Zeus!: The Video 2.0

Ok, I got a few better ones this morning at breakfast. Notice the disgusting hair that she smeared with food, hoping for a bath. For the record, I'm not giving her a gallon of Hi-C every day or anything. This 8 oz sippy cup is about 2 tablespoons of apple juice and filled up with water.

Zeus!: The Video

Aquarium

Today we went to the Camden Aquarium with our friends and Oly has a new animal noise: shark! We have one book with sharks in it and we've read it 25 times since we returned home this afternoon. Tomorrow we'll go find some more- maybe sharks will be her childhood obsession. At three she's going to be admonishing us, "The Shark Ray isn't really a shark, it's official name is the Bowmouth Guitar Fish."

Yup, Pal, those are fish.

And those are adorable, adorable, adorable penguins having a fish lunch.

Here she is in the shark tunnel watching them swim over our heads:

Here is Catie being adorable.

She was asleep before we even pulled out of the parking lot.

Another Post For Good Measure

Old Friend, New Friend

We got a fantastic surprise phone call yesterday afternoon- my wonderful friend from college, Eva, was just a few hours away on business (she's a producer for collegehumor.com's original video content) She said that she was in York, PA picking up some pipes. At first, I was extremely confused because I figured that New York city, where she works, would be a good place for something like that. She went on to explain that they were huge specialty PVC joints for a 'Star Wars Piano' that someone was going to make for a future skit. I'm not making this up. So anyway, she and one of her co-workers were going to stop by on their way back to the city because she still hadn't met Oly!

Well here they are:

Here we are:

And here is Oly, after handing this kid her new book and backing right into his lap. He was an absolute delight but I can't even remember his name. "Um, Olympia? My great friend for almost a decade is sitting next to me on the couch. This guy is practically a stranger."

I guess she made two new friends yesterday!

More Presents!

A Christmas present that had been lost in the mail finally arrived from Silly Grandmom. You'll see in the video that she seems more excited about the envelope and wrapping paper- but she's been reading the book nonstop ever since!

Zeus!

Her first word! Well, there's some backstory. She's been saying 'UH-oh' for awhile and 'muh' for 'more' for awhile too- but they didn't really feel like first words because they sort of morphed over several weeks. Although yesterday, after falling and crashing pretty hard, I offered her some juice to make her feel better and she just said it, "Juice!" Well, it really sounds more like Zeus, but she's 1. Give her a break. "Go, go, go!" means 'up the stairs' now too.

Parenting is About Going With the Flow

Blocks

Last January when the Reading/Farmers visited us right after Oly was born, they brought a box filled with baby toys to pass down to us. Jasper, having been the exact age Olympia is now, was playing with some nice wooden blocks that our friend Deneb had given us and Jay had the ingenuity to cut a hole in the box for Jasper to sort. And now Ladies and Gentleman, history repeats itself.

A Little Cuteness

She used to have a decent repertoire of feelings faces: sad, happy, mad and surprised. For some reason now it is all just surprised. And please, notice the destruction that is the dining room/living room floor. She can do twice that much in less than 90 seconds. We just wait for her to go to bed before we pick anything up.

p.s. Shelly look at the coat! What happened to my little baby?! Oh yeah, I think this kid ate her.

She Did Not Get This Compulsive Cleanliness From Us, That's For Sure

This kid is SERIOUS about hygiene. After a bath, she signs about it for at least an hour. Then there's about 45 minutes where she's not talking about baths and it starts all over with her asking for another bath. We let her brush her teeth almost continuously to tide her over. I made the mistake of letting her wash her hands in the sink after a meal but now she wants to do it all the time. If she's the slightest bit tired and/or cranky the tears flow if she's not allowed.

I'll try to get video of her new signs and.... wait for it..... words! Well, "Uh-oh" (is that a word?) when anything drops on the floor and "vuff, vuff, vuff" at the sight of a dog. She started saying "Muh" yesterday for 'more', but now I think it might also be the word for 'milk'. And so it begins....

Misc.

Here are some pictures from the last few months that didn't make it into their own posts.

Trying to play at the park bundled up, but it was still too cold:

Napping on Papa:

Her first candy cane, given to her by Santa:

Opening a Christmas present from her babysitter Lauren, who she loves dearly. Lauren plopped the wrapped box down and Oly knew just what to do:

Pretending to be Mama:

Tormenting our friend Caitlyn's cat:

"I want more blueberries. MORE!":

"Here. Right here is where I want you to put more blueberries":

New Years Eve

For New Years Eve we went to our friends' the Czaplicki's to play some house (the kids) and have some dinner (the parents).

Oly walked in the door and made a beeline for Samantha's dolls.

She and Sam rocked everybody to sleep.

Then Dr. Olympia palpated (tickled) Samantha's belly to make sure she was in top shape,

And Dr. Sam gave Oly a full check-up and declared her in perfect health.

She even listened to her bellybutton. So thorough.

Then we put all the girls upstairs to bed, had a lovely dinner where no one (hardly) threw any food on the floor and managed to stay awake until champagne at midnight, but just barely.

Dane and Katie have a Malamute named Kenai who, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet and unfortunately she went un-photographed. Olympia, of course, was madly in love with her. She'd toddle up to her, pat her nose and then expecting a giant tongue (like Shady Bear) on her face, she would flinch- but never receive a kiss. I don't know if she was disappointed or relieved.

Holidays at the Reading/Farmer Farm

We had 'Second Christmas' up in Ithaca. We opened presents (check their blog on the right to see Jasper have a pretty good day), read and ate. Perfection. There aren't enough of pictures of Lucy because she was a constant blur of skin and all of the photos would have looked the same.

Shade tolerated Olympia's affections:

We put Oly to work preparing the meals.

Remember, you have to prepare Jasper medium rare because he's a pretty lean meat.

How cute is this?

No seriously, I want to read comments from everyone about how cute they think this is.

Here is Jasper clutching his new tractor hollering at Oly to get away.

We took a wonderful hike with the kids. Here is Amy trying to get.....

this picture:

Most of the pictures that we took look like some variation of this:

And on the way home she studied.

Kissing Cousins

Olympia, no means no. (The light was low in the living room so I tried to adjust the contrast in iMovie but it's clear I'm no movie producer.)