Plenty to be thankful for

On this, Olivia's second Thanksgiving, we have plenty to be thankful for. First and foremost Olivia herself, who continues to fill us with wonder each day. Being in England, where nobody gets any time off from work for an American holiday like Thanksgiving, we decided to shift our expatriate holiday to Sunday. So we had a fantastic Sunday Thanksgiving with all the trimmings, planned for and provided almost singlehandedly by Suzanne (yum!). And we had good friends to share it with. Here, seated around the table (L-R), are Lori, Wim, Kate (thier daughter Lyra is under the table), Toby, and the rest you know :). And of course, Suzanne is behind the camera! We had the traditional dinner around 3pm (or 15:00 in Europe), then a nice walk, and back for some pie. We were all, true to tradition, rather full. It was a great holiday, the only missing elements were a 4 day weekend (greatly missed) and a football game (not really that missed).

Upwardly mobile

Well, it's been a while since we put anything up here; Olivia's been keeping us pretty busy! As of the last post she was crawling and able to move on her feet some. In terms of the "big milestones" (read- walking), we haven't passed any more since last post, but she sure is getting around these days. She'll use whatever means is right for the job: crawling (she likes to look back and gesture for us to follow), walking holding furniture or the wall, or walking holding our hands or clothes. She transitions between these modes effortlessly, hardly thinking about it. Closest to "real" walking? She's walked 4-6 feet holding only one of my hands. And all these words can't express how well she clambers over just about anything, up anything, and on and on. It almost seems like she looks for interesting challenges of navigation ("I'll walk along holding the coffee table, then climb over papa's chest, then see if I can pull the bookshelves down!"). She doesn't even stop for nappy changes these days, which can be challenging (but we'll spare you the gory details).


And of course she continues to be a joy to be around. In these pictures she really wanted to get a hold of the camera!

Walking Tall

Olivia can now walk quite well when holding our hands, and frequently enjoys a little excursion. She's still working out how to transition from, say, walking along the wall holding on, to down on the floor crawling, but she's getting better at that, and now pretty much has the run of the house (ground floor only!). One of us will be in the kitchen and she'll suddenly appear in the doorway; a nice surprise!


When she gets to the kitchen, as it seems most babies this age do, she "gets into everything". We've tried to keep as many cabinets accessible to her as we can, and have consolidated the breakable and dangerous items behind doors that have been safety-latched. Phase 1 baby-safing is under way.


As she romps around, it's particularly nice now to have some overalls she fits into- most pairs we've tried don't have enough room for her cloth nappies (considerably bulkier than disposables). This pair, though, does the trick- another in a fantastic and long line of hand-me-downs from second cousins Megan and Sarah. Thanks Vicki!