lots of new things

It's crazy -- in the past week or so, Olivia has started doing a bunch of new things. She can wave (though mostly for hello than goodbye so far), she says hi to us when we walk in a room, to people at restaurants, etc. Such a social girl! Given how introverted her father is and how shy I was for most of my childhood, I'm not sure where she gets it.

She'll clap her hands when I say "good job!" or "yaaaaaaay!" -- I do a lot of that while she's eating -- and she'll also clap if we ask her to. She likes to give us five as well, but it's more of a down-low five than a high five. When you ask her if she sees any birds, she looks out the window, and if you say, "where is _______?" [insert "Nugget/Antoy," or any of her toys], she'll look around until she finds it. She loves to untie shoelaces, and she figured out really quickly that you always have to pull the non-bow pieces to get them untied. It's so strange and so cool that she's turning into such a little person. It seems to have happened overnight. I swear, the last 9 months have been a total blur.

Last week we had the pleasure of all having colds while Olivia was also getting her top teeth all the way in. That wasn't the most fun ever. *sarcasm* She is VERY opinionated lately, and especially hates having her nose wiped. She shows her displeasure with flailing, sobbing, and even some choice kicks to the face. Wow.

She went to town chewing on her crib while her teeth were coming in. Despite buying a gummy cover for the crib rail, she's still working on chomping it down to bits. She's figured out how to unstick and lift the gummy piece, and the rail looks like it was attacked by angry beavers. Siiiiiigh. The thought of her ingesting varnish and wood shards makes me positively twitchy. I should have saved my money on all that organic baby food! :p My mom is working on some sort of a padded rail cover that will hopefully keep her from further gnawing.

Solid foods are starting to go a little better. She hasn't had a major gag or vomit incident recently, and she's starting to be able to handle whole Cheerios and zwieback toast. Hopefully that was just a short-lived phase that she's growing out of, because god knows I can't handle much in the way of barf.

Since I know you're not here for my babble, but for photos ... ;)

Reading the paper:

Showing off her newfound standing/balancing skills: