Cute, mini Olivia stories…
Bunny Ears
Uncle Ryan told Travis that Olivia was going to grow bunny ears because of all the chocolate milk that I had been drinking. No joke, I drank a ton of chocolate milk when I was pregnant, in the hospital, and I’m still craving it while I’m breastfeeding!
Sleeping Patterns
Olivia has been sleeping really well. Most nights I have to wake her up to feed her. She keeps her daddy up with her little “coo” noises, grunts, “meeps” and sighs. She really is the perfect baby though. We are so blessed to have her. While I’m extremely tired, I have been able to get stretches of three or four hours of sleep at a time. She’s started waking me up around 2am and 6am, which allows me to get some good sleep.
Playing Dress Up
Most of the clothes that we had for Olivia were green, yellow, and white so our neighbors who have a little girl, Kate, brought over a big bag of pink hand-me-downs! I have had so much fun dressing her up in her little pink outfits! Travis says that Olivia is like a glorified Barbie doll to me. However; he can’t make too much fun of me because when my mom and I were at the store my dad and Travis dressed her up in her UT cheerleading outfit and posed her for about 20 pictures!
Olivia’s Favorite Toy
Newborns apparently can focus best on black and white images around 8-12 inches from their face. Olivia loves this zebra that I purchased from Kirkland’s. She will stare at it for an hour. She is fascinated with it! I will place her in her crib with the zebra and she started talking and making little noises – she loves it!
Olivia’s Trips to the Doctor
My mother went with me to Olivia’s one-week doctor’s appointment. When the nurses stripped her down and placed her on the scales to weigh her – she tinkled everywhere! When she was discharged she only weighed 7lbs 8oz and she weighed in at 8lbs 2 oz. Dr. Myers was so impressed with Olivia’s growth. She is in the 89th percentile for height, 60th percentile for weight, and 50th percentile for head circumference.
During her two-week check-up, Olivia pooped all over herself! She shot poop clear up her back! It was all over her baby blanket – she had mom, dad, and the doctor almost in tears we were laughing so hard! Travis said that he couldn’t quite clean her from front to back this time! She weighed 8 lbs 12 oz – more phenomenal growth! The doctor told me that she’s eating very well and that I don’t need to wake her up at night to feed her anymore. Yeah, I need my sleep!
Mom’s Allergic Reactions
I was allergic to the tape that they used for my c-section incision, so I broke out in a horrible rash and blistered up pretty bad. The doctor’s put me on a bunch of allergy medication and I ended up having more reactions to the medication. I have had a traveling rash that’s moved from my face, breasts, tummy, ears, and mouth. Apparently I’m extremely sensitive to certain types of adhesive tape.
Olivia’s First Outings
Other than Olivia’s trips to the doctor – her first meal out was lunch with Grandmother Joy at Bread and Company. We also took her by Belk to show her to some of my old employees. They were all excited to see her and thought that she was so beautiful. Then daddy and I took her to Lowe’s, Toys R Us, and Target (not all in the same day). We also took her by Fifth Third and TN Bank and Trust to show to some of Travis’s friends. Her Mimi and daddy tried to take her and Baxter on a walk around the neighborhood one night, but Olivia was not enjoying her stroller. So, Mimi ended up carrying Olivia for the entire walk while daddy walked Baxter and the stroller.
Olivia’s First Day at Church
This morning we dressed Olivia up in this precious dress that my friend Lynne gave her and took her to church for the first time. She slept through the entire service. The lesson was on forgiveness and how forgiveness requires change. Her daddy said that when she is older he will always remind her that she slept through the lesson on forgiveness. Afterwards we went out to eat at Panera Bread and then swung by to visit our friends Gabby and Frank who just had a baby boy, Cole.
Baby Faces & Noises
Olivia makes the sweetest noises. We think that she’s going to be a talker. She loves to make little coos, sighs, and grunts. She also makes these funny grunting noises when I’m feeding her and she has extremely loud hick ups like her mama. She also inherited her mommy’s long tongue, which she loves to stick out all of the time.
Zoolander Pose
Olivia loves to touch her face with her hands. She’s always striking Vogue poses, but the cutest is when she makes a kiss face with her lips and puts one hand up to her cheek like Ben Stiller’s signature face in his Zoolander movie.
