Two Year Old Check-up

I still can't believe that Olivia is really two years old. We just finished up with her 2 year check up. Olivia weighs a whopping 33 lbs and is almost 36 inches tall. That puts her in the 90th percentile for height and the 65th percentile for weight. Olivia identified most of her body parts correctly for the doctor today, she did experience a moment of confusion when asked where her tummy was (we use the word belly). When the doctor asked where her belly was she promptly walked over to me and showed the doctor my growing belly, lifting up the shirt and all. Olivia did have to get one shot today, it was a quick one so there were only a few tears and as I carried Olivia out of the room she looked over my shoulder to the nurse and gave her a loud and tearful "bye". It was hilarious.

I love being the mom of a two year old! I feel like my life has turned into an elaborate game of diplomacy, toddler diplomacy that is. Olivia loves going to the doctor's office, they have a really neat playhouse in the waiting room. Of course they called Olivia's name right after she'd started playing so she didn't want to go. I tried coaxing her out of the little house using every bribe I could think of (you can have a snack, some juice, etc) and she wasn't having it. Finally I went over to the window of the house and said can you climb out the window, it's time to go and out she came, all on her own, no bribe necessary! At the end of the appointment I was trying to load Olivia into the stroller to make the trek back to the car but of course Olivia did not want to be buckled into her stroller. I told her she could walk like a big girl, congratulating myself on my flexibility, but no she refused to walk. Olivia wanted to push the stroller all on her own so that's what we did. She put the diaper bag into the stroller and proudly pushed the stroller all the way to the car. I really am loving being the mom of an independent little two year old but sometimes I wonder....should I be more strict? I keep going back and forth on this issue. I feel like I'm letting her win the small battles now about the things that don't really matter but am I actually setting myself up to fail later on? Does it matter? Today it doesn't seem to matter that Olivia didn't want to come out of the playhouse when I told her it was time to go, I find it amusing that she was willing to climb out the window, but should I be more concerned that I told her it was time to go and she didn't listen to me right away? I'd love to hear what you think!

More cell phone pictures....

To continue last week's post on pictures taken with my cell phone I have these to share today. Olivia's first taste of cotton candy. These were taken at the Puyallup Fair shortly after we moved to Washington. The Puyallup Fair is a huge fair held here every September. I can't believe that they started advertising for the fair this year, that means we've lived here an entire year! Why do I feel like I'm still learning my way around?

Speech Therapy Progress

So Olivia has been going to speech for a little over 3 months now and she's made tremendous progress. I just have to stop and share some of the highlights with you. When Olivia started speech in April she was 21 months old and she consistently made one sound, "da". She expressed happiness with the word "da" and anger with the word "da". She would make sentences with the word da, "Da daaa dadadddda". She would stand there talking with her hands and point to things and tell stories, all with the singular sound "da".

In just 3 short months Olivia now mimics a multitude of words some of which include: mama, dadda, ball, apple, down, up, off, on, open, hi, bye, goodbye, carry, up, down, duck, book, more, bath, bubbles. And just last night purple and pig were added to her list. She has added many more baby signs to her vocabulary and she's combining signs with words to make sentences and tell stories.

None of this process has been easy but it's been such an experience for us to grow as a family. I have more respect for Olivia and the progress she's made. I have come to love and appreciate my husband in a new way when I see how patient and understanding he is with our little girl. I have more confidence in myself as I've learned to be a more patient mom. I am so thankful to have found such a great speech therapist that was able to start working with Olivia right away. I am thankful that the doctors and pediatricians we've seen so far have been receptive and understanding about my concerns with Olivia's speech development. So stay tuned, I'm confident Olivia will be talking up a storm one day!

Cell Phone Pictures

I know this may surprise some of you but I've only had a cell phone that takes pictures for the last 10 months! I never really understood the excitement of having a camera on your cell phone until I became a mom. I realized that you really never do have a camera handy when you need one and the camera on my cell phone certainly does come in handy!

