The Water's Fine

Last week we took our family vacation to the lake. The week started off a little rocky...Olivia wasn't much into the water, which was quite a surprise to me, but after a few days she got right in and LOVED it. If we were there a few more days I think she would have been jumping off the dock with her cousins--maybe next year. I took so many pictures I had a hard time narrowing it down for you to see so I picked some of my faves and wanted to share them with you. Our week was filled with all of the normal lake fun...

Playing at the beach...even if it was the one that Daddy and Uncle Russ made for the kids. The house we stay at doesn't exactly have a beach but Olivia always gets what she wants, therefore she got a beach. Daddy and Uncle Russ spent a good hour pulling weeds and raking up grass so the kids would have a beach. Swimming with Daddy...this is before Olivia realized that she could swim on her own in her swimmies or life jacket.

There's always time to waterslide at the lake. Look at the smile I think she's having FUN!!! Finally taking off on her own and swimming. I think it was Wednesday(we came home Friday morning) before Olivia realized that swimming on her own wasn't that bad....heck she was having a BLAST by Thursday afternoon on her own.

Jet ski riding with Daddy. As you can see Paul let Olivia drive...jeez and people wonder why I worry and hover over her. She has a need for speed...just like her Daddy.

All in all we had a wonderful vacation. I was glad to come home but only to get back to our routine. It's amazing to me how much a few days away from home and change Olivia's daily routines, no matter how hard we tried to keep it.

Snip, Snip, Snip

Saturday morning I(me and mom) took Olivia for her first real haircut. She has had many trims but never a real hair cut at a beauty shop, until today. I was REALLY nervous about it, I was so afraid that they would mess her hair all up. We've tried really hard over the past few months to let Olivia's bangs grow out and only give her a few wispy ones. I've waited too long and had to do something about Olivia's do. So on the advice of Russ(my brother in law) we took Olivia to the same place they take Colby. They were so prepared for kids-race car to sit in, tv, and a little toy area for them to play. Olivia was happy within the first 5 seconds when she saw the cards to play with. I of course brought my camera along for the trip so here are the highlights of the day.
Look how serious Olivia is in these pictures...I think she was scared of the stylist but she behaved and even started getting comfortable towards the end.

I started getting nervous when she started cutting there was a lot of hair falling to the floor, but she insisted she knew what she was doing and I needed to calm down. She told me she wouldn't do anything to my babies hair that she wouldn't do to her own child's hair.

Look at Olivia making faces at herself in the mirror.

Getting the new do dryed to see how pretty we looked.

OK, so I could have gotten a better face for this shot but I didn't. I did however get a good shot of the end product of our trip to the salon.

Olivia's hair looks so much better now. It's not all wild and crazy anymore, well it's still wild and crazy when she wakes up. We'll definately be going back to the salon next time we need a little trim.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Summer

It's not officially summer yet here in sunny Florida but once it's above 85 degrees on a regular basis and you can wear shorts/capris everyday I would say it's summer, wouldn't you?? So in honor of summer's arrival here are some of the summery things we've done in the past few weeks.
We took our first boat ride of the season about 2 weeks ago. A big change from last year with Olivia on the boat. Each year she enjoys the boat even more, she was actually excited about going and pretty pumped about wearing her new life jacket that she picked out herself. She of course had to drive with Daddy, trying telling her to wait just a second and she'll quickly let you know who's in charge around our house...all joking aside she LOVES the boat and will wait to drive until it's safe it just takes a few seconds of negotiations. Olivia finally put all her fears of the BIG swing aside and decided that she could in fact swing on it. Remember the swing set we got Olivia for her birthday...well we kept one of the baby swings from her old one since she wouldn't touch the big girl swings. She has now decided that she was big enough to swing on it on both her belly and the right way. She's been trying to swing on her belly for a few weeks now and just couldn't get it. Just the other day I turned around to thing...

she was rockin' it. I had to make her get off. Then a few minutes later Paul said *show Mommy how you swing, hold on tight, you can do it* and I saw this...

What the heck!! One day she wouldn't go near the darn swing the next day she was swinging like a big girl and smiling about it, geeze where did my little Olivia go.

We also made a transition to a BIG GIRL bed this past weekend. Instead of going right to a full bed I just took the front off of the crib and made it a toddler bed. I was a bit nervous about how Olivia was going to do, but once again she proved me wrong and did GREAT!! She's been sleeping in it for 5 nights now and has acted in true big girl fashion everynight. Olivia hasn't tried to get out or anything, which is what I was afraid of. She lays her little self in the bed until she falls asleep. I have needed to go in once or twice but she doesn't get up until she sees me, how about that for a big girl. Now naptime is a whole other story, she did get up run over to her bookshelf and get a book. It could have been worse she could have played with her toys, she just wanted to read another story-who could blame her.

