Gymnastics!!

I was worried about over scheduling Olivia, so I signed her up for Gymnastics! :) It is once a week for only 2 1/2 months. I really thought she would like it and decided to try it. She LOVED it and hasn't stopped talking about it and asking to back to "gytastics" to do some more "jumpy jumpy jumpy". Her favorite part was the really big trampoline.

Practicing "dog crawl" up to the trampoline

Jumping on the trampoline

Rolling and chasing the ball

Nice landing!

We first started with some floor activities and then we had two different areas, each with stations. An Olivia favorite, the slide, was one of the stations.

My Cuties

Some shots of my cuties from last weekend:

Already time for warm winter hats...we are scared as it is only September!

First Day of School!!!!

All week I have been prepping Olivia about the fact that she would be going to school on Wednesday to Little Caterpillar Academy. They had an open house last week and Olivia had fun in the short time she was there and talked about toys she played with ever since then. I told her that she was going to say, "Bye bye to Mommy" and she was going to stay at school by herself. Wednesday morning came and I went in to get her and I asked her where she was going today. She said, "Little Caterpillars, say bye-bye to Mommy, Mommy go get Daddy's shirts". Ha! So apparently, she figured I was going to go to the cleaners while she stayed at school.

I was thrilled to find this little school. It is brand new and run by three teachers, one being a Speech Pathologist!!! Their website is awesome, hitting all of the ideas that a fellow speech therapist would love. On the first day, we got there and they gave the children plenty of free time to explore and get comfortable. Then we all went on a tour to look at everything at the school, "following the leader" style stopping and exploring at each stop. Then we had a transitional activity that the parents participated in. After that activity, the teachers announced it was time to say bye-bye to all of the Mommies and Daddies. Olivia gave me a big hug and a kiss and said bye-bye. She seemed to get a little anxious right when I was leaving, but no tears or protests!! I left quickly and the teachers said she did great with me leaving! When I went back to pick her up, she saw me and jumped in my arms and started telling me about all she did. She really seemed to love it!

Very excited to check out what was inside her backpack

All of the silly faces of Olivia on her first day of preschool:

At least we got ONE semi-normal smile

Circle time with lots of singing!

Checking out the bubbles

In the gross motor room

While she was at school, I went to the mall to make a return and was able to casually browse and actually try on clothes! I also made a quick trip to the grocery store. I just ran right in and grabbed what I needed--in and out in 10 minutes! Olivia won't sit in a grocery cart anymore (unless it is a car style shopping cart) which makes quick runs to the grocery store a thing of the past!

Olivia will go to this school twice a week for 2 and 1/2 hours and then another little school one day a week for 2 hours. When she was accepted to both schools, we didn't know what to do. I am hesitant for her to go to so much and we will have to see how it goes, but it would be a LONG winter with a busy toddler without lots of activities.

Hook 'Em

So 'cited for Longhorn Football!!!!!!!!!!!

More Dinos!

Last weekend, we headed out to the super cool Jurassic Forest. It was a 30 minute drive North of Edmonton and so worth the drive. Olivia has solidified her love of all things dinosaurs and we knew she would love this. We didn't know that we too would find it to be so interesting. It was really well done. It is out in the middle of know where, right in some farm land. There are two different paths that you walk along, stumbling across dinosaurs as you go, with informative signs at each stop. The dinosaurs are all on motion sensors and when you get to them, they move and roar...very exciting! Only issue, it started raining as soon as we started out on the first path. I did happen to bring Olivia's raincoat. We weren't quite as prepared.

The entrance

Waiting out the rain with some fun kid activities

Dreaming

I think that Olivia has been dreaming and remembering her dreams for a while now. This weekend we got solid proof. She woke up in the middle of her nap SCREAMING. I went upstairs and she was asleep, eyes closed screaming,"NO MAYA!!!!". I said something to her that woke her up and she looked at me crying and said, "I wanna different cereal bar". I picked her up and she kept crying saying she wanted a different cereal bar over and over again. I thought maybe she was hungry because she didn't eat a great lunch. Confused and not sure what to do, I put her back down and promised I would go get her one. When I came back up, she was asleep. Later, when she really woke up from her nap, the first thing she said to me was, "Maya ate the cereal bar, Maya ate the cereal bar!!!". I finally figured out she had had a dream that Maya ate her cereal bar. When Mike got home from running errands, she ran right up to him and said the same thing. It was hilarious! Maybe this is why she was so mad at Maya that day :)

Fun with Ducky!

