first Christmas, first goose egg

We went to Dan's family Christmas today. Olivia was the life of the party once she warmed up to everyone -- I'm constantly amazed by what a social girl she is.

During the chaos of gift opening, one of the kids tripped while carrying her new (very large and heavy) toy keyboard and fell, first bashing me in the head and then hitting Olivia. She screamed for a few minutes, but then settled down. My head stung for at least half an hour, so I can only imagine how her poor little noggin felt. She's got a goose egg on her head, too. :( She liked all her gifts, but seems to prefer the wrapping and tissue paper to the actual gifts. I'm not really surprised!

Her favorite word is still "hi," though she's slowly adding words to her list:
book
box
bird
bear
bottle
duck

You'll notice there are a lot of B words on the list--I know it sounds strange, but she has a different pronunciation for each one. She's also started giving hugs when you say, "Where's my hug?" or asking her to hug someone. She gave Dan's niece a big hug tonight, and multiple hugs to the girl who hit her with the keyboard. It's incredibly cute. Christmas Day stories and pictures to follow tomorrow!

Olivia and Santa

We didn't get any of the traditional hilarious crying photos because daddy ran over to her the second the tears began, blocking the photographer's view. There's always next year. ;)

She wasn't waving here -- she kept her hand raised like this nearly the entire time. We were all cracking up, and Santa got into the act.

Inspecting the beard:

deviating from the regularly scheduled programming

http://lemmondrops.blogspot.com/

I've been following this blog since around the time Olivia was born, maybe before that. The author, Emilie, is a lovely, intelligent, caring woman and mom of two young boys. She found out she had cancer when pregnant with her youngest, and despite surgery, chemo and radiation, has had to bring in home hospice care this week.

If you could take a minute to comment on her blog to let her know you're thinking of her, or to just send a quick thought or prayer (whatever your preference) her way, I'd appreciate it.

In general, I can't imagine being 40 and faced with dying; more specifically, the thought of dying and leaving behind two small children and a husband -- around Christmas, no less -- is just more than I can wrap my brain around.

Christmas card, take 2

We ran out of Christmas cards before I was finished with my list. Oops! Rather than spend $80 on another set of 20 from our photographer, I decided to stage an impromptu photo shoot this morning when Olivia got up from her nap. She was in pretty good spirits and even let me put a bow in her hair. About one hour of uploading, choosing from the 45+ photos I took, and picking a card design later, voila! Thanks to the fabulousness of the web, I can pick them up now at the Walgreens down the street. What did people do before the internet? Olivia will never have to know.

10 months!

If you look closely, you can see her three little teeth on the bottom!

I haven't had a chance to post for a while -- I've been sick all week and had some freelance work to do, so free time has been scarce.

We went to have Olivia's picture taken with Santa today, thus the holiday outfit in her 10-month photo. We weren't sure if she'd freak out or be fascinated by him. She was a little of both. When we put her in his lap, she did the pouty lip and started crying a bit, but we worked hard to distract her. The photographer got a couple of good shots, and I can go pick up the prints on Saturday.

That's it for now -- bed calls!