Nine down

We currently have a 9 month old residing at our house:

A smiley, happy, into everything 9 month old:

She really does laugh quite a bit.  She cracks up over the silliest things (an electric toothbrush, Olivia doing anything, Daddy walking in a room, I could go on and on...).

























My friend Staci helped me with these pictures while our big girls were in dance class tonight.  We were making fools of ourselves to get her to smile.  It worked:

We went to her 9 month check up last week.  She was 15 pounds, 10 ounces and 26.5 inches long.  She was in the 15th percentile for both, which is the curve she's been on since she was 6 weeks old.  Her iron was still low, even with the multivitamin she's been on for 3 months, so she is now on a prescription iron drop.  Olivia had low iron at this age, too.  They have apparently improved the taste significantly, because Paige doesn't seem to mind it at all! 

She is such a joy.  I have decided to try to stop being sad about time passing so quickly and instead enjoy each day.  This week, I am enjoying late night snuggles on Olivia's bed while we read books before going to sleep.  I even enjoy Paige crawling all over us and Daddy having to come rescue her, before Olivia loses her cool (ha!).  I especially enjoy picking Olivia up from school and hearing her excitedly tell me about her day.  Soaking it all up...

And just because she's cute:

 

Disney, Part 3!

We slept in Wednesday after our late night at the Halloween party.  When we got up and ready, we headed to Epcot! 

We rode the kid-friendly rides and went to Turtle Talk with Crush (which was great!).  Daddy and Olivia played some of the games after we rode Mission Space:

And played in the shark's mouth after the Little Nemo ride:

Poor Paige was fed up with all the excitement:

By this point, it was close to our dinner reservation at Chef Mickey's.  We hopped on the monorail and rode to the Contemporary.  Olivia was THRILLED to meet the Fab 5 and get their autographs:

I think this next picture sums up what Paige thought about the characters:

Ha!

We had planned to go back to Epcot, but ended up making it an early night at the hotel.  We were exhausted!
The next morning, I took some pictures of the girls at the hotel on our way to breakfast:

It was so humid, my lens kept getting foggy, but they're still cute:

They're wearing the zebra Minnie shirts I made them, because we were headed to Animal Kingdom!  Olivia was really excited when we told her about the safari ride.
First thing we hit was It's a Bug's Life.  Loving her 3D glasses:

Then Papaw, Daddy, and I rode Expedition Everest while Olivia had an ice cream break! 
We were headed to our lunch reservation, when we stopped in at a bird show.  Paige LOVED it:

We had reservations at Tusker House, which is a character meal with Donald, Daisy, Goofy, and Mickey. 

Paige was still terrified of the characters:

Unfortunately, it started raining pretty hard right after our lunch.  We headed over to the Safari ride and managed to see quite a few animals. 

It was still raining, so we headed to Festival of the Lion King, which is ranked as one of the best shows at Disney.  It was great!  The girls loved it:

The rain was over after the show, but Animal Kingdom closes at 5:00, so we only had time for a quick picture before heading out:

We went back to the hotel and rested and then rode the fairy from our hotel to Downtown Disney.  It was fun to walk around and we spent some time in World of Disney (which is a HUGE store with only Disney merchandise), but it was VERY crowded.  The biggest crowd we had seen all week!  So we headed back to rest for our long road trip the next day.  So sad to leave Disney, but what a great trip!
Everyone was feeling low when we started our drive the next day.  About an hour after we left, Michael suggested stopping at a beach for the night.  Who am I to argue, right?  I got online and found a hotel available, so we detoured to Jekyll Island, GA.  It worked out well- because of the location, we could make it home the next day in around 6.5 hours and so could Mamaw and Papaw. 
After the terror of the characters, Paige LOVED the beach:

Olivia was pretty excited, too:

We had a hard time keeping the sand out of Paige's mouth!  Olivia was working on a sand castle and she crawled over and tried standing on her back:

Unfortunately, right after the sun went down, the bugs came out in full force!  We were getting eaten alive, so we headed to the pool and swam for a little while before eating dinner.  Great way to end the trip! 
I was really worried about Paige in the car, but she actually did really well.  I had to sit in the back with her, but as long as I kept her entertained, the crying was kept to a minimum.  The consensus is, we love Disney and Olivia is already asking to go back!  However, Paige will be quite a bit older before we make the trip again, ha!

Disney, Part 2!

We took a nice break at the hotel and got Olivia ready for dinner with Cinderella.  She had been looking forward to this forever and it did not disappoint!  

Ready to go!

Poor Paige, I didn't have any dress up clothes for her!  She didn't seem to mind.

We got back just in time for the parade, where every character that approached Olivia curtsied to her, even the ones on silts!

Paige got lots of attention, too:

Obligatory picture in front of the castle:

Posing in front of New Fantasyland:

She was so stinking excited.  We got to castle, checked in and headed inside to get the girls pictures made with Cinderella.  We got copies included with our meal, so the only picture I have is from my phone:

Anyway, this was my view of Olivia across the table for the majority of the meal:

I don't think she ate one bite the entire meal.  We were sitting on the left side of the restaurant.  The princesses started in the middle and worked their way around the room.  She kept her eyes on them the entire time!  The first princess at our table was Snow White:

Paige liked the princesses:

Next was Sleeping Beauty:

It was amazing how well they stayed in character.  Olivia was in awe and not talking much.  Ariel asked her if she traded her voice for human legs, ha!

She loved getting their autographs and meeting each one.  She told Jasmine that she is her favorite, which is funny, because I don't think she's ever seen Aladdin.

 



































It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for Olivia!  We made it out in time to catch the electrical parade and fireworks.  Disney goes all out for everything!  We loved it!

We slept in the next morning (ha! as much as possible with 2 kids) and relaxed at the pool.

We took it easy during the day, because we had a late night planned!  We were there for the first night of Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party.  Disney has the party twice a week until Halloween.  It.was.awesome!!!  First, I talked everyone into wearing this:

I still can't believe Michael wore it!  In my research (ha!), I read that many people dress up for the party.   It was way too hot for a heavy costume, so I made these.  We got lots of compliments!  Disney sells a limited number of tickets to the party, so the crowd was almost non-existent!  We walked onto every ride.  We were handed a bag when we entered to go trick or treating, which were stations set up around the park with cast members handing out handfuls of candy.  Olivia loved it!  Michael and I did, too, because we got to ride the big rides while Mamaw and Papaw took the girls trick or treating!

One of Olivia's requests was to meet Tinkerbell, so we got in a short line at Pixie Hollow and got to meet Tink and Vidia:

Vidia took a liking to Papaw:

Getting Tinkerbell's autograph:

Funnel cake break- Daddy's request:

We headed to Enchanted Tales with Belle, which is the new attraction in Fantasyland.  First, we walked around Belle's cottage:

Then, we were invited inside to act out Belle and the Beast's story.  Papaw was picked for a part right away!

Olivia volunteered, too:

They acted out the story for Belle, then got to take their picture together:

We rode a few more rides and Paige finally passed out.  I was able to transfer her to the stroller, thank goodness!

We headed to Main St. to get a get spot for the parade.  We had some time to kill, so I took Olivia to meet more princesses!  Rapunzel, Snow White, and Cinderella were signing autographs with their princes, which doesn't happen very often:

We hurried back in time to see the headless horseman ride down Main Street:

The parade was great!

It was close to midnight when it was over.  Olivia really wanted to see Mickey and Minnie in their costumes, though, so we made another quick stop:

We finally headed back to the hotel, exhausted!  Papaw had been fighting a cold for a few days and gave us a scare having trouble breathing after carrying Olivia up a flight of stairs.  When he was feeling better, we decided to tone down our trip a little, ha!  We had been going nonstop since we arrived. 
Looks like this is turning into a 3 (maybe 4!) part series!  Stay tuned...