Happy Mother's Day!

A big "Happy Mother's Day" goes out to all you mothers out there with the biggest emphasis going to my mom (Grandma Pauline Smith), my sister (Aunt Jennifer Dueweke), Amanda's mom (Grandma Teri Stevens), and of course my beautiful wife and first-time Mother's Day participant, Amanda. Since Amanda spends so much time at home with Olivia, I thought the best gift to give her was an opportunity to get out of the house and get a little something done to make her feel better. So, I got her a half-day of beauty which includes a facial, a massage, and a manicure. I'm sure she'll enjoy it.

Overall, Olivia is doing wonderful! She's sleeping an average of 6 hours at night! That's allowing us to sleep a little more too, but we're still trying to "catch up" from the past four months. In other words, we're sleeping more, but we still don't feel rested. The only problem we're having with Olivia is a very minor one, but it's clearly visible...baby acne. With the temperature going up, Amanda and Olivia both get overly warm and tend to sweat as Olivia feeds which is causing Olivia's face to break out. It's getting better already and Amanda and I are being much more careful about how we handle her and how warm she's getting. We haven't been taking a lot of pictures of Olivia recently because of the acne, but now that it is getting better, we'll resume and we've also started thinking about getting her first "professional" pictures taken pretty soon.

Olivia is also on the verge of smiling and meaning to smile! We've got her to do it a couple times...we caught one of her first smiles on video which was really cool. I'm really looking forward to see her smile really big then hear her laugh. It will make all these weeks of diaper changes, removing stains from soiled clothes (both hers and ours), and late-night feedings worth it.

Here are some recent "unprofessional" pictures of Olivia. Since it's Mother's Day, I wanted to get a few good pictures of Amanda and Olivia. Here are two of my favorite. I also finally got a picture of the three of us! To honor my mom's request, I got a picture of Olivia's legs...in the words of my mother..."dangling like Chirstmas ornaments." I just do what I'm told. :-) Lastly, here is a picture of Olivia with Grandma Teri Stevens.