Visit to Columbus and fun with Leslee and Quinn

We headed up to Columbus about 2 weeks ago for a surprise 30th birthday party for my friend Kelly's husband, Luke. It was great to see, Kelly, Luke, and Ella, and Olivia loved interacting with all the other kids there. Here are some pictures from our visit.

So much excitement between all the new people and toys

Olivia discovered lots of fun new toys at their house

All the big kids climbed up the slide, so Olivia
figured she could do it too! :)

Attempted to get a picture of the two of them both
looking at the camera.  Obviously, I failed. :)

Kelly and I

Olivia and I have had lots of fun little adventures with Leslee and Quinn this summer. Here are some pictures from our two most recent adventures - Carillon Park and Paw Paw Camp at Hills and Dales.

The Carillon

Leslee and Quinn checking out the Budweiser horses who were there for the German Fest.
Olivia prefers to keep her distance from large farm animals. :)

Not good of Olivia, but cute of Quinn. He was saying "cheese".

Leslee must have been saying or doing something interesting.

Getting ready to have a picnic lunch

"Hey, what are you doing down there?"

This is the only picture I have of them from our trip to Paw Paw Camp. I looove it! So cute! It looks like they're having a conversation!

The Latest Adventures of the Kawai Family

Another month has gone by since I last posted anything on the blog. I'll attribute it to a busy summer and not a whole lot of time to myself to accomplish this kind of thing. There's so much to catch up on...our trip to North Carolina, a visit with Kelly and Luke in Columbus, and a trip to Indianapolis to meet up with Amie and Brady at the zoo. Of course, there are some fun visits with Leslee and Quinn mixed in there, as well as Olivia doing lots of learning and growing too! So, let's start with the beach!

We broke up the drive down by stopping halfway in Wytheville, VA. Overall, Olivia did pretty well in the car. Here's a picture of her in the car, hugging her baby doll. :)

 And, here's Olivia flopping down on the hotel bed once we arrived in Wytheville.

When we finally got to our condo, we moved all our stuff in and then headed down to the beach for a quick visit. Here are pictures of Olivia's first time seeing the ocean.

We soon discovered that Olivia did not like the feeling of the sand on her feet or legs. After a few days, however, she got over it. Phew!  Here are some pictures of her enjoying the beach (and sand).  We had this perfect little "river" that developed every afternoon when the tide went out. It was shallow and had no waves - perfect for a baby! :)

She also enjoyed visiting with her Pop Pop, swimming in the pool at the condo and at Pop Pop's house, visiting with her cousins, Alex, Jack, and Charlie, and celebrating Pop Pop's birthday.

Chico likes to get in the pool too!
Olivia got a kick out of it! :)

Olivia with Alex

Olivia with Jack and Charlie

delicious cupcakes for Pop Pop's birthday

We ate at our favorite restaurant, Sear's Landing, checked out the intracoastal waterway, and visited the sea turtle hospital.

on the back porch of Sear's Landing,
overlooking the Intracoastal

Waiting in line at the sea turtle hospital.
It was so humid that my camera steamed up!

We can't forget to mention that Sarah was there and Olivia loved playing with her aunt.

Olivia really showed how much she loved her Grandpa on this trip. Here are some pics of her and her best bud.

Our last dinner with Pop Pop and Flo before we had to go home.

Olivia and Flo :)

I'll end this post with a few more of my favorite pictures from the trip. I can't wait to go back!

Miss Independent

Eating a Mum Mum

As Olivia is going on 10 months, she is becoming more and more independent by the day. About two weeks ago, she decided she would no longer let us feed her pureed baby food. She would scream, cry, and generally make our meal time a very stressful experience. I decided to start letting her eat all finger foods and she is now a very messy, but happy camper. She really does a pretty good job of picking up her food and putting it in her mouth, although judging by the picture below, it doesn't look like it. :)

Speaking of eating, she has been eating like a horse lately. I thought maybe she was going through a growth spurt and that being a bottomless pit would only last a few days, but this new found shoving-food-in-her-face business shows no signs of slowing down. She's so busy crawling around (on all fours), pulling herself up on everything and now, climbing stairs, that she must be burning a lot of calories and working up an appetite.

She seems to love fruit, especially nectarines. She's been eating bananas, cantaloupe, peaches, sweet potatoes, cheese, turkey and ham lunchmeat, puffs, mum mums (see picture at the top), and some homemade turkey meatballs packed with all those veggie purees that I have stored in the freezer. So far, she's not a picky eater for which I am grateful.

In other news, Olivia is a genius! ;) She "read" the word yum-yum in one of her little lift-the-flap books. On this page it says, "This little baby is hungry." When you lift the flap, it shows the little girl eating and the words say "yum-yum." When I turned to the page and lifted the flap,she said yum-yum all on her own. I was so surprised and excited. I ran to the office to tell Yusaku and when we got to that page, she performed her little trick again. So, it wasn't just a fluke! She did it again the next day for my mom!  Granted, she doesn't do it every time, but that's okay. I still know she's a smartypants!

Great Minds Think Alike

As I mentioned in the last post, we had decided not to get each other any gifts for our anniversary. We decided instead that we would just give each other cards and go out for a nice dinner.  Well, as it turns out, we both thought we'd try to be creative and a little sneaky and buy each other a little something. This little something? A small version of our wedding cake...same flavor, from the same place our wedding cake was from.

The funniest part was when we discovered that, without knowing it, we had both gotten each other the same thing. I had ordered my cake for him (an 8 in. single white cake with lemon cream filling and buttercream frosting and the words "Happy 5th Anniversary" with 6-24-06 written below it) earlier in the week over the phone. Then, Thursday night he finished up work a little early and told me that he and Olivia were going to run a little errand. Since he wouldn't tell me where he was going, I was guessing that maybe he was getting me a little something.

When he came home and we were talking over dinner, I asked him if he had anything (read: present) he needed to bring in from the car. He said no. I was surprised and asked why not. He told me he had ordered something. This set off my suspicions that just maybe he had had the same idea as me. After a lot more dancing around the subject and asking each other some questions, we finally discovered what we had done and swapped details about what kinds of cakes we had gotten. The one he ordered for me was just very slightly different than the one I had ordered for him - a 6 in. single white cake with lemon cream filling and buttercream frosting with the words "Happy Anniversary" and some pink flowers on top.

Since we had figured out the surprise before we were actually supposed to pick up the cakes, Yusaku asked if I thought we should cancel one of them (because, come on, who really needs two cakes?), but I said no, it made for a funny story and good memory and we could always share some of the extra.  So, here are pictures of the two cakes.  I'll definitely never forget this anniversary! :)

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! :)