Babbling, Baby Bjorns and Bujos

How about all that alliteration, huh?? It's amazing how I amuse myself these days!

Babbling

Olivia is getting very close to moving from "pre-babbling", which is making a bunch of random noises, to "babbling", which as I understand it entails making the same sounds over and over. Among her favorites are the "L" sound, which usually sounds something like "Ooooh-LA" and the Spanish "en-ye" sound, you know the "n" with a funny squiggle above it!?!?!?! It's been so much fun talking with Olivia, she's getting really good at taking turns talking. Leslie or I will talk and then she'll talk, then we'll talk, then she'll talk, etc., etc. Her cochlear implant has been a miracle, there is no doubt about how well it's working. When that thing is on,she's a different person. Olivia is even starting to start talking to us just when we come into her view, something that's so great. She seems to get shy around Aunt Lisa for some reason...we'll work on that Lisa!

I hope she grows up to be like her dad, talking all the time and asking a ton of questions. I hope I'm like my dad and I have the patience to answer all of the questions!

Baby Bjorn

Among Olivia's newest possessions is a Baby Bjorn. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's the sling-like contraptions you see parents wearing with their children dangling in front of them. Honestly, I was extremely skeptical of this thing. In fact, I flat out refused to buy one for 15 months or so...man, what a mistake. I was totally wrong, this thing is awesome. Olivia loves it, we love it and it frees up our hands!



Olivia loves this thing, we've taken her the Greek Festival in it, on walks, to the new Market Square Park in downtown Houston (many times)...all over the place.

Bujos

For those of you that don't know the story, one of our favorite nicknames for Olivia is "bujo", which comes from the Spanish word "buho", which means "owl." We had a couple of nice ladies cleaning our house for a while (since gone, budget cuts) and one day Olivia was wearing a onesie with an owl on it and they taught us the term "buho", which we turned into "bujo"...OK, it's one of those stories where you have to be there for it to be funny, but it is to us. The best part of the whole story is that Gramma Mary made Olivia a owl/bujo outfit for Halloween so be on the lookout for those photos soon.

Update on Olivia's Progress and the Anat Baniel Method

I feel like every time I start a new blog the first sentence goes something like "It's been a long time since I posted to Olivia's blog, sorry about that, I'll try better in the future to post more frequently." We this post is now different...It's been a long time since I posted to Olivia's blog, sorry about that, I'll try better in the future to post more frequently.

I've come to realize that while I want to provide everyone with a periodic update on Olivia, so many other things come first. Most of that time, that's something for Olivia so I apologize if we don't post as much as we could, but we're trying really hard to!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since our last post, Olivia has been getting more and more accustomed to her cochlear implant. Our daily struggle is keeping the magnet on her head, something we expect to get much better when she starts sitting on her own more regularly and for longer periods of time. Olivia have been doing great; to me, the implant has been the single greatest aid for her. For a short time, she wasn't making many noises when she has her magnet on but recently she's been talking like crazy. Leslie and I can't stop saying how much she "talks" with us. We've even noticed that she starts fussing when it falls off. If that's actually the case than her implant is working incredibly well for her! We continue to talk with her as much as we can and expose her to new and interesting sounds. Olivia really like music too, so far her favorites are "Toddler Radio" on Pandora, "Rammstein Radio" on Pandora (this is NOT a joke, for some reason she loves death metal - it makes her smile all the time) and "Zac Brown Band Radio" on Pandora.

Again, she really loves Death Metal...no idea why, but every time I take her to Bayou City CrossFit, which plays pretty loud and intense music, she loves it! In fact, I had her at Bayou City last Friday and the Saturday before that, she had a blast! She loves her Uncle Vic and Aunt Katie and all the other great folks there who like to catch on world events with her.

We've also started Olivia is another therapy which integrates teaching Olivia movements with nueral mapping. It's a really interesting method called the Anat Baniel Method (ABM) and is based on the work of Moshe Feldenkrais who was apparently a renowned movement expert. We took Olivia to San Rafeal, CA last month to spend a week at Anat Baniel's center and saw great results...it was the first therapy that Olivia didn't consistently hate. In fact, she was smiling quite a bit. We saw results too, I feel Olivia has become better organized and was sitting for long periods of time (so awesome). Since then, we've been seeing an ABM practioner in Houston. So far, so good...we'll see how it goes in the long run.