Full Disclosure

Almost all of the time, Olympia Louise is an absolute delight. Every once in awhile though, she's a little monster. We are extremely happy to report that she has her first word, "Mama". I would love to say that she points to me with a big grin and squeals "Mama!" with delight. But no, not yet at least. She only says it when she wants milk, or when she's being a monster, like in this video from last night when I wouldn't share my shrimp potstickers with her. Poor, poor Oly.

At the end I'm laughing because she is leaning down to tear at my shirt with her teeth. Apparently she's dying of starvation and even cotton will suffice.

A few may notice the movie we were watching is on pause in the background: 'After The Thin Man' with the great Jimmy Stewart as the murderous jilted lover. Oly loved it when Asta barked.

11 PM

We've been told that children, when passing a large developmental milestone like crawling, refuse to sleep for a few days. Well, we can now confirm this.

As for the bunny ears, if we're going to be awake we might as well be having some fun.

9 Months

Apologies for the long wait for this video, the last week has not been very photogenic. Oly had a virus that produced a high fever and extreme crankiness- and then when the fever broke she had bright red welts all over her body. Not cute. I have such an appreciation for what a wonderful kid she is now that I have endured 4 days of screaming. But now she's sweet and adorable again! And she's crawling! Well, sort of:

We went to her 9 month check up and have finally reached the plateau that we've so desperately been waiting for.

Weight: 23 lbs and 13 oz (only 1 pound gained since 6 months!)

Length: 30 inches (2 inches gained)

Head Circumference: 48 cm (almost 3 centimeters gained)

To quote Dr. Browngoehl, "Well, you've still got a ginormous kid, but at least now she's proportional!" She's an even few centimeters above the 97th percentile on all of the charts.

She's bound to thin out even more quickly with that wonky crawl that is wasting a ton of needless energy.

Summer Visit

The Farmer/Readings were here all weekend and much fun was had.

Lucy loves Oly and the feeling is obviously mutual:

Jasper loves Timmy and the feeling is VERY mutual:

Most of the weekend was spent doing this:

parents lounging while the kids tear into the toys in the living room.

But on Saturday we went to the Camden Aquarium and Olympia loved it. She sat in front of the tanks watching the sharks and turtles swim back and forth but we were too busy staring at her to take any pictures.

After awhile though, the tanks of fish lulled her right to sleep:

Lucy touched a shark and a starfish:

Sunday we sought a different kind of aquatic experience:

We hiked through Ridley Creek Park with 2/3 of the kids on our backs. We swam and fished in here:

But since our cameras aren't waterproof and there weren't pockets in our swimsuits, there really aren't photos of that fun either. What a great blog post! I talked more about the pictures that aren't here more than the ones that are. Well, you'll just have to see what Amy has on her camera along with the video she took of Oly's first crawling!

People, This is Rain

This is what the sidewalk looks like after 6 minutes of a summer thunderstorm in Pennsylvania. And they think it rains a lot in Seattle.....

A Full Belly of Salmon

This is what Oly does on a FULL belly of Sockeye Salmon.

On a related note here is a list of the foods she ate yesterday, some in blended 'baby-food' form, but most just off our plates:

Asparagus

Fresh, local peaches

Pasta bolognese

Sausage

Garden squash

Rice cakes

Sockeye Salmon

Avocado

Almond butter

Melon

Spicy Lemon Quinoa

Kid eats better than most american adults.

Waving At Grandmom

She proceeded to wave at Grandmom all day- she has yet to do it to either of us.

No, no, no

Um, I think she's starting to understand what 'No' means. Obeying it is a completely different story.

Silly Grandmom!

We spent the day with Silly Grandmom who was visiting from California and she has the magic touch- she was there the day Sarah walked for the first time, the day Lucy crawled for the first time and today she taught Olympia how to wave at her! Thankfully she didn't crawl yet and I live another day to make a dinner in relative peace.

Here are some of the less blurry pictures from the day to hold you over until tomorrow when I will post a plethora of videos!

A sneaky picture of the curls:

Garden Dinner

We had a dinner last night almost exclusively from our garden (alas, no raising lambs in Media Township). Timmy made a tomato (four different kinds!), cucumber and fennel salad:

and Oly finally enjoyed some corn that we grew ourselves.

Can someone tell us what this means?

Oooooooooh Puffs?

Maybe it's the fact that Olympia has seen Lisa more or less every week at Birthmark (for our Mama and Me class) for her entire life that would make her comfortable enough to scoot over and hook her foot over her leg- or maybe it's the fact that she had rice puffs.

(that's root beer)

The Cuteness

Swinging at Aidenn's

Last weekend we went to our friends' Brian and Colleen's house for a BBQ and to meet their new baby Rowan. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the little munchkin, but I do have pictures of Oly swinging in the backyard and one with their older son Aidenn- he's SO cute and at one year, a little smaller than Olympia. (Tim wants to make sure that I mention that Oly is a foot and half up in the air and is swinging forward towards the camera in the picture with Aidenn which makes her look more like an Amazon than she is. Noted.)