We have a niece!

Welcome to the world, Ella! We are so excited to have you in the family.

cake and ice cream

Here's the video from Livvy's birthday, as promised.

The ice cream thing...yeah, not so much.

We'll try again later (with a spoon) Ü

Easter

Livia loves Easter. About a month ago she went on an egg hunt at a playgroup and has been obsessed with easter eggs ever since. She carries them with her pretty much all the time. Shortly thereafter I was at Michaels and she found an Easter basket with which she instantly fell in love. She carried it the rest of the time we were in the store and all the way home. A couple of weeks ago I taught her how to put eggs into the basket, and so by the time Easter finally rolled around, she was SO ready!

Hunting for eggs!

Birthday fun

On Saturday night we had a little birthday party for Livia with friends and family

She opened a few of her presents...

and has been enjoying all of them immensely ever since.

Since her birthday fell on Easter this year, I had no choice but to make her a bunny cake!

Livvy had an entire ear to herself (videos to follow sometime this week)

Poking the cake...

Trying a taste...

"Woah! You guys have been holding out on me! This stuff is awesome!" (Stuffing her face with frosting)
Trying a little bit of ice cream...

Too cold! She had a little bit of a panic attack when she got some ice cream in her hands and mouth

All done! (looking entirely overwhelmed and slightly sick)
The next day, being her actual birthday, she opened the rest of her gifts
And had some more cake!

Thanks, everyone, for helping to make her first birthday such a special one! I think Livia really had a lot of fun.

Happy 1st birthday, Livia!

What an amazing year it has been!

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Tiny dancer

I love it!

Baby steps

It's so easy to take all of our abilities for granted, but when you have a child you celebrate the little things. For example, this week Livia learned how to...

• turn the light switch on, as well as off
• clap (actually, she slaps her knees. Close enough, I say)
• hold up her sippy cup high enough that she can actually drink out of it (this is pretty exciting for me, as I always had to hold it for her before)
• climb up all the steps on the playground at Thaddeus park
• open doors by pulling on those little door stops on the bottom (not so exciting for me)
• sing along to music (sounds like "haaaa, haaaa")
• point
• Say the word "hi" (pronounced "ah"). I am officially calling this her first word, unless you can count growling, because although she can copy the sounds I make, this is the only one that she uses consistently and in the appropriate context.

This is exciting stuff!

Livvy has been taking steps for the past two months. Everyday I expect her to realize she can walk and just take off. It hasn't happened yet, but she's still making progress and becoming increasingly confident in her ability. Here's a video we took on Monday night.