Kathy is now a notary! She needed it for work. I don’t know all the details as to why, but something about things at credit unions needing to be legit… Kathy mumbles a lot. Anyway, yay for Kathy.
I can’t even keep up with the number of words that she knows now. Her list of German words is getting bigger too, and we’re trying to work with her some, but its tough since we don’t speak it at the house. Anyway, Olivia loves being more responsible, and she wants to do everything on her own now. She laid on her back on the floor trying to put pants on (over her shorts) for about 5 minutes yesterday.
She loves being outside and running around.
She also enjoys feeding herself.
I was just reading back through some posts from 2 years ago (when we found out we would be parents), and I really went out on a limb making some wild assumptions about the type of parents we would be. Well, call me crazy, a fortune teller, or whatever, but we’ve actually stuck to our plan. We do not celebrate things that are unwarranted, we do not buy our kid toys, silly expensive shoes, or feed her junk food. Sure she gets to play with sticks and rocks, but thats what all the spoiled kids do. Olivia really enjoys picking up scraps in my shop and throwing them into a bucket or into the trash. Thats just her personality, and she’s been like that since she started to develop one. She likes things tidy, and I’m pretty sure that her mom and I didn’t teach her that, because we’re not the most tidy people.
I’m really happy that Olivia plays with other kids, she’s speaking english and german, she can almost run, and doesn’t care about the tv (other than watching the same 2 episodes of elmo over and over. no kidding, i’ve tried to show her other episodes and she won’t watch). I’m also pleased that she’ll eat anything that we put in front of her, even the stuff that Kathy and I hate. On her 2nd birthday, we’re taking her out for some sushi 
.
Some of you may or may not know that we have an elevator that we use on a daily basis to get downstairs to the basement/garage. Olivia gets to ride in it as well and she really likes it. Today this happened….watch the video.
It took a lot of convincing on Olivia’s part, but Stan (the cat) finally gave in and he’s officially friendly with Olivia. Also you might notice that Olivia is wearing little girl panties. She’s doing pretty well with the potty training and she does her best to tell us when she needs to “pee pee”.
Ok, so I was potty training Olivia right before she turned one. I would put her on her frog after naps and she would pee in it every other time. She was sick a bunch so I slacked off on it and I should not have. Now she is walking and I can’t really put her on the frog since it sits on the ground. So, we now have to put her on the big toilet with a kids seat on it, that way she can’t just take off.
This weekend we put her on the toilet a bunch and she just sat there and stuffed stickers and toilet paper down in the bowl. She knows the word “pee pee” and heads straight for the bathroom but just sits there and likes to be entertained by mama. After trying all day she finally said “pee pee” on her own, so I followed her to the bathroom put her on the potty and after some convincing and grunting on MY part she grunted some and pooped like a big girl. At the end I let her flush and she got a kick out of watching everything disappear……while I held her hands or otherwise they would have ended up in the toilet!
We went to the doc yesterday for Olivia’s 15 month update. Here’s the short of it. She got a couple of shots, one in the leg and one in the arm. She didn’t like that. She got her finger pricked twice to check for anemia, and her red blood cell count was lower than ever (26/8.9). We had to go to the lab to get more blood drawn (from her arm). She didn’t care for it, but seems to dislike shots in the shoulder even more. We’ll know more on the results on Monday. Until then, we have no idea the consequences or path forward if she is anemic. I’m fine being ignorant for one more weekend… so no questions and no advice about the subject please. I’ll pass along more information when I find it out.
She was super happy last night though, and slept very well. It was a big day for the both of us!
UPDATE: Olivia just needs even more iron… The doc will check her again in 3 months, but this should go away on its own.
So… I got bored and started eating a little better in August. That went well, so starting the last week of September I started going to the gym. I started 2 days a week, then 3, now 4. I’ve lost 21lbs, 4″ from my waist, and dropped from 26.% body fat to 17.5%. Believe it or not, but by clinical standards I was considered to be obese in those first pics at 26.5% (25% and over is obese for my age). I hope to hit 10% without losing much more in the lbs dept, but that probably won’t be an easy task. I don’t want to be skinny, but I do want to fit back into 32″ pants! 34′s are loose so it should happen any minute now… until then, here are some progress pics from Oct and some from this week.
Note that I am sucking in for the pic in glasses
Also, its difficult to tell because of the facial hair, but my double chin is gone.
My kid doesn’t need a lot of fancy toys to keep her happy…
She loves to eat popsicles with mommy too!!!
Update 18 Jan 11
We leveled and trimmed out the upper cabinets on one wall. The keen eye will see some wiring hanging down behind the cabinet. That is part of the in-cabinet and under-cabinet lighting that I mentioned the other day.
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We’re moving right along with the kitchen. We leveled the base cabinets, installed toe kick and filler strips, and did some metal working to put in that nifty HVAC vent (yes, I’m going to paint it black). I’m starting on the upper cabinets tonight. They’re a little more involved than the base cabinets. We’re putting lights under each of them for the counter top, and inside each of the glass faced cabinets. Its a little silly, but we spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and really like it there. We will have 39 light fixtures in the one room though. 17 cans, above table fixture, above bar fixture, and the rest are a mix of the puck lights in and beneath the upper cabinets. It should look nice. Each set of lights is on a dimmer. Really, this is just us seeing what we like so that we can improve on the design in the next house. I will probably go with an automated lighting system to control the lights in the new home. Anyway, here is a quick peak at what its looking like. I’ll post more pics tonight after we do some of the upper cabinets.
