Olivia in the 9’s

Olivia is well into her ninth month of life. I haven’t done post about her in a while. Where or where is the time?

I think if I had to pick one word to describe her right now it would be INDEPENDENT. She is all about the independence. A month or so ago she was wanting me all the time, but now that she’s fully crawling and pulling up and putting down, me holding her, or anyone for that matter, gets old fairly quickly. This kid is happy toodling around the house on her own exploring and seeing what she can get into. And boy, can she get into… Some examples you ask?

• We now have a universally understood rule (as in me, Chris, Matt and visitors must abide by it) that the toilet seat MUST be down. Lid too. Why? Because someone loves water and the toilet was discovered about a week and a half ago. Thankfully I had just flushed and it was as clean as it was ever going to get. 
• Speaking of the bathroom… Our bathroom door knob doesn’t actually work, again (Dad, we’re saving it for you). Dad fixed it last fall and it worked great, but the pins in it slipped again and now the door just pushes closed and pulls open, which is fine when you have adults that understand that a closed door means the bathroom is occupied. Olivia has discovered that she can push the door open when it’s occupied. On more than one occasion I’ve heard Chris yelling, “Baby, NO! Baby, leave me alone! Leslie, HELP!!! The baby is harassing me!” all while Olivia is sitting on the other side pushing with all her might and crying because she can’t understand why Daddy won’t let her in. And me? Of course I’m sitting in the other room laughing so hard I’m crying. But shhh, don’t tell. Tee hee. 
• She’s figured out how to get the funnel off the water bottle as the water is running down from our filter. And then she plays in it. So much for not cross contaminating our water.
• Olivia learned how to go up the stairs to our bed room. Not just two or three – all 13 of them. By herself. We did not encourage this or provide any instruction. Now she starts up and goes all the way. Yes it freaks me out, but we watch her. The goal at the end is of course getting to crawl around in Mommy and Daddy’s room which is SUPER fun. So many things to explore up there. When she wants down she peeks down from the loft and whines, which I’m thankful for because she has a less than orthodox way of going down stairs.
• Going down stairs, less than orthodox? How can that be? Trust me, I tried. Chris tried. When she would get to the step in the house (there’s one in the middle that separates levels) she would whine and cry for help. We would teach her to turn around and go backwards. Well, I guess Miss Independent didn’t like that because she’s figured out how to go down forwards. She puts one hand down, then the other, then crawls forward enough to drop a foot, then the other and away she goes. It totally freaked me out at first, but now she has it down and it’s just funny to watch. Sorry, no pictures. 
• Every single thing that’s of value is now up high because she loves playing on end tables etc and chewing things. Nuf said. 
• The thing that makes us say, “Olivai, NO!” the most? Chewing on the mop. See, we don’t have a storage room or closet in the house. Not one. So things like brooms and mops and any other item we have in the house is just stashed somewhere. The mop bucket always sits by the back door. For some reason it’s fascinating. From the day she started crawling Olivia has been into it. Now she just crawls over and starts chewing on it. Bleh. Good thing kids have good immune systems. 
• Our dish cupboard, which is in the bottom of a wood buffet type piece of furniture, now has rubber bands around the handles  so the doors only open so far, then bounce back. More than once I found a litte person with the door open. The last time I found her with the door open, standing up in front of it with a plate in hand that was SO close to being dropped. Oiye!

Needless to say, Liv is keeping us on our toes. But, it’s all good. She’s got so much personality that most of the time it’s entertaining. More than anything we’re just amazed with how fast she’s growing. When we brought her home she wasn’t even on the standard growth chart. She was only 5 lb 4 oz. Now, she’s around the 70th percentile. Yesterday I went through her drawers again (i just did this a month ago) and moved more stuff up that I honestly didn’t think she would be wearing until Christmas. She eats like a horse, and is totally done with mushy food. She’s all about the finger foods now. Bananas and avocados are her favorites and I’m not kidding when I say she can eat half a Haitian (about the size of a soft ball) avocado and a banana in one sitting. No wonder she’s growing…

There, I hope the fan club has gotten it’s fix. I’m sure you’re only reading this thing because of her. ;o)