Livia's Birthday Party

Thanks to a lot help from Livie's grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins we pulled off a fun party. In case you can't tell Livia had a cupcake party. We had a blast and it was a great weekend with family and friends. We wish we could do it every weekend!

You can't stop her

You can only hope to contain her. See why I'm not ready for her to walk yet? Look where she goes when she crawls! Yes, it's a cabinet where sippy cups go to die and the dishwasher.

One already?

I can't believe Livia is one today! Sometimes I think she doesn't even look like the same little baby - she's so big now. Today kicks off her five day birthday extravaganza (what, you only celebrate for one day? Weak.) - tomorrow part of family gets here to start the celebration and they filter in all weekend. We're so excited to have all of our immediate family in one place!

Happy Birthday sweet little cupcake!

Livia and Sarah

Sarah is our nanny and a little piece of heaven. I've known her since she was a little girl when I used to nanny for her cousins. Every summer Sarah's grandparents would rent a cabin in the Ozarks and I went with to keep an eye on Sarah's three cousins and her younger brother. It was always kind of a long week for me but always so much fun. I think how they were just little and now the oldest is married and a teacher, the middle three are in college and one is a junior in high school. That made me feel really old.

Sarah is a journalism major at KU and is in a photography class. Sarah had these posted on her blog along with a write-up of how much she loves taking care of Livie. I can't lie, it made me tear up a bit. Livia is lucky to have such a smart, funny and caring nanny. Mommy and Daddy are really lucky too :)

Mommy's Bad

Wow - it's really been a long time - sorry! I haven't even really taken many pictures in the last two months; that new baby smell must be wearing off.

We've been very busy: got in one last summer weekend at the lake over Labor Day, then Livia attended her first Brad Heyka golf tournament, then Mommy did the humane society auction, then Daddy left for two weeks in the UK the same day Mommy was doing her sorority reunion, then went to Uncle Tyler and Courtney's to play with Scout and FINALLY Daddy is back today. Boy did we miss him. After Jackson's fun birthday party Livia took her first trip to the airport to pick up Daddy. She totally lost her little baby mind when she saw him - it was pretty awesome.

What's new? A few weeks ago I thought Livia was ready to take off and walk, she did a lot of standing on her own and took one baby step by herself but now she couldn't be less interested in walking if she tried; she's figured out that for now she can crawl much faster than she can walk. She babbles all of the time - loudly - and throws out "hi", "cat" and something I think is "Abby" but she will not do it on demand so don't even ask her. She loves to read more than anything. It's the first thing we do when we wake up in the morning and after naps, before we go to sleep and whenever it's time to settle down a little bit. She does a few signs (I have no idea if they're the correct signs, at least we know what it means) for more, all done and up but sometimes she says all done when she's really not all done. When Livia goes outside to play in the yard/driveway with her dinosaur walker she waves at every car she sees (whether it's moving or parked on the street) and gets upset when they don't acknowledge her. She's got some other new tricks up her sleeve but Mommy is too tired to remember.

Since her first birthday is right around the corner she's had two recent photo shoots with another one next weekend. These pictures are from Rusty. He's very creative and has a different point of view than our other two photographers which is cool for us. Here are a couple. I'll try to post more pictures this week.