Recently my 10 month old cell phone has experienced some minor damage at the hands of our little toddler. Olivia loves to talk on the phone and I'm sure you can imagine some of the creative things that Olivia has done to my cell phone over the last couple of months. It's been buried in our sandbox, left in the bottom of the toy box, thrown down the stairs, and recently dropped in a toilet (in an airport bathroom, YUCK!). To be honest I'm shocked that it lasted as long as it did! Anyways my cell phone has finally been retired and I received my replacement cell phone (thank goodness for warranties) in the mail yesterday. I had to download the pictures from my old cell phone so they weren't lost forever. I realized I've taken quite a random assortment of pictures with my little cell phone. There are way too many to post today but I'll try and share a couple of them with you each week.

What pictures do you have on your cell phone?

We had taken Olivia to the play area in the mall and she literally played herself to sleep. She was exhausted!Before I went back to work mornings were my favorite time with Olivia. She wakes up so happy and ready for the day! I told her to go to the kitchen and get ready for breakfast so she went into the kitchen and pulled down the tray of her highchair and sat on it. Ready for breakfast! Even Mr. Big thinks that she's crazy but she's so proud of herself!

The big T-W-O

I can't believe that Olivia is already two years old! We were in Hawaii on her actual birthday so we celebrated this past weekend. We had some friends over for birthday cake on Saturday then we took Olivia to Charlie's Safari to play on their giant inflatables on Sunday.

This weekend we also converted Olivia's crib into a toddler bed and so far she's doing great! I was really hesitant to move her out of her crib but Olivia seems very proud of her big girl bed. She climbs into her bed but so far I don't think that she's discovered that she can climb out all by herself too. We'll see how long that lasts.

And the Baby is....

Thanks for voting. So far the results are close, most people think it's a girl but only by 2 votes! We had our second ultrasound yesterday and the baby looks happy and healthy. Mike and I had been going back and forth about weather or not we wanted to find out the sex of the baby and we've decided that we just aren't ready to find out yet. We don't know if it's a boy or a girl so the poll is still open. I'll try and post some of the new ultrasound pictures soon.

Hawaii Trip Highlights

We had a great time in Hawaii. Some of the highlights include:

• Olivia's behavior on the plane. This was the first time we had to purchase a seperate seat for Olivia and she was very well behaved on the 6 hour flights there and back!
• The weather. We're still not used to the cold Seattle weather so we all really enjoyed the hot, humid weather in Hawaii!
• Our hotel. The first night the air conditioning wasn't working well in our room so they moved us to an ocean front mini-suite with a beautiful ocean view!
• The pool in the hotel was very nice. There was a sandy kids play area made to resemble the beach which Olivia loved. There was also a huge 2 story slide into the pool which Mike and I enjoyed and then a little mini slide that Olivia enjoyed.
• The beach. While our hotel wasn't right on the beach we really enjoyed visiting several different types of beaches on the big island including beaches for snorkling, state parks, and a black sand beach (which was quite the experience, it merits a whole seperate blog post later)
• The Manta Rays at the hotel. The Manta Rays would feed in the ocean right outside the hotel and we could see them from our room. They were huge and it was amazing to watch them floating around.
• Our trip to the Volcanoes National Park and our hike through a lava tube.

While we had a great time I certainly don't want you to think that every aspect of our trip was perfect I'll also share some of the not so plesant moments:

• We discovered that Olivia gets car sick. This happened quite a bit on our drive from New Orleans to Seattle but I (never having been car sick before) dismissed it as a stomach bug. Now that I'm 6 months pregnant I think that my stomach is a little more sensitive and I noticed that I was feeling a little queasy and I looked back into the back seat just in time to see Olivia start throwing up all over her car seat. Without going into more detail by the end of our drive every member of the Leiva family had "lost their breakfast," Olivia and I because we were car sick and Mike because he had to clean up the vomit from all over the rental car and rented car seat.
• The weather wasn't constantly sunny. It turns out that for the last 2 years the area we were staying in has tended to be a little hazy because of all the smoke from the volcano. While we did have a few nice days we were a little disapointed.
• The first night in the hotel was miserable. When we initally got to our room it was a little warm but we just thought that was because the air hadn't been turned on so we cranked it up and decided to head to the pool. By the time we returned Olivia was exhausted so we put her down for bed but the room was even warmer than before so a maintnence man was sent to investigate. The ac was broken and the hotel offered to move us to a different room right away but we had finally just gotten Olivia down to sleep and I'd unpacked everything so we decided to try and tough it out for a night. Some of you may remember that during my last pregnancy I had central ac installed in our home (in Colorado) so me pregnant without ac in Hawaii is obviously much worse.....

