Livia and her BFF

Abby is Livia's best friend. They hang out together, talk and both like to chase the laser pointer. Lately Livia has been showing Abby her affection. I kind of felt sorry for Abby for a few minutes but she's much faster than Livia and can get up at any time.

Shocking!

When Livia sees "Good Night Moon" make its way to the sectional at night she knows it's time for "night night". Now she takes off and does laps on the couch. Well, with the heat going almost 24/7 around here now there's a little static build up. Anyone with suggestions on how to get rid of it please email us - we keep shocking each other!

New Development

Livia started going down the stairs backward the week of Thanksgiving. It's pretty funny because we have a little landing and it takes her a bit to get re-situated to go down the last two steps. She does a very good job of feeling the edge of the step with her little feet. I guess it's time for a baby gate at the top of the steps!

First Parade

The first Saturday in December Lawrence has an old-fashioned Christmas parade. Amina and her mommy thought it would be fun to go and guess what - it wasn't! It was cold and Livia does not like to be bundled up. We were there for about 10 minutes and someone was crying at all times. We decided to wait between horse-drawn floats and run across the street to eat lunch instead. Maybe next year.

Silly Dinners

The other night she didn't want to sit in her high chair to drink her milk for dinner. Fine, no problem. She is now able to get down from furniture by herself, safely, so she can escape. She decided her milk would taste better if she crawled around with her cup hanging out of her mouth and shaking her head from side-to-side. Whatever works!

Book time

Livia has a few books that have little cut-outs so a little animal pops through, like ladybugs and rubber duckies. She really likes those books because of the textures and the number of the animals either gets bigger or smaller, depending on which way she turns the pages. Often times we skip from 9 to 3 but that's not a big deal - any time spent with a book is time well spent.

Relaxing before bed

Sometimes after a bath and before a night-night book a girl just wants to relax in her chair for a bit.

Great-Grandpa Brown Would Be Happy

The Brown side of Livia's family really digs Cracker Barrel. Who wouldn't when it has a fun store with all kinds of toys and blueberry pancakes? Bobi took us, Aunt Paige, Uncle Mike, Carson and Reece to breakfast there a few weeks ago and she thought Carson, Reece and Livia's Great-Grandpa Brown would be very excited they were all eating together at Cracker Barrel.

No flash photography

Livia loves things with buttons - remotes, cell phones and digital cameras. I was trying to take some pictures the other day and this is what I got. Evidently she needed her privacy.

Thanksgiving

Livia's second Thanksgiving was much busier than her first. Bobi, Grandma and Grandpa came to have Thanksgiving dinner with us and then Uncle Tyler, Aunt Courtney and her family came for pie. Whew. Daddy cooked a yummy turkey! Now, back when Livia ate food out of a jar she loved the turkey dinner kind but she did not care for her Thanksgiving dinner at all. It's really odd too since she often eats turkey sandwiches for lunch. The one thing she LOVED about Thanksgiving - pumpkin pie. With whipped cream.

Spots

I forgot to update after Livia's 1 year appointment. She is 30.5 inches tall (83%), weighs 21 pounds and 14 ounces (53%) and her baby noggin is in the 83% (not a surprise). The doctor said she's absolutely healthy and also told us the best thing we can do for her is to read to her, which we do several times a day so we're feeling like great parents :)

Unfortunately (and fortunately, depending on how you look at it) she had to get four shots and one was the chicken pox vaccine. She did really well the first 7 - 10 days after the shots because these were delayed-reaction vaccines; one possible side effect is a bit of a rash...well, call the FDA adverse reaction hotline because she looks like she has the chicken pox (you can kind of see them on her tummy in the picture). Luckily it's mostly on her tummy and back but a few cropped up on her face this afternoon. Mercifully they don't seem to bother her at all but we did buy baby benadryl today just in case. Poor little cheetah baby with her spots. I'll have to make the disclaimer at her next KinderMusik class so we don't make other moms worry.

On the bright side: it was really warm today in the house thanks to the sun so Livia got to wear her cute special cupcake birthday shirt.

A Girl and Her Chair

Daddys aren't the only ones who have special chairs.

Fourteen

When Livia's cousins were in town for her birthday weekend we went to the awesome toy store that's in downtown Lawrence. It's an old-school store and it's really big for an independent toy store. They have toys out to play with for kids of all ages - Livia likes to stand at the play tables and play with the magnetic toys (don't tell her but Santa might have them on his list) and makes her motorboat noises. Well, Carson and Reece were told they could pick something out. Reece picked out and held about 15 different toys and finally decided on a few little bouncey balls. Carson picked out Aunt Lindsay's least favorite thing: a huge plastic snake (very similar to the one his dad used to scare Aunt Lindsay in Colorado a long time ago). The snake has been christened "Fourteen". Unfortunately Livia took a shine to Fourteen and I'm so glad he lives in Garden City.

The little frog

Livia has show much more interest in walking lately. She stands up on her own and in case you're around she expects a party when she does it; it's pretty funny because she stands there and waits for you to clap and tell her what a big girl she is. Once she's on her feet she hops - hops back a couple of times then throws herself back on her baby bottom and giggles for about ten minutes. A couple of times she has taken a few steps rather than hop. The first time she did it was at KinderMusik where she had an audience of 10 to clap for her and she just laughed her head off the whole time. Tonight she would stand up, squat down and then do a little frog jump. She was very proud of herself (there is no way this child should ever develop self-esteem issues!). She now wants to walk up the steps holding your hand instead of crawling up so it takes a few minutes to get to the top now but it's a great work-out for Mommy and it totally tires her out.

She's just at such a fun age where everything is hilarious, she dances (usually the Twist) to any and all music and just chatters. Tomorrow she has her one year check-up so I wanted to write down how happy she usually is before she's miserable for three-four days after her shots.

These pictures are from early October. And no, I don't know when she started sticking her tongue out like Michael Jordan when she's playing hard but that's pretty much gone now since she clicks her tongue instead. Everyday it's something new and it's so much fun!