I can't remember what I've mentioned and what I haven't, so here is the most recent Olivia Update:
-She can walk very well now. Still no running, though.
-She's developed some great new dance moves. A few head nods, some arm action, and a little bit of shoulder motion. No video of them yet, but maybe I'll catch her doing them on camera someday.
-She has 10 teeth (2 are molars) and I spotted another one just starting to poke through yesterday.
-She no longer minds getting her nails clipped, provided I'm willing to spend 20 minutes taking turns between her nails and mine.
-Baths are still super fun. She attacks the water with both hands and laughs in surprise when it splashes up and hits her in the face. Every time. She tried to take a bite out of the water a couple of weeks ago and got slightly wetter than she bargained for.
-Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. She eats about three times as much as I do at breakfast, but ingests amounts more suitable to her smaller size at lunch and dinner.
-Fruit is delicious.
-Vegetables are okay. Sometimes. They're better from my plate than from a jar, and worth another try when stuck to the underside of a lid. They're also more acceptable if taken between bites of fruit.
-She has a small but persistent diaper rash that only clears up when we let her sleep naked.
-She's a big help around the house. She unloads the silverware from the dishwasher everyday (and hands it to me to put away... she's too short to reach the drawer), helps put her toys away at night, finds her socks each morning, pushes my laundry baskets full of clothes from the basement door to the couch, is better than I am at rescuing the dryer balls from a completed load of clothes, and follows directions reasonably well.
-Froot Loops (well, the Aldi brand ones) are delicious, and anyone who says otherwise obviously hasn't tried them.
-Lucky Charms (well, Marshmallow Treasures) must be eaten in two phases. The first phase being the "prejudice against everything not marshmallows" phase, followed by a 5 minute intermission, followed by the second "I suppose these have sugar on them, too" phase.
-She talks a lot, and has a few words that we recognize, including "thank you," "the end," "Jesus," "good-bye,"and "you're welcome." She says "ah dee" a lot, but it refers to many things, not just daddy. I'm not sure what word it's supposed to be, but it essentially means "look at this over here!" I sometimes think I hear her say "Olivia," although it comes out more like "Leah."
-She has an excellent high five. We're now working on fist bumps.
-She likes watching videos of herself, although I'm not sure she knows that she's the one starring in them.
-The left hand is inferior. She will not use it to eat, instead tucking it down by her left leg. She will use it to drink if she feels it would be easier. She cannot turn off lights with it, although her right hand is now a quite proficient light turner-offer.
-She's 23 lbs, 6 oz and 31.5 inches tall.
-She can climb stairs. We've been practicing when we bring laundry up from the basement. I still don't trust her to not try to sit down on the stair, though.
-She knows to climb off couches feet first. Her sense of edge is a little fuzzy still, though, so sometimes she sits or rolls too close to the edge in her attempt to get her feet to the right position and I have to catch her.
We need a security system in our house so that I can have recordings of all the good moments and share them with you. On Thursday afternoon, I was making runzas while Olivia played in the kitchen. Since she was occupying herself well, I paid very little attention to her. However, I did occasionally glance around to see her doing various interesting things: flat on her belly to examine the space under the fridge, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed while she lectured her koala, unnesting the bowls into a line, swinging a pair of bright pink slipper socks above her head like a lasso... I thought about getting the camera, but figured that would remind her I was in the room. When my preparations took me into the dining room, though, I grabbed the camera, only to discover that the battery was dead. Oh well.
A few weeks ago, Olivia saw her first Ohio snow. She was confused at first, and then didn't care. It wasn't sticking, so mostly she just saw white raindrops. Her first snow-sighting ever was last December when we went to the Grand Canyon. It DID stick there, but she was too young to be impressed. Since our snow, the weather here has been quite nice.
On Thursday, Olivia got into a fight with the sidewalk. The sidewalk won. Since it was so beautiful outside, we decided to go for a walk. Bryan had never been for a walk with a one-year-old in which said one-year-old is allowed to be walking and not riding. We meandered along, stopping to examine piles of dirt and pick up rocks. We even had an occasional moment where we came to a complete stop and sat in the middle of the sidewalk (to examine our rocks, of course) before standing up and moving on. After about ten minutes of this, though, it was decided by our walk coordinator that we should run. Or at least walk as fast as the coordinator could go. Unfortunately, the sidewalk sloped downward slightly and the coordinator is still a little lacking in coordination. Olivia now has a lovely series of war wounds on her nose. I think she looks a bit like a bruised fruit.
