Eleven Months

 Livy is 11 months old.

We are closing in on one year mark very soon now.

 Olivia is taking her first steps.

She is becoming bold and brave enough to turn away from a stable surface

and venture into the land of just her own two feet.

She is becoming more and more confident.

We should have a full blown walker soon.

 Olivia is eating!

FOOD, FOOD, FOOD!

Her diet has really doubled or tripled this last month.

She loves to get food right off of our plates.

She loves to munch on graham crackers, bread, pancakes,

yogurt drops, and these puffy things we call cheetos.

She only turns her nose up at a few foods,
but we can usually still get her to eat them.

Livy loves to eat bananas, pears, sweet potato and prunes.

She does not really like green beans, squash, and peas.

Olivia is a chatty Kathy.

She loves to say what we believe to be, "Giggle giggle giggle."

She is often found saying da da da or ma ma ma.

We are so proud of her!

Livy can find the smallest spec of dust or crumb
and immediately puts it into her mouth.
She is so speedy!

Olivia loves to be outside.
She does not really dislike grass but
she is choosing to keep her distance from it right now.
She loves feeling the wind blow in her face.
(She loves when we also turn on our ceiling fans.)

Livy is very smart.
She can recall were something once was
or she can watch us to see how we complete something
and then tries it herself.
She knows what she can and can't play with
or where she can and can't play.
We are amazed by her each day.

Celebrating Easter

 We enjoyed a fabulous Easter weekend.

On Saturday we went to our Ward Easter breakfast.

We enjoyed some pancakes and then an egg hunt.

 Unfortunately Livy missed out on all the eggs.

But, we all still had a great time being outside in the beautiful weather.

 Once we returned home,

we discovered the Easter Bunny had come to our house!

 Livy had a great time discovering hidden eggs.

 Each egg had a small treat inside for her.

Cheerios.

 Here is our little girl with her Easter goodies.

The bunny was very nice and brought her some new toys

and an Easter dress.

 Our Easter Sunday was delightful as well.

We enjoyed our church service and the fact that

Livy took a nice long nap afterward.
We also had a wonderful Easter dinner
with two other families from our ward.

We are so grateful for the precious baby girl.

We are so blessed to be an eternal family.

Happy Easter!

Springfield, Springfield

 We visited the capital city during Joe's spring break.

We just planned a day trip so we were up and ready to go.

Springfield is about 90 minutes from us,

so we thought we could all handle the short trip.

Livy eventually fell asleep on our way there,

which made the time go by much faster.

 And here it is...

The capitol.

Our first stop of the day was to take the Lincoln Home tour.

It was really fun to walk through his house.

This was the house he lived in right before he was elected president. 

 We headed to Lincoln's tomb next.

Unfortunately, it was under renovation so we could not go inside,

but we still had a great time outside.

 Rubbing Lincoln's nose brings good luck.

 We all had a go at it.

 Bring on the luck!

 Our last and final stop was to the zoo.

It was so small, and we were the only people there.

Bonus!

Our expectations were pretty low, and I would say

we had a better time than we thought.

 It was a pretty cold March day, but we had a great day all together.

And Livy slept the whole way home!

 Boy oh boy do I love this family of mine!

Catching Up on 8,9, and 10 Months

 8 Months Old

Olivia is a rolling baby.

In order to move anywhere she rolls to get where desires to go.

She can army crawl, but rolling is much faster for her.  

Olivia is teething!

Her first tooth made its appearance this month! 

Her middle bottom teeth were first to break out.

She did pretty good as long as we kept her distracted.

Teething is no joke! Yikes!

Olivia chews on everything!

Everything goes into her little mouth!

Fingers, toes, toys and any minuscule thing she can grab on the floor.

Our vacuum is getting used more and more!

 9 Months Old

Olivia has started wearing bows!

Her hair is not so fine now and it will hold a clip.

She never really tolerated a headband.

With all over her rolling and trying to grab things headbands did not 

last long on her head.

Olivia has started eating Cheerios.

She struggles with the whole thing so we cut them in half for her.

We are working our way up the food ladder.

Olivia can not hold still.

She is a blur!

She is moving and rolling and singing and waving all the time.

Seriously, what a happy kid!!
Olivia sits up.
She no longer wobbles and falls
but she sits up straight and enjoys the view.

Olivia's sleep has improved!

YES!

This has been something Mom and Dad have been hoping for!

Our trip to Utah really took its toll with Olivia's sleeping habits.

But, now she is only waking up once at night!

(And that is usually around 5 or 6am)

So much better than 2-3 or 4 times a night!

Everyone is so much happier!

Olivia is army crawling.

She has her own style when it comes to crawling.

She is picking up speed!

She is using her army crawl to get around these days.

Olivia is growing!

We went to the Doctor this month.

Here are her stats:

19lbs 7.5oz

27.5 inches

10 Months Old

Olivia is getting so big!

Each day we can't believe how big our little Livy is becoming!

She is such a lady.

Olivia is crawling!

We have had to baby-proof up to Olivia's level now.

She gets where she wants to go and does so quickly!

Olivia can pull herself up to furniture.

She can also walk alongside it.

Each day she gets better and better at this skill.

Her falls are becoming less frequent and she is not 

so surprised by them either.

Olivia makes messes!

Big surprise right?

Just another parent pleasure!

Olivia grinds her teeth.

Olivia has 6 teeth now.

4 on the bottom and two fangs on top.

