10 Months Old

Peek-a-boo is a favourite! You love hiding your little face in boxes, behind furniture whatever you can find. When we ask "Where's Olivia gone?" We are greeted with a gorgeous cheeky smile. Your love for this game has continued to one of your Christmas presents from Aunty Courtney and Uncle Blake. They gave you a peek-a-boo pop up book. You love this book and are now grabbing the book, turning the pages and opening the flaps chuckling at the animals or vehicles that pop out at you. The other day I read you this story and then grabbed another book a couple of pages into the second story you took it off me and picked your peek-a-boo book up again ready to roar at the dinosaur again.
Another love of yours is animals! You can't get enough of them. Whether in real life or a picture of an animal. You love them all. Another story Aunty Courtney and Uncle Blake brought you for Christmas was Handa's Surprise. It is about a little girl who carries a basket of seven different fruits on her head to her friend. The trouble is the cheeky animals one by one take the tasty fruit out before the goat bucks a tangerine tree to fill the basket with tangerines. With each page you crack up laughing at the cheekiness of the animals taking the fruit with your own cheeky giggle. It is so contagious Daddy and I find it hard to carry on reading.
Going to the pet shop recently to get things for Ava you were in your element looking through the glass at the little puppies who were jumping up to say hello, the turtles and fish swimming around and the birds flapping their wings.
You have been busy pick pocketing Daddy for his wallet lately grabbing the necessary Gold Visa then crawling off down the hallway with it. Funny that you know exactly which card you need for shopping.
Standing is now second nature. As is walking along the furniture and moving carefully from one steady object to the next. You now find anything to stand behind and push to practice your walking and are using your pram to do this too. The amazing thing is you don't just hold on and push but you put one hand on the back of the pram and push/steer while the other hand turns the wheel, as if you are already aware of how turning the wheel makes the pram move along.

Trip To The Zoo

We are starting to get out and about with our SPACE group and our first stop for Term 1 was the Hamilton Zoo. We piled in and headed round past the rhino's to the giraffe's where a zoo keeper told us a bit about them and how the Hamilton Zoo only have male giraffes. He also told us why they have grey tongues. It is so they don't get sun burnt in the heat when they twist and reach them out to eat leaves off the trees. We made sure you had your Sophie teething giraffe so we could get a photo with you, Sophie and the real thing. At the Savannah we also saw zebra, ostrich and antelope. Carrying on round we went past the pigs who were sleeping in the sun past the alpacas and wallaby's to the tiger. A zoo keeper greeted us there pointing out a female tiger asleep in her tree house and to tell us that she had a couple of three month old cubs but they were hiding in the shade. Next we headed to the chimpanzee enclosure. At first we could only see one in the distance up high you began to blow raspberries unimpressed that you couldn't really see him. All of a sudden he took off up the hill behind the shrubs but it paid to stick around because he grabbed his blanket and then headed back down the hill towards the glass we were standing behind. He laid his blanket down and then got comfy right in front of us. You had a great time waving and saying hello to the chimp. This was the highlight of the day. We headed past the red pandas then through the birds and reptiles. Once back to the start you hopped out of your pram to crawl around and chase after the peacock and sparrows hanging around the cafe. You are such an animal lover that despite being pushed around in your pram for over two hours there was no way you were going to sleep with so much to soak up and see.

9 Months Old

We have had lots of fun as you hit 9 months old. It is amazing to think you are as old now as you took to grow inside my tummy. Loving seeing you develop in the outside world I can only imagine how much you grew and changed each week you were inside me. We have started swimming lessons again this time at ACE on a Thursday morning as well as going on a Monday to Gallagher Aquatic Centre where Daddy hops in for ten minutes before his hydrotherapy class. We go to SPACE every Tuesday and this is becoming more focused on you with trips about to start and more play topics. Friday we try to get to Wriggle and Rhyme at the Library.
We have done some painting for the first time. I put some blobs of face paint onto a A4 piece of paper and put it inside a snaplock bag. Then you set to work squishing the paint under the plastic mixing the colours to make some artwork for Daddy. Next I froze some water with food colouring and you made your first water colour painting for Grandma who had badly fallen off her bike on a two day mountain bike ride.
I don't want you to help me with actual baking eating the raw egg and sugar so I mixed together some oil and flour and you stirred it all over the kitchen flour with Ava cleaning up after you. The oil clumped the flour together when squished in your hand but then crumbled when you ran it between your fingers. I have also made some playdoh for you and I showed you how to roll it into a worm and then twirl it into a snail we wrote your name and made some shapes with it too.
You are becoming more interactive all the time. You have learn't to wave watching us wave when we say hello or goodbye to someone you have picked it up. When you first learnt to wave you would just wave all the time but then you learn't to use it to say hello and goodbye. Now when Daddy gets home from work your little hand waves from side to side just as your grin grows wider and wider.
A happy little baby it is only right that you should know how to clap. As the song goes "If your happy and you know it clap your hands." On 18 February you learnt to clap your hands and now you love to show your seal of approval by clapping. If we do something that is funny or lots of fun your little hands clap together as if to say "more, more." Not only can you clap your hands together but you are also picking up objects and having one in each hand will bang them together to listen to the different sounds they make. Recently going swimming at the pools on Monday you slept longer than usual for your morning sleep which meant we got to the pools just as Daddy was due to start his class. But with the pools close to each other as Daddy did a length and we did a width and meet up you gave him a clap and wave as he played peek-a-boo.
Playing peek-a-boo is a game you have enjoyed for a while and sussed it out fairly early on that we were just behind the blanket. Now you like playing it but you like to be the one who hides. Whether it is behind a blanket, bib or piece of furniture you hide and we say "Where's Olivia?" Then you pop out from where you are hiding with a big cheesy smile as if to say "Here I am." You even play peek-a-boo with yourself in the mirror leaning to the side just out of view. You will look behind the mirror to see if you are behind there as well. When you see your pretty little face in the mirror you give yourself a kiss just like you have started doing in the shower. You will wipe the glass down and then pucker up. You are so funny when you give a kiss because it is always with a big open mouth. When you lean in to give a kiss on the lips it is still with an open mouth and sometimes you even slip in your tongue.
Uncle Glen has been busy racing his jetsprint boat and on February 15 he was racing in Meremere. So we headed to the racetrack to watch. Being a nosiey sport we brought you some cute pink earmuffs so that you could enjoy watching without getting sore ears. You had a busy weekend heading to Whangamata on Saturday night then getting up for breakfast with Jo and Hamish who were over for a wedding and Sam and Saba we then headed to Meremere. So with a busy day by the afternoon you needed a sleep and after some walking in your pram with Nana you drifted off to sleep. The racing finished and it was time to head home. I picked you up and transferred you into your carseat we drove home and unpacked the car and then you woke up. You are a pretty good sleeper normally but this afternoon you slept for so long Daddy joked that maybe we need to put you to sleep with your earmuffs on all the time.
We have been to the Waikato Museum to check out Excite (an interactive kids part) and some of the exhibitions on show. For Children's Day they had free entry to Excite and Planet Warrior an exhibition on looking after the environment. You had a great time looking around at all the displays and planting knitted vegetables in the holes of the knitted vegetable garden.