Thanksgiving in Maryland, First Haircut

We had a lovely visit to MD for Thanksgiving!  It was a nice and relaxing trip with no stress and chill time hanging out and letting Olivia explore the coffee table drawer and all the interesting things hidden inside!

Olivia was so excited to visit Mum-Mums and Pop-Pops that she had trouble falling asleep on the red-eye flight out and made friends with everyone as the boarded the plane - "Hi!... Hi!"  over and over with her cute little waving.  When the plane accelerated, Olivia, who was sitting on my lap facing me, had a huge smile on her face and started yelling out, loving the rollercoaster!  What a blast!  I couldn't keep from laughing myself. :)

We arrived in MD Wed morning and spent much of the day recovering from the overnight flight.  Kevin slept upstairs, I napped on the couch.  We watched a few of the 8mm videos my parents had converted to digital  - very fun!

Thursday was Thanksgiving and Olivia managed to sleep in until around 10 am which Kevin and I appreciated.  Olivia discovered the stairs on Thursday and after her practice run of going up and down three, the next several times she went all the way up... and then all the way down!  What a fun game at Mum-Mum's and Pop-Pop's!  We were very careful to keep the door to the basement closed so there were no rolling-down-the-stairs accidents.  Mostly, Olivia enjoyed wandering around and checking everything out.  She didn't eat much while we were in MD, but she did enjoy saying "more!" and feeding Eloise banana from her high chair.

Thanksgiving was a lovely event - the turkey was perfect, everyone was relaxed.  Friskies were flowing.  We made our jalapeno poppers (with jalapenos imported from the Janeiro's garden in California) and they were a hit!  You never knew if your jalapeno was a true POPPER or not until you bit into it - most of them were pretty spicy!  Let's see, who was there - Mom, Dad, Barbara, Bart, Margaret & Price, Bradley, Aunt Sarah, Caroline & Freddie Moore, Peter & Evie, Kathryn, & Eric & Baby Walter, Elizabeth & Paul, and us.  I ate too much.  Olivia refused to take a bath (screaming bloody murder) and wore the cutest little jumper Mum-Mums made for Sarah as a baby.  How cute!  We brought it home for Olivia to wear Christmas Eve. :)

Olivia had fun both Thursday and Friday nights going down for sleepy time at the regular time, and then waking up around midnight for an hour or so.  We tried having her fall asleep in the big bed with us, but she was too rolly-polly, so back to the pack-n-play she went!

Either Thursday or Friday, I declared that I wanted to find a rocking chair like the one my parents had for us growing up (fine, sturdy piece of furniture) for Olivia.  I was sitting in the chair at the time, and Olivia had been playing with it - in and out, in and out, not happy when Mom was sitting in the chair.  So on Friday while Kevin watched Olivia and put her down for her nap, my parents and I went out to BeCraft, the same store on Rockville Pike, near Gaithersburg High School, where Mom & Dad had bought the chair for Sarah, and where Grandma and Grandpa Litwin had bought several pieces of furniture, and proceeded to buy two rocking chairs - one for Olivia, one for Walter.  They are manufactured somewhere in Virginia, so this is truly and East Coast import to Cali!  How fun!

The antique store was very cool - with a fire in the fireplace and four elderly folks around waiting, and hoping, for business.  I ended up purchasing a muddler for Kevin, a butter dish, and a small bud vase as well... then a somewhat expensive necklace for me!  Business has been hot and cold, the owner said, and I'm afraid that store will be out of business soon.  There wasn't any new blood to take it over and upgrade.  Apparently there used to be 3 cousins making the chairs we bought, but 2 went out of business, partly because the unions got all up in their business.  So sad.  Stupid unions, they make a mess of things and I'm not really sure what they help these days.

Dad is still trying to figure out how to ship the little rocking chairs out here.  Sounds like the good ol' USPS may be the best bet!

Pop-Pops had fun leading Olivia around and trying to get her to walk.  He got her down to one hand being held, and you can tell Olivia is really getting ready to take the leap!

Friday night we all piled into the car and saw the Holiday Lights in Seneca Creek State Park.   We had Olivia out and riding on Pop-Pop's lap in the front seat as we saw the lights at 2 mph and she was totally into it!  Mesmerized and laughing at everything for the first half.  Then she was so overwhelmed, Olivia got tired and started fussing so we headed home.  Perfect length trip for our little girl.  After getting her to sleep, we hung around enjoying a fire in the fireplace, a couple of nightcaps and chatting.

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Saturday was uneventful.  We mostly hung around watching Olivia, and trying to get her to walk on her own.  After Olivia's short nap, we packed up the car and all headed to Great Falls for a little walk before the Janeiro's were off to Dulles for our evening flight home.  The Falls were impressive as always and we managed to take a few cute family pics.  We lucked out on the flight home and had a row to ourselves.  Olivia was a little tricky to get to sleep - I ended up laying down with my head on Kevin's knee and Olivia on top of me - then she finally passed out.  We tried setting her down on the seat between us a few times and after about 10 minutes she would wake up.  At one point, Olivia had saturated her diaper so much that she ended up peeing on Kevin.  It was pretty funny.  Fortunately, I had extra clothes in her diaper bag... but Kevin was out of luck!

Today, I gave Olivia her first haircut - to tame the mullet!  As if it was even possible, but she's even cuter now!  What a sweetie pie!  Olivia followed me all around the house as I was trying to unpack and straighten up a bit.  I'm pretty tired - and took a 3 hour nap the afternoon.  I took Olivia to the doc this morning since she had a pretty bad cough on the plane, but she's recovering.  We braved the rain and had a quick breakfast at Panera and picked up the safety scissors for her haircut at RiteAid.

I still haven't heard back about that management position I applied to the other week, so hopefully I'll hear tomorrow so I can stop thinking about it.  Oh how I'd love to just take tomorrow off and do some Christmas shopping and pull the house together a little more - just have some "me" time.  I'm sure looking forward to Christmas break!  This work thing is getting to me.

Ok, time for sleepy sleeps.  Kevin is already snoring next to me

Olivia doesn't want to leave MD