Overall we did have a fantastic time and we all agree that the best part was being able to spend some quality time together without any distractions--no tv, no cell phones, no email!

We've shared more of our photos through shutterfly, please check them out at:

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In the mean time Olivia LOVED the beach, she would try to run into the ocean. Our child had no fear, meanwhile I was terrified that she'd somehow be washed out to sea or something. Here's a clip of her enjoying the sand (and waves)

Hawaii Here We Come

Okay now it's finally time for our family vacation! We traded in our timeshare in Vail and actually got two weeks elsewhere (it's a long story but that's how Mike was able to stay at a beautiful resort in Cabo last week) and we've decided to use the second of those weeks in Hawaii! We spent Olivia's second birthday on the big island of Hawaii. While we're not right on the beach it looks like we'll be staying at a beautiful hotel and after the 2 weeks of not really seeing eachother we're all very excited to spend some time together with just the 3 of us! I'll be posting some pictures of our trip soon!

Mexico

So while I've been busy all week trying to get ready for vacation and recouperate from Gamma Phi Beta Convention, Mike has gotten a head start on vacation. Mike had initally planned to spend a week in Cabo with dad and brothers but for one reason or another their plans fell through. We had already made the reservation so Mike decided it would be a good opportunity for a mini-Phi Psi Reunion. Even though I'm slightly bitter he's off in beautiful Cabo while I'm stuck here in rainy Washington I really am very happy that he is getting a change to hang out with some of his friends. We've moved so much over the last couple of years I know it's been hard for him to keep in touch with them as much as he would have liked to. So here's to Mike and the guys, I hope they're having a great time (and that they remember to use sunscreen)!

Gamma Phi Beta Convention Photos

I've put together a few convention photos. Some of these might not make sense (why are there hundreds of women walking around with hot pink hats with carnations?) but I guess I can just say it's a sorority thing. John McCain was staying in our hotel for a few days and he did stop by briefly for a photo op. He seamed nice enough but he does look a little frightened in the picture, what normal man wouldn't be a little frightened to see 800 sorority "girls" running at him with cameras. One of the highlights was a concert by Elizabeth Pitcairn current owner of the Red Violin and a Gamma Phi Beta. Apparently Elizabeth and the Red Violin both lived in the Gamma Phi Beta house at the University of Southern California. The violin travels with it's own private guard!

So where have you been?

We have been very busy and I know that I've been horrible about updating the blog lately! I was in Cincinatti, Ohio for the Gamma Phi Beta Convention last week, this week Mike is in Cabo for a mini-reunion with some of his fraternity brothers, and next week we're off to Hawaii for a week. I don't know about you but just thinking about all the traveling, packing, and unpacking makes me tired!

I had a blast at the Gamma Phi Beta Convention. Some of you may not know this but while we lived in Colorado I worked for the sorority as the Collegiate Coordinator at International Headquarters. When we moved to Oklahoma I stopped working at Headquarters and I started volunteering for the sorority as a regional coordinator. As a regional coordinator I directly supervise several collegiate chapters and right now I work with Gamma Phi Beta chapters at California State University-Chico, Sacramento State University, the University of Washington, and the University of Puget Sound. I really enjoy my time working with these chapters, it gives me a chance to use my master's degree and it allows me to give back to the organization that had such a huge impact on my development. I loved being in a sorority, I had a ton of fun in college but today I appreciate it so much more for the things that I learned that I wasn't expecting to learn. I learned a lot about conflict resolution, I learned how to make "small-talk" and have appropriate "cocktail party" conversations, I was able to experience incredible leadership opportunities, I found a few fantastic friends who I know will be close friends for the rest of my life, I learned how to network, I met my husband, the list goes on and on......
It was great to reconnect with so many of my sorority sisters this past week (all 800+ of us), I'll be sharing some pictures soon.