Olympia's Week

We started the week by admiring the beautiful flowers that Papa got for us!

We thanked him by putting him to work in our plot at the Community Garden at Rose Tree Park. It's a beautiful set up- and $30 for a 20 x 30 foot space!
Olympia is learning all about vegetables.

Although she's not good for much hard labor
(except, of course, at her birth which was hard labor indeed).
She just lounges under the canopy and watches us.

After a particularly grueling session at the garden, she plopped into her co-sleeper for a nap just like this:

Along with the big girl car seat, we had to get a big girl stroller (our old stroller was just a base for the infant car seat). *Deal Alert*: Got it at the baby consignment shop in downtown Media. It had only been there for 2 hours and was outside on the sidewalk- I drove by and actually made the "errrrch" sound with my voice when I pulled over to snatch it up. Thirty bucks!

This is how she spends most of her time these days. On her side, chewing on something.

And this is how she spends most of her time in the car: fast asleep, neck crunched up. This is actually a picture of her reflection in the baby mirror so I can see her in the rear view while I'm driving.

She has had a rough few days, probably just a developmental phase and not a sickness like we had thought. We're eager for her to grow out of this one. We're not ready to blame it on her careful study of a 'Jasper Tantrum' quite yet, if only because if she was able to learn how to scream like him she hopefully would have learned that it never does him much good!

And this is a pretty cute new trick: Holding onto her toes and "singing".

What A Wierdo!

(That's sweet potato all over her belly)

Springtime trip to Amy, Jay, Lucy and Jaspers

(Check out the top blog on the right for more pictures of this trip)


Just in time for the trip to New York:

The big kid car seat!

Cute cousins

Lucy was very understanding when Olympia pulled her hair.

They took their first of probably many baths together. Lucy helped Oly scrub up with Strawberry scented foam soap:

And Oly helped Lucy wash her filthy springtime feet.

A poorly framed shot of Oly and Jasper holding hands.

First time in a swing!

Lucy's brilliant dinosaur

Reading books together on the lawn

Checking out the pond life

Tadpoles! Sprouting little teensy legs!

Amy holding two fussy children

We had so much fun! Their new house is so great and the barn is so great and obviously, the pond is awesome- the company wasn't half bad either. I can't make complete sentences at the moment because after the 4 hour drive home and therefore Olympia's 4 hour nap it's almost midnight and she's doing this:

Happy Easter

Avocado!

A Highly Sophisticated Sense of Humor

Allison visits!

We had tons of fun, even with the new teeth and ear infection.

Gettin' clean.

We planned our garden, started seeds and planted the window boxes. Oly was such a huge help.

When she was tired of doing manual labor she and Andrew pretended to be tough guys.

We took an amazing trip to Longwood Gardens, a 1,000 acre botanical garden nearby. The land was originally owned by William Penn but was developed by Pierre DuPont at the turn of the century into one of the finest collections of trees and flowers in the country. We spent 6 hours there. It was remarkable. I took lots of pictures but am not posting them because they just don't do the place justice.

There's a huge conservatory that seems to go on for miles. It's a wonderful place to put a baby to sleep, with the warm, humid, sweet smelling air.

Oly was awake at one point and reached out to lightly stroke this flower with her chubby fingers. While I grabbed for the camera she crushed it in her fist. Oops.

She's so bad.

We are very sad that we had to do this in Kennett Square, PA and not in the Skagit Valley but.....

Tiptoeing through the Tulips

And now Allison is gone and we're super sad. It's nice having another hand during the day to hold this giant kid. Would it do more psychological damage to a child to have an Au Pair who is periodically mistaken for it's mothers twin? Or less?

Quick almost 5 month update

Will post pictures soon- Allison is visiting and we're very busy buying flower and vegetable seeds.
Quick update: First tooth broke through a few days ago and #2 will be any minute! She has an ear infection and is quite miserable about it. We went to the Doctor today to confirm and she weighs 20 pounds and 11 ounces. So much for that plateau.......

First Rice Cereal

We've been told that the most important sign your baby is ready for solid foods is grabbing food off of your dinner plate. Well last night she tried to take food out of my mouth. She's ready.

Here she is having her very first spoonfuls of food, brown rice cereal. Next weekend: avocados!



(FYI: My t-shirt is bunched up over my tanktop, but I'm officially dressed.)

Oly's new dog

Ok, he's stuffed, but she adores him.

Oly and Jameson

We went over to our friend Caitlin's house to visit with her and Jameson, her new puppy. Oly and Jaime have hung out before, but this is the first time she really engaged with him. It was way too cute. It wasn't all fun and games though- it's serious business making sure your baby ingests enough dog hair to be safe from dog allergies. We succeeded.

The woman holding Olympia is Caitlin's friend Tara.

A few licks on the lips just to be sure.
No worries. We'll be going back for booster shots of Puppy.

Random Cuteness

She's about 2 ounces away from being too big for her infant car seat, but we're desperately trying to hang on as long as possible so we can keep going to Iron Hill for lunch.

She clearly has a great time there. We're not so sure about the headband, but she got a lot of compliments while wearing it.

Tummy time is becoming much more enjoyable now that she's getting strong enough to look around- and now that we have a soft new rug for her to play on.

She really understands the value of stuffed animals finally! She snuggles with them while she sleeps, laughs when we use them as puppets and chews on their noses.

I swear we don't let her watch television. Hardly.