Milestones

Here we are 5 years ago...such a beautiful day! :)

In the past few days, we celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and Olivia turned 9 months old! :) Our anniversary was Friday and we had tickets to see the Lion King at the Schuster Center. It was amazing!!! Yusaku had seen it once before in New York when he was younger, but I never had and wasn't sure what to expect. I had heard good things about it, but it was even better than I expected.  The costumes and scenery were so beautiful and the way the performers embodied the movements of all the different animals was so impressive! I would love to take Olivia to see it some day!

Here we are on our anniversary before heading out to the Lion King

On Saturday we had beautiful weather and, after Yusaku worked on mulching the yard in the morning, we packed up our bikes and some sandwiches and headed over to the bike path. My parents joined us and we rode our bikes about 3.5 miles from where we started to a little park for a picnic. We had decided not to get each other any gifts for our anniversary, but I did think it would be nice for us to at least give each other cards and go out to dinner to celebrate (as it turns out, we both got each other a little something...see next post). So, Saturday night, my parents watched Olivia for us while we went out to eat at Brio. It provided us a chance to have an uninterrupted conversation with one another over a delicious meal that someone besides myself cooked and served. ;)

Yusaku and Olivia playing during our picnic pitstop

Olivia was happy as a clam hanging out with
Grandma and Grandpa while we were at dinner

Olivia turned 9 months old on Sunday and she had her checkup today. She is 18 lbs 5 oz and 28 in. long. That means she's 10 lbs 5 oz heavier and 8 in longer than when she was born. It's interesting though, that between her 2 month and 4 month and 4 month and 6 month appointments she gained about 3.5 pounds each time, but since her 6 month appointment, she only gained a little over a pound. She's just so active lately - crawling, pulling herself up to standing, etc. - that I guess she must just be burning a lot more calories. She's in the 45th% for weight and 75th% for height, so she's doing just fine! :)

Here are some of the things she's doing these days:

• Mostly still army crawling because that's her fastest means of transportation, but she can and does crawl on all fours sometimes
• Pulling herself up to standing on any and everything, including pieces of furniture and people
• "Waving" - she mostly sticks her right arm in the air and gives an enthusiastic "Hi" (more like "Haaaa); sometimes she makes a true waving motion with her hand; sometimes she does a double-armed wave
• Eating finger foods/larger pieces of food despite my anxiety about her choking. She started with puffs (little star-shaped rice cereal that dissolves easily) and just today, I gave her some little cheese crumbles and some tiny star-shaped pasta. I'm making progress! :)
• Is starting to enjoy touch-and-feel books, but prefers licking the different textures to touching and feeling them
• Has no fear and despite the fact, that I'm almost constantly hovering over her, knocks her head on things and tries to put everything in her mouth on a daily basis

I'm sure there's more, but by this point in the evening, I'm too tired to think of anything else. I'll leave you with this cute picture of our sweet girl trying to "eat" her daddy's eyebrows! :)