Olivia loves her new cake decorating set from Ducky!

And who knew Ducky was an artist! :)

Oldies But Goodies!

I had pictures taken of Olivia when she was 9 months old and I FINALLY went and picked them up when I was home in July. I can't get over how blond her hair was!

"Um"

So, Olivia is my "mini-me". She says everything that I say. If she wants to do something she will say something like, "lets go play outside". Often times, before I have a chance to say anything, she will say something I would say like, "Okay, lets do that!". That is the way it goes for language development, but there are things I say that I are NOT good for language development! There are too many examples of that, but the most recent is saying, "um". Here is an example of her saying "um" now. I wish I could give her a better model, but I don't even realize I am saying it!

Swim Lessons!

When we went home in May, Olivia was pretty scared of being in the pool. She really preferred to sit by the pool rather than be in the pool. That all changed with a few trips to Rockport and several hotel stays with pools. When we got back, I poked around and found that the city offered Parent and Tot swim lessons, twice a week for 2 months for only $40! Olivia LOVED it! The big pool is a little chilly, but at the end of each lesson, we got in the heated shallow pool that feels great. Ducky was able to go to our second to last class on Tuesday.

Waiting for our class to begin!

Walking deeper into the chilly pool (I didn't even realize we had on matching suits!)

Practicing jumping with a table

Practicing big kicks by trying to kick the letters off the wall. Miss Kathryn is just behind us. Olivia was in love with "Miss Kapryn". Every time she would come near, Olivia would light up and say, "Watch this Miss Kapryn" and do something either silly like jump up and down or something we were actually working on.

Practicing more kicks, this time from a chair

Hooray for songs in the heated pool!

Our First Visitors to Edmonton!

We just had our very first visitors to Edmonton, with hopes of many more! We took off for the mountains the morning after their late (and very delayed) flight in from Houston. The 4 hour drive to the mountains was not nearly as convenient as the quick 1 hour drive from Calgary. We had a really nice time just relaxing. Mike and my dad got in 2 rounds of golf and I got in a trip to the spa. The pool was fabulous as it was heated and just the right temperature for Miss Priss.

Getting a close look at the beautiful flowers at our hotel, Banff Springs

Pong Pong and Olivia just outside of where we were trying to have dinner. As soon as she saw the outdoor patio, we all had to take turns going out there while she ran around silly!

Doing the Elmo sticker book with Pong Pong at breakfast in Banff (with some help from her new Cookie Monster from Ducky)

Pong Pong on the golf course. The haze hiding the beautiful mountains and our hotel was from forest fires in British Columbia.

My parents were supposed to come to Edmonton for Easter but the trip did not work out. This was Olivia's Easter dress that she didn't get to wear. Ducky wanted to see her in it, so we put it on her to go out to dinner. We went to a pub, so we were dressed very casually and she looked like a flower girl! She got so much attention and loved it all!

Walking around downtown Banff

The next morning, we drove to Lake Louise for brunch at the other Fairmont hotel. It is so fun to see this entire area in all the various seasons.

We stopped for lunch right around nap time, so we let her watch Elmo at the table! Hopefully she won't expect that every time we go eat.

Music

Olivia passionately loves music; she takes after her father on that one. She has these Mother Goose books with an accompanying CD for each book, that she would listen to all day long if she could. She follows along and turns each page at the right time for the next song. She also knows the words to all of them. It is really cute to watch and funny when we are getting ready for bed and she will ask you to sing some random song like, The Grand Old Duke of York.

It has been great re-learning the words to all of the songs I remember from my childhood. "Wheels on the Bus" is her all time favorite song followed closely by ABC's. Poor letter 'h', it gets skipped over every time if you don't remind her :)