies are passing around germs we've never seen before.  With her being sick, she's not sleeping well, so we're catching up where we can...and on top of all that, I've embarked upon a pretty ambitious craft project that I have to finish by Christmas, so I officially have NO free time.

Thursday was Thanksgiving! We got the go ahead to try "real food" from the pediatrician back at our four month appointment, but we haven't really been going for it.  On Thanksgiving we tried rice cereal.  It was...anticlimactic.

Interested??

Maybe?

Maybe not.  That face is amazing though.  

 Despite all of the sickness going around, little miss Olivia decided to give us something to be EXTRA thankful for and on Wednesday night slept 10 hours in a row.  A total fluke that hasn't been repeated of course, but it was a nice break considering that we had just come out of a week-long stretch where she was up literally every 45 minutes.  I was so tired at work, I was seriously considering taking George Costanza naps under my desk.  As if it wasn't enough to sleep all night the night before, Olive spent most of Thanksgiving asleep, too.  We had grand plans to take a ton of adorable pictures, but by the time she was up and in a good mood it was dark outside and the lighting was bad.  We did get some cute ones though!

Her foot is ALWAYS in her mouth if she can put it there.  She drives the ladies at daycare nuts by pulling her socks off approximately 753 times per day.

I think aside from her feet, Olivia is most thankful for her Sophie! All signs have been pointing to teething lately and she sure has loved gnawing on Sophie's feet and ears.

This year we decided to be a little more reasonable and only cook enough food for 10 people (we usually aim for about 30 or so).  We stuck to a turkey breast instead of the whole thing and it was perfect for two people plus TONS of leftovers.

I made ALL the stuffing.  And it was good.

We also had cranberry sauce (a must for next-day sandwiches!), potatoes, green bean casserole, and rolls.  I am pretty sure our meal was recently featured on thisiswhyyourefat.com.

On Friday Andy and I both worked, so we didn't have a long weekend, but this weekend has still been pretty good.  Yesterday we got our first significant amount of snow all month (about three inches), and I don't think we're going to set the record for least-snowy November anymore.  I have missed the snow, but I will say I was loving the quick commuting to and from work every day!

On top of the snow, we got another visit from our baby moose friend! We don't see him with his mama much anymore and I think he decided our neighborhood is the perfect spot to spend the winter. We love having him around except for the other day when we were almost unable to take Ripley outside all day because the moose was camped in the yard.  Poor Ripley.

On Saturday he checked out the shrubs in front of the house.  You can tell by looking at the shrubs that he's been doing this a lot lately.

Obviously he has no issue being close to our house - this is the view out of Olive's window.  After this, he went down the driveway and spent about two hours wandering around in the backyard which drove Ripley crazy.  Once he finally left I swear I was outside with him for twenty minutes watching him pee on every. single. thing.

We hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving - although our feast was small (people wise, not food wise), it was a special day for us as we're now a family of three!

A Day at the Museum

It's getting to be that time of year when there really isn't much that you can do outside - especially with a baby.  Sadly, it's driving poor Ripley crazy because even when it was freezing out, we'd be up for long hikes and other adventures on the weekends, but I don't know if I can physically bundle Olive up enough to feel comfortable with her outside for long periods of time when it's 20 degrees (or colder!) outside.  Poor Ripley.  All of this means that we have to work on expanding the things we can do inside.

We've always loved the Anchorage Museum, but it's become a new favorite spot since we became parents.  A couple of weeks ago we went to the museum to check out an exhibit called "Brick by Brick" featuring some awesome LEGO creations.  Here we are posing outside with the funny armless animal statutes and our new hats! (Olivia and I went to the South Anchorage High Holiday Bazaar with Ann and her mom the day before and bought some awesome stuff!).

I think it was 25 degrees outside - I didn't want to wear a coat because it's really hot carrying Olive in the Ergo inside the museum, but maybe I should have sucked it up and paid 25 cents for a locker so I could walk the three blocks from my parking lot to the museum without trying to get frostbite...

The museum was a big hit! Olive was alert pretty much the whole time and even took a nap at the end so we could have lunch at the fantastic restaurant there.  Good baby! Last time we visited there it was when Andy's mom was up and Olivia had a meltdown before we could eat.  

We're adorable.

The LEGO exhibit was awesome! 

As someone who absolutely must follow the directions to a T when making something with LEGOs, it's pretty awesome to see what creative people can do with them.  

Clouds...

An umbrella...

Creepy Skulls...

Various human forms...

A pretty awesome dog!

But I think my favorite was the dress! Isn't it amazing?!

My cell phone pictures just don't do it justice

All in all, it was a great day! And because this post was low on adorable baby pictures (which I know is the sole reason that most people, at least the grandparents, come to the blog anymore) here you go.

Hanging out in her bouncy seat, which she loves.

Bath time! Her favorite time of day.  Someone is going to be a swimmer like dad!

She even likes tummy time these days!

Our poor baby has been sick with daycare cold number 2 of the season this past week or so.  We finally took her into the doctor because it migrated to her eye (not pink eye thank god!) and we found out she had ear infections, which is probably why none of us have been sleeping for the past several days.  Hopefully this clears up quickly!