I just put Olive down for the night. I've gotten into a bad habit of putting her down with a bottle. I started doing it because I noticed how much easier she went down with one. And things have been so insane lately - we just moved, getting ready for Christmas, traveling a bit - so I haven't wanted to try and right it yet. We will though. I'm reading a fantastic book right now. It's called Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. It's very enlightening, and I'm only into the first 2 chapters. Chris seems to be Olive's favorite thing lately. She gets very excited when he comes home from work. And tonight he's in Henderson so I think she can sense his absence. She pointed to a picture of him and cuddled his pillow. Cute. A little while ago she was rummaging through my Sunday bag when she got to the Holy Temple pamphlet she looked at the picture of the Salt Lake temple on the front, and then flipped it over and looked at the Hawaii temple on the back. She did that over and over and over. And then she pointed to the Salt Lake temple and started talking her little gibberish that she often does. I loved watching that whole process. We took her to see Santa on Saturday. She cried. It was funny and I'm glad we got it immortalized with a picture. She's been fun to watch with all the Christmas excitement going on. Seeing her look at lights and decorations and dancing to music. She loves music! I definitely think she has an exceptional affinity for it. Tonight she discovered how fun The Office theme song is. It was on TV a few times in a row, and each time the song played she stopped what she was doing to dance and enjoy it. Her latest trick is putting her tiny fingers together when we sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider. I think that's pretty remarkable. She's taking more steps but still not walking consistently. She's still a great eater. In fact she's pretty demanding that we share any and all food with her. She's showing a bit more attitude and feistiness lately, but still such a delight to everyone around. Especially us.

Olive is clapping her hands, waving, and even giving 5 sometimes. She has taken a few steps here and there, but still hangs on to things in order to get around. She still loves music, always lights up and starts dancing as soon as she hears it. She continues to be very vocal, it often sounds like she's saying lots of words even though it's just nonsense. We took her to the pet store the other day and she flinched and stiffened up when we got her near any animals. She's a great eater. She loves to slurp spaghetti noodles. She continues to be such a delight everywhere we go. People seriously can't get enough of her. And she's such a little ham. We love her so good.

I noticed that Olive's fourth tooth is poking through. So, now she has 2 on the bottom in the front, one middle left front tooth, and then an eye tooth on the top right. It's kinda funny looking.

She had her first diaper rash last week. The doctor said teething is somehow related to having more acidy poops so that's probably why. She was pretty sad about it but not for very long. We were really proactive about keeping her in clean diapers and putting on plenty of cream. And it went away pretty fast.

Olive continues to be very vocal and expressive. As Chris says, she seems really inquisitive about what we're doing. And although she doesn't have words, we do communicate a lot with each other.

She kinda took a couple steps the other night. Emphasis on kinda because it wasn't totally the real thing. But I believe she's so close. It'll happen any time. I don't know if I'm in a terrible hurry for that. I love my girl so much!

It's been a while since I've updated Olive's journal, and my mental list is overflowing. Let's see, for starters Halloween was fun. I made her an olive costume. For those who didn't know her name we had to do a little explaining, but she looked adorable. We took her to the trunk-or-treat at church, and after about an hour of that she was pooped, so we came home. She did get to enjoy a little Milky Way and a Tootsie Pop before the events were over though. We put her on the swings for the first time a few weeks ago. And I've done it with her twice since then, and she just loves it. She laughs and smiles the entire time. It's wonderful. I started taking her to Sunshine Soup at the library. It's this little exercise/learning class, and it's really cute. The only thing is that it's right during her morning naptime, so she isn't exactly at her best. But she really loves anything social, so she has a good time. I've also been taking her to the nursery at the gym, and to play group at church. Seriously, she's such a little social butterfly. Today at the post office she had everyone in line laughing at her. She does a lot of fake laughing and scrunching her nose, and gets tons of attention through that. Chris says she goes out of her way to do that, and it's totally true. She's just beginning to make kissing and waving gestures, but I'm not entirely sure she knows what she's doing yet so I don't know if it counts. She's always been so dexterous. Sometimes she just gets lost in watching her hands twirl and move. Oh, and when she gets frustrated she makes really stiff karate hands and grunts. I'm not a huge fan of that one, but I gotta admit it's cute. She immediately starts dancing when there's music, or even just when we hum or sing. She bops up and down, and she sways side to side and she turns her head. It's adorable. She's into everything -- crawling all over, or scaling the walls to get from one place to another -- and she pulls stuff out like crazy. She loves to pull the laundry out of the baskets or dishes out of the cupboards. And she loves to boing the doorstops. Lately I've been facing her high chair out the window, and she watches the birds and grunts at them. She'll eat anything we give her, which I'm glad about. Graham crackers are her favorite though. She's doing a lot of talking -- not making any words yet but I think she'd really love to. She does say mama a lot, but I don't know if she relates the word to me yet, so again I don't know if it counts. A few weeks ago she started playing peek-a-boo with Chris. She stood behind the coffee table, bent down so her face was hidden, and then popped up and laughed. She did that over and over. And now she does it all the time. I have no idea how it occurred to her to do that, but I love it. She stands for several seconds without holding on to anything, but then realizes it and lets herself down. I'm not in a huge hurry for her to walk anyway. She's already into tons of stuff as it is! It's so neat to watch my girl grow and learn and progress. In some ways she just isn't my tiny baby anymore. She finished nursing about a month ago; that's bittersweet. I'm so proud of her. She really is a light to people, just leaves a trail of delight everywhere we go. I hope she continues to have that kind of influence on others. I love her so much!

Olive is 9 months old. I guess this means she's been alive outside of me as long as she was inside of me. She's 27.5 inches long and 18.11 lbs. Average in size, but the doctor said she's advanced socially and with her motor skills. She got 2 shots, one of which was the H1N1 vaccine. As usual, she handled everything really well and earned herself a chocolate shake. She has been pretty fussy since the appointment though, and this picture is the best one I could get with her growth sticker. In other news, she's going to have a little sister...

9 months

Olive's personality is coming out more and more these days. So far it seems like she's funny and stubborn. See what I mean?

She's been doing this a lot lately. I marvel at how she got the idea to do it in the first place, and at how she remembers to do it over again each day.

When she doesn't like something, she makes these stiff little karate hands and she grunts. I'm scared of this possibly being an indication of how she'll react to being told no throughout her life. Yikes!