<This should have been published on 12/14>
It's been fun and exciting around the Janeiro house since Thanksgiving.
Olivia has officially taken her first steps, as approved by Kevin. We were hanging out in the family room, I had Olivia on her playmat and set her on her feet, let go, and she took ~3 steps to me! Kevin approved. Very exciting! I think that was last Tuesday. She stands up occasionally straight from the floor, and stands on the couch often. Then she'll go and grab the phone, or slide off the couch to go after a toy.
Olivia has taken to babbling sentences to us, and to herself. Although, she does not seem to have picked up many new words. She has learned "duck" and is very excited whenever she sees one.
The West Coast has seen a couple good rain storms, including a particularly intense one last week. I was ostensibly working from home on Thursday during the worst of it and had the local news on to watch the flooding in various areas - crazy! Trees down, some power outages in San Francisco, and they even closed school in a number of areas to basically keep people off the road. (Traffic was light, but several accidents) Good news for our drought-stricken state. It still didn't bring the snow pack to normal, but it's better than nothing. There were large pockets of standing water on Paseo Padre as I drove home from dropping Olivia at day care in the morning. We're supposed to get a bit more rain over the next few days as well.
Olivia now tries to put the kong balls in Trixies mouth - she holds them out to Trixie, but the dog is too scared / confused to take it. Olivia's also slowly learning to throw the ball for Trixie to chase. At first, when Trixie would grab the ball and run off, Olivia would start screeching and look at me while pointing at Trixie, clearly wanting the ball back. But lately, she'll throw the ball, Trixie will get it, and Olivia will just watch her.
The shape-sorter drives Olivia crazy. She'll pick up a shape, try it in the first hole, be ticked when it doesn't go in the first time, and then FLINGS the shape across the room. I mean FLINGS IT! Look out! Today she was so upset, she picked up the whole box and threw it! I need to do some research on how to decrease / redirect that behavior.
We finally went to the pediatric dermatologist (the morning of the "storm of the era") and discussed the lesions - this doctor also thinks it was flea bites. But, if we see them again, we can now bring Olivia straight in to the dermatologist - good deal!
The 49ers are just stinking it up this year. Sadness.
I just accepted a promotion to a Level 5 manager position which will start in the new year. More work for less stress and no work travel - thank goodness! I'm ready for a change. While the actual tasks of my group will lead some to believe it's beneath me, I will be integrating two stovepiped teams, have more exposure to internal LM, and formally managing a team of people (I don't know how many yet) so it's a growth position nevertheless. Besides, I won't stay in it for long, just enough to integrate the teams and set everyone moving forward together to the same beat. Who knows, in that time maybe a new program will magically appear in Sunnyvale... maybe. Scary times around our work. Hopefully this position will also give me some time to learn new, marketable skills.
This past Friday I went to the work Holiday Party stag - we didn't have a babysitter, and Kevin's not a big fan of those parties anyway. It was a pretty good time - mostly because I was excited to fit into a dress that was tailored pre-pregnancy. I had several folks come up to say hello, and ran into my new Director, who is clearly very happy to have me joining his team. All good things.
Yesterday, we picked out a Christmas Tree at Home Depot, Olivia practiced walking down the aisles of HD - her own personal heaven. (A huge space filled with bins of STUFF to be touched and all pulled out and thrown on the floor!)
Olivia likes to point to herself and say "Ma-ma". She's really in to playing peek-a-boo where she hides her eyes with her hands... if you say "Where's Olivia?" to get her to point to herself, she starts playing Peek-a-boo; too funny! She still loves playing with the light switch when we try to change her. She's taken to putting the strap of the diaper bag over her shoulder, then turning to me, waves and says "Bye-bye!" Also funny. Olivia loves checking out my shoes and Kevin's shoes, and is always interested in my yellow list pad. I ended up giving her an extra one and she was so tickled! Olivia also still likes to help me type on the laptop (makes it impossible to electronically shop for Christmas gifts when she's awake). She's just so close to walking, I can't wait!
Kevin spent the afternoon putting up the lights, only to find at the very end that ~1/3 of them don't work. Booooo! Olivia and I were in and out of the house, keeping him company and practicing walking down the sidewalk and crawling through the (wet) grass. Fun!
We went out to dinner and didn't do much in the evening. I was suffering from allergies to the new tree in our family room, so I tried to finish some online Christmas shopping. I tell ya, while I'll miss seeing the Bellenger family at Christmas, I am also VERY happy not to be facing two cross-country flights and look forward to time around the house to do a few projects. Olivia will still go to daycare most days, so I'm excited to finish caulking the crown moulding, touch-up the paint around the doorframes, maybe get the last two doors (bathroom and guest room) hung, hang pics in the hallway and maybe .... insert more projects here!
Today Annie and Walter joined Olivia and I at the Academy of Sciences up in Golden Gate Park. We used our membership to get in at 10am (an hour before general admission) an enjoyed the rainforest exhibit in peace and quiet. Walter and Olivia were in heaven! Annie and Kate were happy to be out of the house and checking out something new. We only had enough concentration to last through a couple aquarium exhibits before it was lunch time and time to nap during the car ride home. What fun! Overall a successful adventure! I can't wait to have more adventures with Olivia next year - need to make an annual bucket list for things to check out. :)
The pergola is coming along - the side outside the kitchen is DONE! The side by the master bedroom is in-work. All the wood is marked for notches and the end that goes over the roof (as I'm sitting here in bed typing late at night, the rain has started again. I love hearing it!). Kevin's main goal over the holiday is to finish the pergola! It's taking much longer than any of us anticipated. Obviously, the rain doesn't help (raining harder now). But it will be totally beautiful when complete! There's still the whole center section (higher and longer) to go.
The weeds are starting to pop up all around - maybe on Friday I'll do some major weed-control. That's best done now as the ground is so soft!
Okay, nighty-night time.
xoxo
Kate
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