My little reader

I love that she loves books!

Beads!

Checking out the camera

Looking for the beads under the bear

She loves her beads!

She kept holding them up like this and laughing

I wore pearls to church Sunday, and Liv just loved them! So I took out some plastic beads I have and let her play with them. She loved it! This one's all girl :)

Balancing tricks +

She's got this move down!

I just love this face :)

Balancing tricks

Tyler put a toy ring on Liv's head, and it was so cute, because she would just put her arms up in the air like she was balancing, then she'd knock it off. I finally got a couple of pictures with it on, some with it falling off, and others with it on the floor after being knocked off. Then there's the ever famous scrunchy face while balancing!

Liv crawled!

Well, it's official, we have a little crawler on our hands! Liv got the coordination down and loves crawling around! Pretty soon we'll see just how un-baby-proofed our house is!

Liv gets playdates while mommy and daddy get to go to class

Our amazingly wonderful neighbor watches Liv while Tyler and I are in class. After this year, we'll set up our schedules so one of us can be with Liv while the other is in class, but there were two classes we both needed to take this semester. So Tyler and I dropped Liv off with Hannah and her two cute girls for a couple hours this afternoon. We were hoping Liv would be good for them, and we were so happy to hear that they'd had a great time together.

When we got to Hannah's to pick Liv up, she said that Lauren had so much fun with Liv. Lauren is two, and is such a sweet and hilarious girl. She kept saying to Hannah, "That baby named Liv wants to play with the trains," or "That baby named Liv wants to read this book," etc. and then would go get out whatever "Liv" wanted to play with. I thought that was so adorable! And cutest of all was when Hannah told us that when Lauren got up from her nap, she saw that Liv was there and was really concerned. She said to Hannah, "That little baby doesn't have a mommy and daddy!!" Hannah explained she had just come over to play, and that Liv indeed does have parents, and Lauren was happy again.

Lauren says the cutest things. She was jumping and spinning and told her mom she was teaching us how to do it. Another time, she told her mom she wanted to do a "salt and pepper." Well Hannah didn't know what she meant, then started thinking about the things they had been doing that week. She finally realized she meant a sommersault! So funny! My favorite, though, was when she was mixed up with "me" and "you." She came up to her mom and said, "Help you!" And when Hannah said she didn't need any help, Lauren got really sad and kept saying, "Help you, help you." Hannah realized she meant "help me." She thought Hannah was "me" and that Lauren was "you." It totally makes sense--Hannah would have referred to herself as "me" and Lauren as "you." It made it all the cuter when Lauren went up to Hannah and held out something to her and said, "For me." Imagine this in a cute little girl voice :) It really is adorable!

So happy to see mommy!

I started working mornings on campus in the School for Public and Environmental Affairs. While I'm away, Liv stays home with Daddy. They have been having lots of fun together, and she's been taking great naps for him. Today Tyler took me to school because he had some errands to run, and then came and picked me up because he needed to go to the bookstore before our class. I met him in the parking lot, and as I was walking up to the car, Liv saw me and let out a big, happy squeal and gave me a huge smile! I just love her so much! I was so happy she was excited to see me. I love my job, but I miss getting to be with her. I'm glad Tyler gets to be with her in the mornings, and that she sleeps for a lot of the time that I'm gone, so I don't miss out on as much!

Snuggles with Daddy

So for the last few weeks, Liv has been wanting me to hold her and not leave her with anyone else, not even Tyler. He was feeling a little bit sad, or at least left out. But then Saturday I had just finished feeding her, and she turned out of my arms towards Tyler and gave him a big hug! It was so cute!

A bit later, she would come to me, give me a hug, then turn and go to Tyler, give him a hug, then come back to me. She went back and forth about 15 times. It was so funny! She is so sweet to give me and Tyler attention now :)

Ice cream!

Liv caught with her hand in the cookie jar! Or in this case, face in the Oreo shake...What can I say, she loves ice cream!

Crib time

Gotta love that mischievous look!

Another scrunchy face while standing all by herself in her crib!



Liv realized she didn't know how to let go from standing up. She took the topple well.

Happy baby :)

Bedtime

Tummy time!

Checking out the camera up-close.

Looking for more stuff to play with.

I finally got a good one of her scrunchy face!

Liv hanging out in her jammies.

Liv likes to hold her lotion bottle after we put her lotion on. I didn't get a picture of it, but she also really likes to suck on the cap. I guess lotion tastes good?