Funny Daddy stories
One morning Travis was so tired from being up all night that after he got out of the shower he put shaving gel in his hair instead of on his face! He realized what he did and had to hop back into the shower.
One night Olivia was lying on Travis’s belly and she lifted up her head and projectile vomited right into his mouth and all over his shirt. It was really disgusting, but at the same time hilarious! I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to grab a burp cloth for him. Needless to say I don’t think that Travis enjoyed the taste of breast milk too much!
Olivia’s First Road Trip to Knoxville
Olivia was not a happy camper on the ride to East Tennessee. Big brother, Baxter, was very concerned about her and kept looking at us like “are you going to do something about this?” When I climbed into the back seat to try to console Olivia, Baxter stuck one paw over my arm and started licking me. He was just trying to make sure that mama was takin’ care of.
Attack of the Giraffes
Olivia better love giraffes – if not we are in trouble because she’s not even five weeks old and she already has about fifty giraffes in her nursery! Her nursery is decorated in an African animal theme; however, the giraffes have taken over!
The Story of Olivia's Birth
Two days before Olivia was born I met with O’More Publishing about the children’s book that I wrote and illustrated in memory of Anita (Olivia’s grandmother that passed away from breast cancer in July 2008). They loved the story and illustrations and want to publish it by next spring or summer! I also worked some at Belk and commentated their Back to School fashion show. The night before Olivia was born, Travis and I cleaned the house and went grocery shopping at Costco (it’s a good thing)!
At 1:30am on Thursday, August 21st I woke up to discover that my water (just the floor sack) had broken. I wasn’t having any contractions, so I called the doctor and they said to wait about 30 minutes to see if I started feeling anything. About an hour later I was consistently having contractions about five minutes apart. I ate a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal because I was hungry and I had a feeling that I would be in labor all day then I took a shower and woke Travis up. I was excited and a little nervous, but amazingly calm. Because I wasn’t in any hurry and wasn’t in any pain – Travis thought for sure that this was a false alarm and that we would be sent home from the hospital. When we arrived at Williamson Medical around 4:30am they did a couple of tests to see if my water had in fact broken. In the mean time, I called mom so that she could have a heads up. She immediately hopped in the car and began her three-hour drive from Knoxville to Franklin even though I told her that it could be false labor. She couldn’t wait! Travis joked with the nurses and said “Oh no, your mom might hit 65 mph on the interstate!” She is an extremely slow driver! Anyways, it’s a good thing that she left because we found out that my floor sack had broken and that we would have to deliver within 18 hours or infection could set in. There was also an unfortunate school shooting that morning, so all of Knox County schools went on lock down, so mom would have been stuck at Bearden High School if she hadn’t left when she did. Once, we got word from the doctor that we would be having the baby that day – Travis tried to call his parents. When he called his mom’s house, Bruce answered and said that Susan was going to flip out. She was on a bus with a bunch of Fifth Third seniors on their way to Indiana! She wasn’t picking up her cell phone either. Luckily she checked her messages and yelled out to the bus driver, “Stop the bus, her water broke!” You can only imagine what the bus driver must have been wondering driving a busload of women over 65! Anyways, he pulled over and dropped Susan off so that Bruce could drive out to pick her up. Two very close calls! Whew!
The doctors broke my water sack around the baby and gave me some drugs to induce labor because I was still only dilated 1 cm. When they broke my water they discovered that the baby had already made a bowel movement. Every couple of hours, they would check my cervix. I wasn’t progressing like they wanted me to, but around 4pm I finally started feeling my contractions. They were so strong that I got sick and that’s when I told them that I was ready for the epidural. After the epidural – I felt great. They checked me at 7pm and I was only dilated 4cm, so the doctor told me that we may need to talk about a c-section. At 10pm, Dr. Rupe came back to check me and she said that I was still only at 4cm, so she explained that they needed to get the baby out as soon as possible.
