May 20-27

Olivia now pulls herself up to stand and walks along the furniture in our house.  Nothing under three feet is safe, except things that are at least a foot back from the edge, because her short little arms can't reach that far.  Also, things she drops on the floor have a temporary reprieve, because she still hasn't mastered sitting back down.  While at church, I discovered that she can sit back down if her hands are at waist level (she was playing near a wide step), so it would appear that the problem is that she doesn't know how far away the ground is when her hands are at shoulder level.  Usually at our house she stands and whimpers at me until I rescue her from her tremendous height.

Near the end of the week, Olivia also got pretty good at standing while holding on with only one hand.  She's not brave enough to let go with both hands yet.  I wouldn't be, either, if I were as wobbly on my feet as she still is.  :)

In addition to the frequent head shaking and periodic head nodding, Olivia has added a more noncommittal shrug to her repertoire.  She also likes to tip her head to one side in a quizzical way that quickly turns playful when she realizes that her audience mimics her.

Still no concept of size from Olivia; she sees a space and obviously should be able to fit through it.  Luckily for her, we don't have a lot of small spaces for her to try to bull her way through.

I don't know when sneakiness is supposed to fully develop, but we're seeing the beginnings of it.  There are a few things Olivia knows she's not supposed to be playing with -- my basket full of project pieces ("I just want to empty them onto the floor!"), the Xbox ("But the light is so pretty!").  Sometimes instead of directly approaching the forbidden objects, she uses her toys as props.  She'll drop toys into the basket so that she has an excuse to go into it to get them out.  Is it her fault that she happens to find other, better things in there at the same time?  She'll also grab any random nearby toy to toss ahead of her if she sees me watching her progress towards the Xbox.  She'll throw the toy and chase it, a game that she plays often, but then suddenly lose interest once she gets close the the Xbox.  "But the light, mom!"

Tuesday was Olivia's checkup, and she is now 29.5 inches tall and 20 lbs, 4 oz.

On Friday, Olivia and I drove to Columbus to pick up Uncle Brad for the wedding that we went to on Saturday.  While in Columbus, we watched a family of geese stop traffic while they crossed the street.  I was ridiculously excited (and also reminded of the book Make Way for Ducklings), and Brad was reasonably excited.  Olivia couldn't see from her backseat, but one day she'll get to look at the picture I took and be excited, too.

Saturday was Bryan's best friend's wedding, so we were there all day.  Olivia took a nap in Grandpa's arms.  Sunday we went to a baptism at the same church (although completely unrelated to the previous day's participants).




More pictures:

Standing up:

Taking a nap:

For anyone who only wants pictures of Olivia and/or is squeamish about creepy crawlies, these last pictures are a bug, not Olivia.

We saw this weird bug, so I took pictures.  Anyone know what it is?  It only had 6 legs, it had a pointy red abdomen, and it looked like it had something resembling fangs.  Or really droopy whiskers: