Ten Years!!!

Today, we are celebrating 10 years of Olivia's life. In her own words, she is now a decade! HAHA! She is so funny.

Ten years ago, I was in labor for 26 hours (yes, you read it right!) and gave birth to my first born in the middle of a Dallas vs. Denver football game. I mention this because between contractions, Dr. C., DH, and 2 L & D nurses were watching the game while I was in and out of wakefulness.

I spent every moment of those early months gazing into Olivia's beautiful face. I took her everywhere, we never stayed home. We did all sorts of things that a family with only one child has the freedom to do. All I did was try to make her smile and laugh and coo, then ate up every bit of reaction she gave me! (you know I got nothing done besides that!!!)

From a very early time, Olivia showed signs of being incredibly smart, creative, and funny. Before the age of one, she would take a crayon and draw circles, saying "trkl, trkl." (How cute is that???) She loved to eat grapefruit or ice cream. When she could sit up, she would take a book and "read" it, speaking jibberish like she knew what she was talking about!

When her sister was born, she was an awesome big sister - helping Mommy with anything that needed to be done, especially entertaining the little monkey, joining me in doing everything I could to get little Sophia to laugh and smile and coo....

As her brother came, she stated to the nurses that she was going to teach him how to run and sing the Scooby Doo theme song. (of all things!!!)

Olivia has had a few funny nick names over the years...Livers, Yaya (Sophia gave her that one when she couldn't say Olivia), Oliv, and The Nutty Professor (TNP). She rightfully earned TNP because she spends every waking moment (from the time she started thinking, trust me) inventing, creating, concocting, making up games, drawing, painting, building, singing songs, and so on.

She is bright, funny, very silly, compassionate, loving, loyal, sensitive, goofy, interesting, talkative, athletic, not girlie, intense, generous, (bossy), and she loves Jesus. And I love her.