Sunday we took a boat ride out to Bird Island with some friends. What a fun day, except for the sunburn Kelly and I got. You better believe next time I'm going to have a different sunscreen buddy since she didn't think either one of us needed any. BIG MISTAKE, we're both paying for it today her more then me. Olivia was so excited to bring Grady along on her boating trip and to play with him at the beach. They wore me out with all of their playing, they had so much fun I can't wait for out next trip. I didn't take too many pictures since it was so windy and sandy but here are two sweet kids playing in the sand.

Splish Splash

A few weeks back Paul came across a FREE hot tub, how exciting for us. We could relax in it and Olivia could use it to swim--we all win. Well Olivia wanted to swim ALL the time so we headed out to Walmart to get her a pool just her size and it was a BIG hit! We filled it up right away and in she went.
I just had to get this shot while she was patiently waiting for Daddy to fill the pool with air.Who needs a bathing suit, she just hops in with hose in hand.

Time for the homemade waterslide.

SPLASH! As you can see Olivia ditched her shirt and opted to swim in her undies and the good parents we are didn't object she was having a BLAST!!

Her Thumb Is A Little Green

A few weeks back we made a quick trip to Lowes, ok well it was long trip since Paul went. As with any store they have kid geared things in eye level of little people, even at Lowes. Of course directly across from the bug sprays we were looking at there was a wonderful display of gardening tools with cartoon characters on them...who else does Olivia notice Cookie Monster and Big Bird. After a few minutes of negotiating and listening to Olivia tell me that she wanted to get the new gardening tools we decided on the little pots, seeds, and potting soil with Cookie Monster on them...much cheaper and much more practical. The seeds were for mini watermelons. We planted the seeds in the mini pots the kit came with and waited...after about 2 weeks we had some sprouts. Out of the 6 pots we planted with 2-4 seeds in each one we got 5 pots with 2-3 sprouts each. I was pretty darn proud of us since Olivia tends to over water her plants.
Here are Olivia and Daddy replanting her watermelons into planters. I can't wait to see and taster our yummy mini watermelons soon. Everyday we check them and they are getting so big, I think this is the first plants I haven't killed in, well, forever.

And yes, I do let my darling daughter run around in her panties, don't judge. If you've ever potty trained you know how hard it can be and so we've opted to make our lives as easy as possible at certain times of the day...if that means running around in a long t-shirt with our BIG GIRL panties on so we make it to the potty in time so be it.

Stay tuned we've been pretty busy and I'm going to try and get you all up to date in the next few days.

We've Graduated

I'm proud to annouce that Olivia has graduated from these.........to these....

Yep, you read that right Olivia now wears BIG girl panties. My wallet it smiling too:)

A few weeks ago we decided that it was time to start potty training Olivia. We did it the old fashion way, we quit diapers cold turkey. Yeah, we may have been a little crazy but I didn't really want to go the pull up route. Thank goodness for my Mom or else I don't think I would have made it through this adventure. Olivia did well, it about 2 weeks she was completely potty trained. Now, by no means am I saying that she doesn't have accidents or is night time(naptime) potty trained, because yes she does and no she isn't. We've been at this for four weeks now and we usually have one accident a day, especially if she's outside playing. She is so good at telling us when she needs to use the potty. I really think the key to our success was skipping pull ups and going straight to panties.

I'm such a proud mommy to have a little girl that has just turned 2 and is already potty trained.

Her New Do

For the longest time I didn't really do anything with Olivia's hair. When she was a baby I wasn't really into the headbands with bows and/or flowers, which I'm now learning was a mistake. Olivia is now anti-anything that has to do with making her hair pretty. I've been trying for a few months now to get her to let me put a clip, bow, rubberband, or anything in her hair with no luck. She usually tells me-*no don't want it*, *it hurts*, or my favorite *get it off, no like it*.

So to try and fix the fabulous mullet Olivia has been growing I brought her to Target to pick out some hair stuff. She wasn't into it at all, but I was so we talked about all the pretty hair things and I picked out these fabulously plain ouchless rubberbands for her. I've been able to get her to let me put a, as Paul calls it, Pebbles Flintstone ponytail on top of her head a few times....ok, twice but who's counting....I guess I am. I took these new rubberbands to mom's today to have her try and fix Olivia's hair when she gets there in the morning--low and behold this afternoon we not only got a ponytail we got pig tails. WOW, it made her look like a completely different kid. Look how stinkin' cute she is with her new 'do'. I hope Mom is able to get her hair up most days during the week so maybe, just maybe one day we'll be able to put a bow in...

Don't you just love that face?!?! Olivia got some playdough for her birthday and it's one of her favorite inside toys. After playing with it almost everyday for the past 2 weeks she decided to try it and see how it tasted. As you can tell from the face, not so good. Maybe next time she'll stick to the animal crackers she had for a snack right before she broke out the orange playdough.