I Facetime with Cody and Oliver - mostly Oliver - a couple of times a week. They live about 100 miles South of us and I'm just not as portable as I'd like to be so I end up seeing Oliver about once a month. Facetiming with him when he was a tiny baby was like... ummmm... I think we did better with pictures. Facetiming now that he's old enough to realize that it's Nana on the phone and now that he realizes it's an interactive process is loads of fun! Usually Cody will call me after they've had dinner while Marquee is having a bath and recuperating from taking care of our crazy monkey boy all day.
Oliver is ALL boy. B-O-WHY???? Boy. He climbs all over the place. He's a daredevil. He is hilarious and adorable and full of life. He also doesn't sleep much. He doesn't have a slow speed. He is busy all the time.
Oliver is now 13 months old. He loves cars, balls, climbing on things, Scooby Doo, outside and water. If you make faces at him he will make the same face back to you. He can stick out his tongue, wiggle his eyebrows, blow raspberries, make about a dozen different motor sounds... he's just fun to play with, even over the phone.
Because I'm used to little boys... I don't freak out when they climb on things. Cody famously pushed my mom's ladder back rocking chair up against her refrigerator and climbed up... all the way to the top... and was pulling himself up on top... at 8 months old. Whenever someone at the ballfield would say, "whose kid is that way up in that tree?" I knew it was Austin. Ryan was never as much of a daredevil because he was born "grown". He found trouble in other ways. (We'll save that for another blog post... I could write volumes on Ryan. He turns 30 in November... maybe then... )
< --- in this picture Oliver is running across his couch. RUNNING. He will reach for his dad's hand when he crosses the ottoman from the couch to the loveseat. He still hasn't quite figured out how to climb up on the chair - his favorite spot because it's beside the window and he LOVES to look outside.
He's pretty good at getting down off of the furniture. He thinks that pillows are magical protection from injury and will sometimes jump with a pillow. It reminds me of when we were growing up and the two Jeffs would do Evil Knievel tricks off of our concrete slab porch. It was about three feet off the ground. They would build ramps and ride up one end and jump off the other. It's a wonder we didn't have more backyard injuries.
There was the one time Jim slid down the hill behind our house because someone yelled that "the old man" who lived in the house behind our property was coming after him. He snagged his knee on something and ended up with a lot of stitches.
Our neighborhood was your typical 1970's neighborhood... ranch houses, fenced yards, dads worked and moms stayed home, for the most part. We had a Jeff on one side of us, in the house where Cody and Marquee now live. There was John on the other side and just past his house was another Jeff. Jeff, Jeff, John and Jimmy. I played with Shannon and Karen (John and one of the Jeff's sisters) and Kim, who lived a few houses down and across the street. There were a ton of other kids in the neighborhood. I'm friends on Facebook with a lot of them. But mainly, especially during elementary school it was Jeff, Jeff, John, Shannon, Karen and Kim. The house we lived in had belonged to John and Karen's grandmother. Now my grandson lives in the house beside the house where I grew up. And Dawn who is my parents "favorite daughter" (really just a much loved neighbor) lives across the street from Cody. Her daughter lives in the house next door... where I grew up! Also... my sister-in-law Angie, being the smart woman that she is, bought the house across the street from my parents when her and Jim started getting serious. Once she was in the neighborhood it was a cinch roping her into the family! (she has since sold the house).
Oliver living in our old neighborhood... I guess he can't help but carry on the Evil Knievel traditions.
The other day I posted a picture of him standing on one of his ride on toys... here's him standing on his activity table. You can only barely see the table but...
I've bet Cody that this one ends up with stitches or a broken bone before his second birthday. Not wishing it on him, of course, just knowing... from being a boy mommy...
Notice the one picture where Little Kitty is in the upper right instead of me? He got bent out of shape because I had moved from my usual nest to another chair in my living room. He climbed all across the living room to be able to get behind me so I put the camera on him for a minute. Oliver checked him out for a hot second but he's not as impressed with cats as he is dogs. And pretty much everything else.My parents came through my living room while I was on the phone. You can tell when I'm talking to Ollie because I answer the phone screaming, "OLIVER!!!!" Which makes him giggle. I really love that kid! He seriously makes my day. I've always said that Austin is my youngest and Cody is my baby. Cody has always just been the sweet one. Oliver is like his dad... tough... but just so sweet.
Cody's birthday is on Tuesday. They're coming up next weekend and *hopefully* I can get the two babies in one place for the first time since April. Marquee's family was celebrating with Cody today. He wanted us to drive down but it's just too much car time for me. I promised him a SECOND BIRTHDAY!!!! if he came up, complete with cake, balloons, clowns... whatever he wants. So I'm really looking forward to seeing him and celebrating his 26th birthday next weekend. And I can't wait to play with my buddy Oliver!
Hope you enjoyed "Facetime With Oliver"... I know I talk about my grandchildren in every single blog post but they really are the loves of my life, my reason for getting out of bed in the morning and truly, my reward for sticking it out this long! Love and hugs, y'all!
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