Oliver's Playtime

Oliver has always been an active climber so we decided to 

channel that energy into safer, more controlled directions.

Oliver LOVES the teddy bear his Great Grandma Barbara gave him for Christmas last year. He hugs it tight every night when we put him to bed in his crib.

"What do you want for dinner Mom?"

One of Oliver's favorite things to do is to "help" Doro in the kitchen when she's cooking. Just this week he's realized that one of his toys looks an awful lot like a kitchen.

He puts the toy cups under the faucet and makes a "keeeerrrrr" noise when we ask him to fill up the cup. He's also nice enough to microwave it for us... but we have to provide the microwave noises.

We wanted to take a family picture with the 

newest member of our family: the Christmas tree.

Every morning Oliver wakes up and greets the tree. 

Every night he also waves goodnight to the tree. 

We dread the day when he wakes up and his buddy has left town.

Oliver's First Mustache

A few of us at the hospital grew mustaches for the month of November.  The last night I had it Hoo Belly decided that he wanted one too.

He just discovered that sitting on my foot while I walk around is super fun, so now a lot of the time there is a little hoot attached to my feet when I am home.  It is so cute.  I say, "hold on tight, two hands" and he squeezes as much as He can.

He never has had any interest in watching TV before this week.  Now he brings us over, pulls out "Bob the Builder" DVDs for us to put in, and then sits in his cardboard box chair and watches it. 

Oliver's Sense of Smell

Oliver discovered his sense of smell by discovering the spice cabinet.  He makes stands next to it, pulls out each spice individually and hands them to Doro for him to smell.  His favorite is dill.

We have a few bald eagles around here and this one landed in the trees right next to our house.

He loves birds.  Doro threw a bunch of bird seed on the back patio and he stands at the door watching them.  This big blue bird we hadn't seen before showed up and he was in love with it.  They don't last very long because he runs over and bangs on the glass.

This is what he does now when he finds a mess on the floor.  He goes into the close and returns like this.

Doro made him his own little recliner with a cosco box and a pillow. 

"Oliver, show me...   all done"

He has always loved our shoes for some reason and lately he puts mine on and walks around the house.

Before bed he always gets a few stories.  We ask him to go get a book and he runs in the next room and comes back with whatever he wants to hear.  The other day he did it and then climbed himself onto the couch and started reading alone. 

Oliver's Halloweeen

Dorothy sewed this crab costume for Oliver.  It has the little vest that he wears and elastic straps so that the claw arms move with him.  It was so cute and she got so many compliments on it when she took him to a Halloween party. 

Right after the bath we always wrap him in the hooded towel that Gretchen gave him.  We call him the little gnome belly and he loves it.

He recently discovered that he can open the fridge by himself, so now he goes digging around in there, finds what he wants to eat and delivers it to us.  Sometimes it is milk, sometimes it is cottage cheese or cheese sticks, and sometimes he tries to get the mountain dew. 

Drive through.

Its getting time for his first hair cut.  In the mornings his hair is always sticking straight up like this.

Oliver and the Tissue Paper

When Doro gives Oliver a snack now he gets his plate on the stool, then he sits down and pulls the stool over his lap and eats. 

This started by some water spilling on the floor.  He walked over, grabbed the tissue paper, pulled one out at a time, wiped up the floor and then would go throw it in the trash can.  I hope I can get the video we took of him doing that to load.  It ended with him sitting on the ground and pulling all the tissues out of the box.  Haha.

We decided to carve hoots into our pumpkins this year.  I love the little feet that Doro carved into hers.  We were so excited to show them to Oliver in the morning, but he didn't like carving his before, and he wasn't interested in ours either.  Maybe next year we will fill it with water or put in in the shower before we carve it and that will get his attention

Oliver's Exercises

Oliver discovered the pull-up bar and loves it, even though he looks a little terrified in this picture.  We let him hold on tight, and then he hangs by himself for a few seconds. 

Oliver's First Pumpkin

We got a pumpkin to carve with Oliver and, to our surprise, he was not all that interested.  He would toddle over, stick his hand in, lap the kitchen and then come back and stick his hand in again.  He didn't even try and eat the guts.

He has always loved bath time, and just recently he discovered how much fun it is to hide behind the shower curtain, pop out to see us and screech.  It is so cute.

Oliver, where is your belly?

Oliver Visits the Pacific

We drove out to see Forks and the ocean this weekend.  It was a really pretty drive out there, the weather was nice, and Forks was really small.

The hotel we stayed at crushed out dreams of cleaning fish on the table as soon as we entered to check in.  Hoot Belly wasted no time once we got in the room finding the bathroom and turning on the shower.  On-Off-On-Off-On - come find us to show us it is on - Off - On.  This went on a long time. 

The ocean out by Forks was amazing.  We put him in the backpack and hiked along the beach for a few miles.  It was high tide so we were trying to avoid the waves as we made it around all the logs. 

Oliver likes our Nature Valley granola bars, so naturally we felt like we belong in one of those commercials where the people are hiking, looking thoughtfully out into the wilderness, and eating a snack.

We were headed for a place down the beach where there was a natural arch in the rock, but since it was high tide there was a river we had to cross.  It was so close, but I didn't want to cross on the logs with him in the pack so we didn't make it there.  We got him out so he could hoot around and have a snack.  He had so much fun climbing on the logs and looking at the birds.

"Mom, I want to go see the waves!!  They are right there!"

"The rez."