Happy 3rd Thanksgiving, Olivia!

Saturday, we celebrated Olivia's third Thanksgiving in Cambridge with special friends. We feel very blessed to have found "family away from family" so far from 'home'. We all cooked, cleaned, set up and watched toddlers together. And ate, of course! My only regret is that we don't have a bigger house to be able to share the holiday with even MORE of our good friends!
Olivia's seat was by mama, but almost as soon as George vacated his chair, Olivia took up the post by Nancy-Ann and helped herself off of Nancy-Ann's plate - she even ate most of her pumpkin pie!
Olivia, George and Lyra had a grand time together jumping around on the bed upstairs, though it's tough to keep heads from knocking when they fall over! They all play really well together with lots of hugs and a minimum of pushing. (On that topic, Olivia used to maintain her space by running away, and has now figured out that she can defend it by long-arming anyone trying to invade it. It's good that she doesn't run away anymore, but we're working on finding an alternative to a behavior that is awfully close to pushing.)
Kate and Wim and Lyra spent most of the day with us, cooking (and trying to give the girls naps). Bob and Wim were fantastic on baby duty. Bob was the first line of parenting Friday, Saturday and even Sunday. Thanks both Bob and Olivia for giving me so much time in the kitchen, and even some time to lie down alone upstairs! (Speaking of which, I think Bob has fallen asleep upstairs while putting Olivia to sleep, and SHE was asleep when I put her down :-) Tired kids.
It's been an active weekend for Olivia. She is starting to try out more new words. Thursday was 'dirty', Friday was 'moon', Saturday was 'turkey' and 'sticky', and Sunday was names from her books, 'Poppy' and 'Nono'. Olivia is fun and beautiful and ultra-cool. So is her papa, and I think he _must_ be asleep because I came down 45 minutes ago and it's been awfully quiet up there for about 44.5 minutes. To wake or not to wake, that is the question...