The nurses had some trouble finding scrub pants that were big enough to fit Travis! He said that he felt like he was the one in labor because he could hardly sit down the scrub pants were so tight! The situation really helped keep me calm considering the circumstances. I was extremely nervous and scared for the baby’s safety. Travis did a good job of keeping me calm. I had the shakes from the epidural, so it was hard for me to relax. At 10:53pm – Travis announced the words that we waited nine months to hear, “It’s a GIRL!” We heard her let out a cute little cry and saw how big and healthy looking she was. Both of us were in tears. She was so beautiful. Once they laid her on the table next to my head, she looked right at me and stuck out her long, tiny tongue (she likes to do this a lot). I was expecting our baby to have a head full of black hair like I had at birth, but she had a head full of gorgeous strawberry blonde hair just like Travis’s baby pictures. She was amazing. After that I fell asleep and the next thing that I remember was the nurses bringing her into our hospital room all bundled up. I fed her for the first time and then we sent her to the nursery so that we could get some sleep. It had been a long 22 hours.
We named our little girl, Olivia Wren, a name that we had chosen before we knew what we were having. We loved the name Olivia and Wren is obviously a family name from my mother’s side. Olivia weighed 7lbs 15 oz and was 21 inches long. Everyone thought that we were having a boy, except for my mother and Reid. I had a feeling that I was having a girl, but was still unsure what to expect.
We had so many visitors the next few days. Susan and Laura were arguing over who got to hold Olivia. Laura gave Susan “Mimi” the nickname “MeanMi!” Because I had to have a c-section – they kept me for a couple extra days. I had a hard time getting out of bed, so Travis had to do most of the diaper changing and swaddling. He was such a natural with her – really I was so impressed with him. He was so thrilled to have a little girl. I can tell that Olivia is going to have him wrapped around her little finger. He called her his “Olivia Bag of Donuts” at the hospital because she looked like a burrito wrapped up in her hospital blanket and Travis always orders the Joey Bag of Donuts at Moe’s fast food restaurant.
The second or third night that we spent at the hospital (all of the nights and days ran together) Olivia’s ankle bracelet fell off when the lactation specialist was in our room trying to help me feed her. It set off all the alarms and two nurses came running into our room to make sure that someone wasn’t trying to steal her!
When we brought Olivia home for the first time – Baxter sniffed her all over. He wasn’t quite sure what to think of her, but surprisingly he was very well behaved. He just laid down right beside her car seat in the den. Now he is not as impressed with her unless she starts moving or making noises.
Bunny Ears
Uncle Ryan told Travis that Olivia was going to grow bunny ears because of all the chocolate milk that I had been drinking. No joke, I drank a ton of chocolate milk when I was pregnant, in the hospital, and I’m still craving it while I’m breastfeeding!
Sleeping Patterns
Olivia has been sleeping really well. Most nights I have to wake her up to feed her. She keeps her daddy up with her little “coo” noises, grunts, “meeps” and sighs. She really is the perfect baby though. We are so blessed to have her. While I’m extremely tired, I have been able to get stretches of three or four hours of sleep at a time. She’s started waking me up around 2am and 6am, which allows me to get some good sleep.
Playing Dress Up
Most of the clothes that we had for Olivia were green, yellow, and white so our neighbors who have a little girl, Kate, brought over a big bag of pink hand-me-downs! I have had so much fun dressing her up in her little pink outfits! Travis says that Olivia is like a glorified Barbie doll to me. However; he can’t make too much fun of me because when my mom and I were at the store my dad and Travis dressed her up in her UT cheerleading outfit and posed her for about 20 pictures!
Olivia’s Favorite Toy
Newborns apparently can focus best on black and white images around 8-12 inches from their face. Olivia loves this zebra that I purchased from Kirkland’s. She will stare at it for an hour. She is fascinated with it! I will place her in her crib with the zebra and she started talking and making little noises – she loves it!
Olivia’s Trips to the Doctor
My mother went with me to Olivia’s one-week doctor’s appointment. When the nurses stripped her down and placed her on the scales to weigh her – she tinkled everywhere! When she was discharged she only weighed 7lbs 8oz and she weighed in at 8lbs 2 oz. Dr. Myers was so impressed with Olivia’s growth. She is in the 89th percentile for height, 60th percentile for weight, and 50th percentile for head circumference.
During her two-week check-up, Olivia pooped all over herself! She shot poop clear up her back! It was all over her baby blanket – she had mom, dad, and the doctor almost in tears we were laughing so hard! Travis said that he couldn’t quite clean her from front to back this time! She weighed 8 lbs 12 oz – more phenomenal growth! The doctor told me that she’s eating very well and that I don’t need to wake her up at night to feed her anymore. Yeah, I need my sleep!
Mom’s Allergic Reactions
I was allergic to the tape that they used for my c-section incision, so I broke out in a horrible rash and blistered up pretty bad. The doctor’s put me on a bunch of allergy medication and I ended up having more reactions to the medication. I have had a traveling rash that’s moved from my face, breasts, tummy, ears, and mouth. Apparently I’m extremely sensitive to certain types of adhesive tape.
Olivia’s First Outings
Other than Olivia’s trips to the doctor – her first meal out was lunch with Grandmother Joy at Bread and Company. We also took her by Belk to show her to some of my old employees. They were all excited to see her and thought that she was so beautiful. Then daddy and I took her to Lowe’s, Toys R Us, and Target (not all in the same day). We also took her by Fifth Third and TN Bank and Trust to show to some of Travis’s friends. Her Mimi and daddy tried to take her and Baxter on a walk around the neighborhood one night, but Olivia was not enjoying her stroller. So, Mimi ended up carrying Olivia for the entire walk while daddy walked Baxter and the stroller.
Olivia’s First Day at Church
This morning we dressed Olivia up in this precious dress that my friend Lynne gave her and took her to church for the first time. She slept through the entire service. The lesson was on forgiveness and how forgiveness requires change. Her daddy said that when she is older he will always remind her that she slept through the lesson on forgiveness. Afterwards we went out to eat at Panera Bread and then swung by to visit our friends Gabby and Frank who just had a baby boy, Cole.
Baby Faces & Noises
Olivia makes the sweetest noises. We think that she’s going to be a talker. She loves to make little coos, sighs, and grunts. She also makes these funny grunting noises when I’m feeding her and she has extremely loud hick ups like her mama. She also inherited her mommy’s long tongue, which she loves to stick out all of the time.
Zoolander Pose
Olivia loves to touch her face with her hands. She’s always striking Vogue poses, but the cutest is when she makes a kiss face with her lips and puts one hand up to her cheek like Ben Stiller’s signature face in his Zoolander movie.
Funny Daddy stories
One morning Travis was so tired from being up all night that after he got out of the shower he put shaving gel in his hair instead of on his face! He realized what he did and had to hop back into the shower.
One night Olivia was lying on Travis’s belly and she lifted up her head and projectile vomited right into his mouth and all over his shirt. It was really disgusting, but at the same time hilarious! I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to grab a burp cloth for him. Needless to say I don’t think that Travis enjoyed the taste of breast milk too much!
Olivia’s First Road Trip to Knoxville
Olivia was not a happy camper on the ride to East Tennessee. Big brother, Baxter, was very concerned about her and kept looking at us like “are you going to do something about this?” When I climbed into the back seat to try to console Olivia, Baxter stuck one paw over my arm and started licking me. He was just trying to make sure that mama was takin’ care of.
Attack of the Giraffes
Olivia better love giraffes – if not we are in trouble because she’s not even five weeks old and she already has about fifty giraffes in her nursery! Her nursery is decorated in an African animal theme; however, the giraffes have taken over!
The Story of Olivia's Birth
Two days before Olivia was born I met with O’More Publishing about the children’s book that I wrote and illustrated in memory of Anita (Olivia’s grandmother that passed away from breast cancer in July 2008). They loved the story and illustrations and want to publish it by next spring or summer! I also worked some at Belk and commentated their Back to School fashion show. The night before Olivia was born, Travis and I cleaned the house and went grocery shopping at Costco (it’s a good thing)!
