Woes of a Doodle

As I sit here coughing, stricken with Bronchitis, I'm thinking to myself, "Well, might as well recap Christmas." So, here I go:
Little Olive woke up with a cold. This put somewhat of a damper on her present opening skills. I think I imagined her ripping the wrapping paper off of the boxes, stuffing the paper into her mouth with gusto, and laughing with glee. None of this happened. She did slowly rip at some of the wrapping paper, but mostly Brian opened her presents for her. Fast forward to dinner (because it was delicious beyond all deliciousness), and you see Olive enjoying her first bits of prime rib and pop overs. The Doodle is never far from her high chair. We introduced Olive to many a Christmas movie (as is tradition), and enjoyed time with her Nana. Now, as I slowly recover from aforementioned Bronchitis, we prepare for Olive's first New Years Eve/Day. Although, I'm learning it's not about the "first" anymore. It's more about every special moment - first or not.

Olive Week 45
Olive Week 46

{cough} {cough} {cough}

. . . it's Olive.

Ah, the Mu's first "real" word. She's been saying dada and mama like there's no tomorrow (dada more than mama, but who's counting...), and now she's moved on to the every day common words category. I mean, who doesn't say, "Uh Oh" at least once a day? Try it.

Anyhoo, we thought it was really cute at first. Well, we still think it's cute, but she sure does say it a lot.

When she first wakes up = Uh Oh!

All morning = Uh Oh, Uh Oh, Uh Oh, Uh Oh

All afternoon = Uh Oh

All evening = Uh Ohhhhhhhhh

And occasionally in the middle of the night. She'll wake up, say, "Uh Oh", and go back to sleep.

What's really cool (ahhh, to watch them learn) is she seems to have linked the "Uh Oh" phrase with two correct scenarios:

• when something falls
• when we catch her doing something she shouldn't be doing (which is quite often)

The other day she had escaped the baby barricade and was headed around the tree when I called her name, "Oliiiiive, what are you doing?" I stood up and stepped forward so I could see her, and as I made eye contact with her she said, "Uh Oh!" and started to crawl away faster than I've ever seen her crawl before. Kind of like, "the jig is up!"

We're working on "Hi", but until then....

UH OH!

This post starts off with a trip to Chipotle earlier this week. In our move to Buffalo three or so years ago we left behind our beloved burritos with cilantro rice. Well, they finally opened one up close to our house, and even though the line was incredibly long we decided to wait. The Mu probably needed a diaper change and she wasn't in the waiting mood herself, but she was quite patient with us... for at least five minutes. In the middle of Brian trying to entertain the Mu, a college-aged girl in front of us turns around and says, "Ohhhhhh, I want one!" As if she were a cute bunny rabbit or even a puppy.

I want one.

In which my response was, "Are you crazy?!" In a flash, all of the sleepless nights, pregnancy pains, labor, crying, diaper changes, snot, spit up... you catch my drift...went through my head.

"Enjoy your sleep." I said to the college-aged girl.

Why did I say this? Why didn't I just say, "Thank you"?

I don't know. It happened quite fast. I was thinking about this in the middle of the night as Mu was kicking me in the side. She needed more room, of course. We kind of half co-sleep with her. The first part of the night she's in her crib, until she cries and comes into our room for a diaper change and to nurse. She falls asleep, I fall asleep, Brian is already snoring. An hour or so passes, and even though we may wake up to check if she's OK or shift positions - nobody wants to risk waking the Mu up by actually carrying her back to her crib.

So, she was kicking me (because only half my body was hanging off the bed) and I looked down at the Doodle. You see, he has his very own doggie bed and pillow. He looked quite comfortable all spread out.

I looked down at the Doodle who had more room than I and I thought to myself, "that girl is crazy." And the whole Chipotle scenario flashed before my eyes. Then, all of a sudden I was filled with this incredible love for this little, kicking creature that was snoring (louder than her daddy) right by my head. I actually couldn't wait until morning so I could wake up with her and sing her the "good morning" song. I chuckled to myself as I remembered all of the funny things she did that day, and I wondered with a smile what she would do next to send us into uncontrollable laughter.

We laugh a lot now.

So, I guess I'm crazy because I was in the same place as that college-aged girl when I wanted Olive before she was even conceived.

And now I'm crazy in love with this baby girl more than I've ever loved anybody. So, maybe I won't be so surprised the next time someone says they, "want one." How could they not?

We've been asking ourselves this question since the day the Mu joined us. Some days they are green, some days blue and some days kinda brown. Christina thinks her eye color is linked to her mood. My opinion is that they seem to reflect the environment. Today we are in agreement, they are pink. Hello "Lil' Miss Pink Eye".

Olive has a new face. I believe the spirit of Popeye is reaching out to us through our appropriately named daughter. To the right you see Olive's general look of disgust when something doesn't go her way - all too often lately, it seems.

I won't bore you with an apology or even a real explanation. It's been 10 days since we posted, we've been busy, the Mu keeps us that way with the crawling and the exploring and it seems with walking right around the corner, it isn't going to get much better.