Olivia at 2.75 years

Welp! My daughter is almost three! Summer is almost over! My daughter is almost three!!!!! We just went to the Game Fair, which is a sporting show with exhibitors, puppies, and a bunch of hunting dog events. I grew up going there with my dad, and Chris and I usually would bring Toby, but since Olivia has come the last two years, we decided right now a dog and a toddler was too much.

Olivia got to ride the school bus with us again that would shuttle us to the fairgrounds and she was so happy she actually looked at the camera and smiled, which rarely happens.

This girl loves being outside, playing in any sort of water—puddles to swimming pools to splash pads, trying to steal drinks of my coffee or Dasani (“pop”), watching Grey’s Anatomy reruns—which she deems “Your doctor movie!”, playing with her doctor kit, art projects, puzzles, wrestling with Daddy, and talking on the phone to Gigi and Pop.

Stats

Clothing size: 3T, still fits some 2T

Height and Weight: 37 inches (3’1”) and 34.5 lbs according to home measurements

Eating

Well, no surprise here, she still continues to be a good eater. Lately, it’s been hummus and carrot sticks that have been favorites. She wants hummus with everything. She loves pizza, eating it by the slice like a “big girl.” She’s been actually really good when we take her to restaurants and loves her kid’s meals. She’s still nursing about twice a day. Her and Chris have been having fun baking and making pizza dough. She continues to love helping us cook. We even got her her own kids knife and she has so fun with it.

Her latest weird toddler antics now involve loving some sort of food one day and then refusing to eat it the next. Take cheddar brats—Johnsonville. Delicious right? She ate an entire one for dinner one night and then snubbed it the next day for leftovers. But then, strangely enough, the girl who wouldn’t ever eat rice ate the cilantro lime cauliflower rice I made one night for dinner.

Sleeping

Still taking her afternoon nap, for about 1.5 hours. Even at daycare, she’s doing great during naptime with the other kids, which definitely surprised me because she was so particular with naps. It makes me feel better for our trip at the end of September with her napping in the second bed in our lodge. She’s been good with Chris going down at night, but she did go through a stage where she was constantly coming out of her room, sometimes four or five times after he laid her down. I think it was a growth spurt because she’s since settled down and now it’s only sometimes when she comes out, usually to want to poop or have one of us lay with her. I didn’t want to start that habit, but it’s few and far between and she’s good at letting us leave after a few minutes.

Potty Training

She’s been doing good! She’ll have some off days where there are accidents, but if we’re on top of it, asking her to go every one to two hours, she does well. She actually does best when I set an egg timer for an hour and when it rings, she gets really excited and runs to the bathroom. “Time to go potty!!!” So hey, whatever works, right? She’s been doing great at pooping. Usually, she saves it for right before bed or five minutes after she went to bed and wants to come back out. But I guess at least she’s consistent, and I haven’t had to do prunes for her constipation in a long time. I put away her little Minnie potty and she’s been using the regular toilet because I got sick of cleaning it out constantly.

She does pretty well in public restrooms. We went through a stage where she would refuse to use the regular toilet because she was traumatized by an automatic flush and I had to make sure we always brought the Potette Potty with so she could use that on the floor. But somehow Chris was able to convince her last month to do it and now she’s been fine, just clapping her hands over her ears the entire time we’re in the stall. But don’t ever ask her to use the blow dryer for her hands.

Health

We had two weird episodes two months apart with her vomiting right after picking her up from daycare and this last one was right when she and Chris pulled into the driveway from daycare. I had talked to her daycare and we both were stumped. We weren’t sure if it was her overheating, if it was her on the tire swing and she overdid it, or what. Of course, it unsettles me with the whole anxiety thing, but once again, she’s been perfectly fine after. Besides for that, she’s been pretty healthy, getting a few days of sniffles and congestion here and there, but then it goes away.

She has all her teeth now and is doing great brushing and flossing every night. I’m not great at getting to them in the morning and need to start a new habit for that. She has a dentist visit at the end of September, so we’ll find out how she’s doing now.

Language

Oh her language, where do I begin? This girl has something new and hilarious to say every day. Every day she says something that boggles my mind, like how did she get this big to say this? “Mama, what you say to me?” she says whenever she wants me to repeat something.

One thing she’s started doing recently is saying, “I wuv you too, Mama,” when I tell her I love her. I used to have to prompt her and now she just says it, and it’s pretty amazing, like my heart might melt into a puddle of goo.

She’s also really inquisitive and wants to know everything. “What dat name?” she’ll say as she points to a person walking past us. “Mama, you listening to me?” when I talk over her head to someone. Hysterical, this girl.

Milestones

She’s been loving playing board games, like Memory and Yahtzee where she will sit there for 20 minutes and shake the dice in the cup and spill them. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s great when I need to write emails. She also loves playing Jenga with us and concentrates hard at pulling out the pieces to stack. She’s also started becoming really interested in puzzles and I just bought her some at the consignment sale, ones that are more complicated with more pieces. She’s been in Heaven.

She loves talking about her friends, especially the ones at her daycare. “I want to go to Miss Sarah’s house!” Everything is about when she can go back to daycare.

Her speech is 95% understandable to me, slightly less to Chris and she probably has a 50% success rate with everyone else. She says her name is “O-widdie” which I can’t even handle and is probably the cutest thing she could ever say.

Activities

I don’t even know what happened to this summer, but it’s coming to an end and it’s flown by. She’s been in daycare 2-3 days a week so that automatically cuts out our time for usual summer activities. There isn’t much time to visit friends, but I’ve been doing my best. We got her little pool set up in the backyard and made it to the splash time once. The library has been a fun place to visit, especially when we have nothing scheduled and need something to do and it’s hot out.

We made it to the Children’s Museum, the water park, Pride, and our county fair. It’s been so much fun doing these things with her because she’s so animated and gets excited about everything.

This fall we plan on getting out and hiking and doing a lot of things outside. I can’t wait for our trip to the North Shore next month. And the next update I post on Olivia is when she will turning three, which honestly blows my mind. How am I going to have a three year old?