She grinds her teeth when she is teething.

The sound is not enjoyable at all.

It makes me ache.

Olivia has an attitude.

She wants what she can't have and will throw fits.

She's a typical girl right?

She is so silly, funny, creative, sneaky, and imaginative.

We are so proud to call her ours!

Salt Lake Vacation

We were so lucky to be able to travel (by plane) to SLC to visit and enjoy

our families this past holiday season.

The day before we were scheduled to leave,

Urbana was hit with a huge snow storm!

As if preparing to travel with a little baby was not

stressful enough now we had weather worries too!

Even with all of the weather,

Joe made it to the Champaign airport the following morning to pick 

up our rental car so we could all travel on to Chicago.

We made the trip to Chicago as early as we could so we could

visit with Joe's brother James and Katie.

We are lucky and they live in Chicago so we got to visit with them

and enjoy some tasty pizza before heading off to the airport.

Once at the Midway airport we returned our rental car

and went to check in for our flight.

(You can't check in online the night before if you are traveling with an infant.)

We waited over an hour before learning our flight to Denver

was delayed!

Now we would not be able to make our connecting flight to SLC.

Long story short, we waited a long time at the airport,

James and Katie rented a ZipCar to rescue us, 

we booked a hotel room, and rode the shuttle to O'hare Airport

the next morning.

We had arrived in SLC!

While we were in Utah,

Olivia turned seven months old!

Olivia is perfecting her rolling.

She rolls where she needs to go instead of crawling.

She drools like crazy!

Teeth must not be far behind.

She is a chatty Kathy and loves to sing songs

and blow bubbles.

She is such a good girl!

Is dancing in her future?

We celebrated Christmas with both of our families!

We got to open presents from Santa.

Olivia was very excited by her gifts.

She received Sophie the giraffe, a baby doll, 

a personalized board book of family, and she 

was spoiled by her grandparents too! 

After presents came the traditional

Christmas morning breakfast!

Joe and I were the narrators in this year's nativity.

Our family on Christmas Day!

Our favorite part of coming home for the holidays was seeing

family and friends.

This picture documents the two Leisles.

Olivia is named after Joe's Nan.

Olivia had so much fun rolling around with Grant,

a new buddy who entered the world of Provo since 

we vacated it.  

We know that Olivia and Grant will be forever friends,

if not more!

The Posts and the Watsons!

We could not ask for better friends!

Other wonderful moments of our vacation include:

Eating at J-Dawgs, Training Table, Hector's, Cafe Rio,

Dairy Keen, Crown Burger, and Market Street Grill

Going to the Salt Lake Temple

Going on a date to the movies! (The Hobbit)

Olivia tried sweet potato and carrots

Olivia graduated from her baby tub to laying in the actual tub

Going to the LEGO store at the Fashion Place Mall

Going to the Outlets in Park City
Bowling with friends

Traveling to Midway

Traveling to Provo
Getting my nails done

Celebrating family birthdays

Playing games

Putting together a puzzle

Getting sick
Breakfast with old co-workers

Babysitting siblings and a niece and nephew

Baking, baking, cooking, and baking
Having lunch with my young women's group from my old ward

Going to bed before Midnight on New Year's Eve

Eating and celebrating Christmas at the Salt Lake Country Club

Crying over leaving my baby girl for just a couple of hours.

We feel very blessed to have enjoyed one month with our family!

Until next year!

Thanksgiving

We began our own family traditions this Thanksgiving,

as well as continued some of our families' tried and true traditions.

We don't have T.V. in our new apartment so we were unable

to have to Thanksgiving Day parade on as background noise.

So, we watched a Thanksgiving movie!

Planes, Trains and Automobiles!

Funny Show!

And hopefully a new Thanksgiving tradition for us.

A must for our Thanksgiving happiness was making gumdrop turkeys.

Livy was so excited to make some!

(She really just enjoyed their colors while Joe and I created them.)

Our family of three!

Our Thanksgiving spread!

We made our first ever turkey!

We also had Sarah's salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing,

rolls and two pies!

We were eating leftovers for a while!

And I still have some of the turkey in our freezer!

We were very grateful to be together as a family for Thanksgiving!

Although we were missing our large family in Utah and

spread around the world we were happy just being us three!

Six Months

Livy is 6 months old!

Hard to believe we have had this beautiful girl for half of a year!

Dr. Stats:

Weight - 17 lbs 8.5 oz

Length - 27 inches

To celebrate Livy being half a year old,

I made half of a birthday cake!

Yum!

This month:

Olivia started eating solid food!

We began with rice cereal and soon learned

that it backs up your internal processes, 

so we began to alternate with oatmeal.

She does not really take to either very well.

But, we try and give her at least a spoonful each day!

Olivia was sleep trained.

Joe and I were dreading sleep training Livy.

We are very against having her cry it out 

and the first night was a fail.

We were a little too involved and she was very needy.

Night number two was so much better!

We laid her in her crib and soothed her

without picking her up.

This was the biggest change we made from night

one to night two.

And it made the biggest difference!

We started getting sleep!

Livy would sleep from 8-6!

I was loving not getting up every couple of hours!

However,

our success ended quickly once we travel to Utah

for our Christmas vacation and 

she was thrust into a new situation of living.

But we still love her.

Olivia has such a wonderful personality!

It is amazing to see it more and more each month.

She is a sassy little one with sweetness down to her core!