Stuffed Animals

Livvy was so excited to play with her stuffed animals today! She was sitting in front of me and kept trying to pull the basket with them in it over. She finally got it!

Sharing pears with daddy

Pull ups

Liv also tries to pull herself up to standing. Poor thing got caught on the chair the other day--too close to sit down, too close to stand the rest of the way up!

Push up time!

Liv now goes from crawling to push-up position. It's so funny! I think she's stronger than I am...

One more messy face

Messy face!

So, we basically strip Liv down when it's time to eat, because as you can see, it gets everywhere! But it's pretty cute, so we'll allow it :) She started doing monkey face, which meant her favorite sweet potatoes ended up in her hair, on the back of the chair, and smeared all around her face (she moved just as I went to put the spoon in her mouth). We have a fun time at meal times!

Cuddling up on a Sunday

After church, I was laying on the floor after Liv finished eating. She rolled over and cuddled up to me. So cute! She's also been giving me her binky lately, which makes me love her even more. I had held it in my mouth a couple of times (backwards) when I'd be doing something else before giving it to her, and she would take it, put it in her mouth, and then try and put it back in mine. Now she just randomly will give it to me sometimes, and I think it's so sweet she's willing to share her binky with me.

To crawl or not to crawl...

So Liv really wants to crawl. She spends all day practicing. And she's so close! She is so good at getting her knees under her and supporting herself. She rocks back and forth, lunges...and then dives on her tummy. She can really scoot around sideways and backwards, but what she really wants is to be able to go forward. I'm expecting any day now. She'd probably have it by now if it weren't for all of those days in the car lol

Monkey face!

So Liv has started doing this thing where she covers both her ears with her hands, and it is so adorable! I call it her monkey face, and it makes her laugh. Every time she does it, I say, "Monkey face!" in an excited voice, and she just cracks up. Sometimes, I make the face back. Yes, even at the grocery store. But hey, I even do little dances and songs for her at the grocery store, so that can't come as much of a surprise. But back to the monkey face. She was doing it the other day over and over at the grocery store. We were having a great time! While daddy was shopping for produce, Liv and I were playing the monkey face game. A college-age girl near us said, "That's so cute she does that!" And it really is. I'm trying to get a good picture of it, and of course erased the one that ended up being the best because I thought it was blurry at the time. Here's one that turned out okay, too, though.

Vroom-vroom

So Tyler is taking Liv on an imaginary car ride in hopes that she'll fall asleep. He buckles her, then puts down the cover. As he walks around the house taking fake turns, he makes fun car noises *vroom-vroom*. It's actually really endearing.

Love my friends, love my life

I got together with some of my favorite people tonight. Ammon, Jen, Liz, Mama, and Shane. It was so fun talking about old times and remembering just how much I love these people and that time of my life. We laughed and told stories, and Katie mistook Liv for Mama's baby (mostly cuz of her name ;) ). We even realized that Shane and I had gone out three times, and I remembered a fourth after he left lol There was a scandal as I mistakenly thought Ammon had been de-friended on facebook. Turns out it was only in real life. Phew ;)

As everyone was leaving, I was thinking how great it is to have such good friends and to be able to keep in touch. I was thinking how sad I was that I don't get to see them as often as I used to. Then I walked upstairs and went to crawl into bed and there was Liv, sleeping peacefully. All the love I have for Liv and Tyler just hit me so hard. I thought, how lucky am I to love my old life, and to love the life I have now? How I got so lucky to have such great friends and a great husband and daughter I'll never know. What I do know is that I am so blessed. Looking at Liv's cute little face while she slept filled me with so much peace. I love what I have, I love where I've been, and I'm so excited for a future filled with family, friends, and new experiences yet to come.

Starting out strong...until we give up

So Tyler and I decided we're going to try to eat better (yes I realize this is ridiculous, given that I'm making a chocolate chip cookie pie). We've been talking about doing the Zone diet and were saying we were going to miss carbs, especially cereal. So I said that we didn't necessarily need to be strict, we could just do our own version. In response, Tyler said, "We should start out strong and then slowly give up." So here's to starting out (somewhat--again, the cookie pie) strong, and give up from there!

And we're back...

So for months I've said I'm going to start blogging again. Every time something funny happens, I say, "I'm totally blogging about this." But then I never do. So I'm in the middle of making a delicious chocolate chip cookie pie (from ourbestbites.com) and thought, oh I'm going to blog later. Instead of waiting and never doing it, I'm blogging now. Here is the pie I'm making. It looks so delicious!!