18 Months!!

It is so hard to believe, another milestone has come and gone! Time flies when you are having fun and learning, learning, learning!

We thought it would be fun to celebrate her 18 month birthday. Just like her real birthday, she showed limited interest in cupcakes.



Little things I don't want to forget...

1) The speech therapist in me loves hearing all of the two word utterances that are flowing these days. My favorite one is "Silly Yaya", whenever Maya does something that tickles her. She has also started saying, "Uh-oh, Cheerio" whenever an accident happens. I have no idea how she came up with that one. It is super cute.

2) We have always talked about the letter "O" for obvious reasons. She loves for me to sing the ABC's and now she loves the letter "A". When we are coloring, I can write both an "O" and an "A" and she can tell me which is which! I am still amazed at that one!

3) Olivia is ON THE MOVE! She now pretty much runs anywhere she is going and never stops going!

4)She is such a sweetie! She gives big, wrap her arms around our neck hugs as well as spontaneous and on demand kisses.

5)She still loves music and now "sings". She sings, "Row Row Row", "A A A" (ABC's), "I See Ya" (A Gymboree peek-a-boo song that is really "I See You"). She loves to dance and has picked up a hilarious head bob whenever she is in her car seat. When we are driving, she says, "Mama" so that I will turn around and see her head bob "dance" with a huge smile on her face.

6)She has started exhibiting imaginary play. Her favorite is making "stew" with all of her new cookware and food she got for Christmas. She stands at the top of the stairs shaking the baby gate that leads to the basement saying, "stew, stew, stew" when she wants to go cook.

7) She has started "hoarding", piling up a huge pile of toys up on a chair and then climbing up to sit amongst it all.


Hoarding in Maya's kennel...Maya looks thrilled!


8) She LOVES to Skype. She wants to all day long. She looks at the laptop and says, "Nana, Abby" (my mom and her dog) and "Nonna, Holly" (Mike's mom and their cat).

9) We went to the park the other day and she followed a group of 8 year old girls for about 30 minutes. She just tried as hard as she could to keep up with them, saying "HI!" over and over again to them. She was enamored by them.

10) Maya is still her best bud in the world. She loves to feed her. Several times a day, I hear, "Yaya cookie" or "Yaya ice" when she wants to give her a treat. We have to now feed Maya after Olivia has gone to sleep because she wants to hand feed Maya every bite and gets frustrated if Maya eats by herself.

Snowboarding

We took advantage of the free babysitting (thanks Nonna, Pawpaw John, and Uncle Joel) and decided to try out snowboarding. Mike, Aunt Carrie and I drove the hour drive from Canmore to Lake Louise and took an all day snowboarding lesson. It was tons of fun. I think I like it better than skiing, but it is a lot harder at first. We will keep trying and see if we make the switch permanently.

Mike had had a lesson a few weeks before...what a show off

SSR looking okay, but...

quickly loosing it

MPR and SSR

SSR looking super cool

Canadian Rockies

The day after Christmas, we loaded up both cars and TONS of gear and headed for the Canadian Rockies. We have been in the summer, fall and now winter. It was stunning to see it all covered in snow. We stayed 4 nights at a fantastic 3 bedroom condo just outside of Canmore. It was a lot of fun to casually check out Canmore, Banff, and Lake Louise.

The Original Rays plus Olivia

The New Rays

Pictures of her in the backpack in that hat, never get old!

She kept saying, "Cold, cold, cold", so we went inside and had lunch

A little too chilly for a 45 minute sleigh ride...maybe next time

Frozen Lake Louise with an ice castle and skating rink

At the other Fairmont, Banff Springs checking out the Christmas decorations

Dancing with Uncle Joel

Christmas Morning

Olivia really got into opening presents this year. She would get a present, open it, play with whatever it was for a minute or two, and then exclaim she wanted another one, "More". She also indicated which presents she approved of. We gave her some cute pajamas. She opened that box and said, "NO!" and through them over her shoulder...lame present, Mama! Aunt Carrie gave her a picture frame with a picture of the two of them. Olivia took one look at it and said, "NO" and handed it back to Aunt Carrie. Apparently, only books and toys make good gifts! It was really funny!

Books, still her favorite!

Loving tearing into the gifts with Aunt Carrie

Taking a book break with "PaPa"

Fun (and loud) new firetruck

Checking out her new tool box with Uncle Joel

A Firetruck book!!

The Princess' stocking

Favorite present of the day, no doubt...scarves from Gymboree

The gift tag is often more fun than the present itself

Cute baby girl in her Christmas dress

Santa's Elves

Santa brought Olivia a play kitchen for Christmas this year. She always gravitates towards the kitchen at playgroup and I found a fun, all wood kitchen on sale. I read the reviews on-line that said it takes 4 hours to put together. Surely two engineers, a handy mom and Nonna could do it faster. We opened the box to find the entire thing was in hundreds of pieces. We succeeded in beating the 4 hours, but it did take us 2 1/2 hours on Christmas Eve. We were up until midnight...just a glimpse of future Christmas Eve's to come, I am sure.


The finished product...she loves it!

Two Different, But Both Scary Santas

At Heritage Park there was a great Santa who Olivia thought was fantastic--only from afar. Olivia is obsessed with Santa. She spots them all over town and gets so excited. She also loves her ever growing Santa book collection. In all of her Chrismtas books, she lets you read the first page and then turns it to the Santa pages. While we were waiting in line to see the real deal, as soon as she saw him through the window, she was mesmerized. "Tant, Tanta, Tanta!!!!!!"


Once it was our turn to have our picture taken with him, Olivia was terrified. "No, no, no"

At first she wouldn't even look at him.

Warming up to him, but still no way ever going to sit on his lap. She wasn't letting go of Nonna for anything.

As soon as we left, she kept saying over and over again, "More Tanta". She likes the idea of him, but definitely not the reality.

The next day we went to the Farmer's Market and there was another Santa, who frankly, we were all a bit scared of.

He tried to get her to warm up with a duck puppet. She quickly stole that off his hand and REFUSED to give it back. We walked around with it for a bit and then gave it back.

Heritage Park

Our first Christmas visitor to arrive was Mike's mom (Nonna). We went to check out one of the few Calgary tourist spots, Heritage Park. It is set up to look like a Calgary town around the 1920's. It was all decorated for Christmas with many Christmas activities. it was actually pretty neat and not as cheesy as you would think.

Petting one of Santa's reindeer

Listening to the carolers

Awesome trains

Running in the snow

Oops! The deep snow is a bit tricky to maneuver through

Checking out the horses with Dada

Yaya

Olivia calls Maya "Yaya" and it seems to have stuck. We all now call her "Yaya" and she responds to it!

Maya being a "horsie"

Maya looking at me saying, "Please help me"