Olivia's birthday

So with a birthday on a national holiday how can you not have more than one party?! We had some of Eric's family over the day before and then were with most of my family the day of to celebrate all the many celebrations! This use to be an incredibly busy time of year for my family (well I guess it still is), but we've scaled things down quite a bit which I guess is good considering there are now birthdays on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of July...not to mention 2 on the 28th of June! So we've managed lots of partying! Livvy was such a good sport! She didn't mind having lots of help opening her presents and she dove into her cakes like a champ! When Micah turned 1 my very clean little boy would only lick the frosting off one finger at a time. Hailey wouldn't even touch her cake! But Olivia required baths after both parties!

Party #1

It doesn't take long to go from this...

...to THIS!

For Valentine's Day Eric bought me this cake pan I'd had my eye on. (He was actually listening when I went on and on about cake pans!) They made PERFECT little cakes for a first birthday!

Party #2

I love this picture! It's like she's thinking,

"should I or shouldn't I?"

I SHOULD!

2 of my 10 year old nieces took turns taking pictures for me. I love that they caught her hugging her new baby!

And like any good mom I completely forgot to take our present for Olivia to the party. (You know you're a third child when you only get 1 present for your birthday (we have too many toys from the first 2) and your mom can't even remember to bring it to your party!) I know it made no difference to her but I actually bought the present over 2 months in advance because I loved it so much! It's an Olivia jack-in-the-box and the music is the theme song. My mom makes jokes about how I named my child after a pig...I didn't, but I think the show is adorable and I think it's fun to be able to buy stuff with her name on it!

Oh boy

Recently Micah has become a very inquisitive child. He wants to know about EVERYTHING in detail! How things work, how things are made...everything. It's sad when your 5 year old is already asking questions you don't know the answers to! He no longer will let me get away with brushing things off or changing the subject so if I don't know the answer I tell him to go ask his dad! (Yeah for me for marrying a brilliant man!) They've had talks about where wind comes from, the evolution of dinosaurs, gravity, formations of clouds, construction of new roads...the list goes on. Yesterday I was putting sunscreen on the kids and told Hailey that if I didn't get it on her nose she'd look like Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. This is literally how the rest of the conversation went...

Micah: "Why is Rudolph's nose red?"

Me: "He was just born that way."

Micah: "How do babies get in the mom's tummies?"

Ah! How did we get from Rudolph to the birds and the bees? He had already asked me a few weeks ago where the first people and then other people came from. However, then he was satisfied with simply knowing he had learned about Adam and Eve at church and that you grow up and get married and have babies. (To which his response was, "I want to do that one day.") Now...I wasn't expecting this conversation for several more years!!! Luckily we were on our way out the door so I was able to distract him and tell him we'd just talk about it later. I'm mostly hoping he'll forget he ever asked. Obviously, I'm not going to have "the talk" with him at the age of 5 but I have no idea what I would tell him.

The joys of parenting...

Move over Lady Liberty!

I know you think today is our country's birthday but actually it is Olivia's birthday! This is such a cliche parent statement but...I can't believe my baby is already 1! It has seriously been the faster year. Probably because she is child #3 so I am plenty busy and time seems to fly by. There are never enough hours in the day or hours of sleep! Livvy has been such a blessing in our home and it is really quite fun to see her personality come out more and more each day. She still absolutely LOVES Micah and Hailey and any other babies. When she gets really excited she has a very high pitched squeal that is rather loud compared to her quiet personality. She hasn't been in any big rush to move around but she's finally crawling (if you can call it that...she looks like Lt. Dan in Forest Gump!) and just within the last few weeks has started pulling herself up to everything! It was nice while it lasted but Olivia is now quite the busy body! I absolutely love to see Micah and Hailey interact with her. They love her SO much! Micah is always saying, "we have the cutest baby ever!" and Liv is the only one that can stop Hailey's crying when she's in one of her moods. She has been my most cuddly baby, although it doesn't last more than a few seconds these days. In the last month she has become a bit of a "Momma's girl" which can be a bitter-sweet kind of thing! I love her red hair that has continued to grow in that we learned comes from Eric's grandma's side of the family and I just hope it stays that way. We love our Olivia, Livvy, Liv, Olive and are so grateful we have her!