At 1:30am on Thursday, August 21st I woke up to discover that my water (just the floor sack) had broken. I wasn’t having any contractions, so I called the doctor and they said to wait about 30 minutes to see if I started feeling anything. About an hour later I was consistently having contractions about five minutes apart. I ate a bowl of Rice Krispies cereal because I was hungry and I had a feeling that I would be in labor all day then I took a shower and woke Travis up. I was excited and a little nervous, but amazingly calm. Because I wasn’t in any hurry and wasn’t in any pain – Travis thought for sure that this was a false alarm and that we would be sent home from the hospital. When we arrived at Williamson Medical around 4:30am they did a couple of tests to see if my water had in fact broken. In the mean time, I called mom so that she could have a heads up. She immediately hopped in the car and began her three-hour drive from Knoxville to Franklin even though I told her that it could be false labor. She couldn’t wait! Travis joked with the nurses and said “Oh no, your mom might hit 65 mph on the interstate!” She is an extremely slow driver! Anyways, it’s a good thing that she left because we found out that my floor sack had broken and that we would have to deliver within 18 hours or infection could set in. There was also an unfortunate school shooting that morning, so all of Knox County schools went on lock down, so mom would have been stuck at Bearden High School if she hadn’t left when she did. Once, we got word from the doctor that we would be having the baby that day – Travis tried to call his parents. When he called his mom’s house, Bruce answered and said that Susan was going to flip out. She was on a bus with a bunch of Fifth Third seniors on their way to Indiana! She wasn’t picking up her cell phone either. Luckily she checked her messages and yelled out to the bus driver, “Stop the bus, her water broke!” You can only imagine what the bus driver must have been wondering driving a busload of women over 65! Anyways, he pulled over and dropped Susan off so that Bruce could drive out to pick her up. Two very close calls! Whew!
The doctors broke my water sack around the baby and gave me some drugs to induce labor because I was still only dilated 1 cm. When they broke my water they discovered that the baby had already made a bowel movement. Every couple of hours, they would check my cervix. I wasn’t progressing like they wanted me to, but around 4pm I finally started feeling my contractions. They were so strong that I got sick and that’s when I told them that I was ready for the epidural. After the epidural – I felt great. They checked me at 7pm and I was only dilated 4cm, so the doctor told me that we may need to talk about a c-section. At 10pm, Dr. Rupe came back to check me and she said that I was still only at 4cm, so she explained that they needed to get the baby out as soon as possible.
The nurses had some trouble finding scrub pants that were big enough to fit Travis! He said that he felt like he was the one in labor because he could hardly sit down the scrub pants were so tight! The situation really helped keep me calm considering the circumstances. I was extremely nervous and scared for the baby’s safety. Travis did a good job of keeping me calm. I had the shakes from the epidural, so it was hard for me to relax. At 10:53pm – Travis announced the words that we waited nine months to hear, “It’s a GIRL!” We heard her let out a cute little cry and saw how big and healthy looking she was. Both of us were in tears. She was so beautiful. Once they laid her on the table next to my head, she looked right at me and stuck out her long, tiny tongue (she likes to do this a lot). I was expecting our baby to have a head full of black hair like I had at birth, but she had a head full of gorgeous strawberry blonde hair just like Travis’s baby pictures. She was amazing. After that I fell asleep and the next thing that I remember was the nurses bringing her into our hospital room all bundled up. I fed her for the first time and then we sent her to the nursery so that we could get some sleep. It had been a long 22 hours.
We named our little girl, Olivia Wren, a name that we had chosen before we knew what we were having. We loved the name Olivia and Wren is obviously a family name from my mother’s side. Olivia weighed 7lbs 15 oz and was 21 inches long. Everyone thought that we were having a boy, except for my mother and Reid. I had a feeling that I was having a girl, but was still unsure what to expect.
We had so many visitors the next few days. Susan and Laura were arguing over who got to hold Olivia. Laura gave Susan “Mimi” the nickname “MeanMi!” Because I had to have a c-section – they kept me for a couple extra days. I had a hard time getting out of bed, so Travis had to do most of the diaper changing and swaddling. He was such a natural with her – really I was so impressed with him. He was so thrilled to have a little girl. I can tell that Olivia is going to have him wrapped around her little finger. He called her his “Olivia Bag of Donuts” at the hospital because she looked like a burrito wrapped up in her hospital blanket and Travis always orders the Joey Bag of Donuts at Moe’s fast food restaurant.
The second or third night that we spent at the hospital (all of the nights and days ran together) Olivia’s ankle bracelet fell off when the lactation specialist was in our room trying to help me feed her. It set off all the alarms and two nurses came running into our room to make sure that someone wasn’t trying to steal her!
When we brought Olivia home for the first time – Baxter sniffed her all over. He wasn’t quite sure what to think of her, but surprisingly he was very well behaved. He just laid down right beside her car seat in the den. Now he is not as impressed with her unless she starts moving or making noises.
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