Olivia at Two and A Half Years

Note: Originally written May 18th 2018.

These last three months have been all about language development. I can’t believe how far she’s come since then. We’re facing the end of her ECFE class, and the end of this freakishly cold/snowy winter.

Mother’s Day was last weekend and it was as emotional as it was the last few years. I held it together until Olivia ran over to me with her card she had decorated and then I lost it. Maybe one of these years I can make it through a Mother’s Day without crying?

We spent the day at my grandparents’, as per tradition where I ate my body weight in chips and dip as per tradition, and Olivia had a blast running around with her cousin. Pictures were a bit dismal this year, but hey, I think it perfectly captures the personality that is Olivia.

Stats

Clothing size: 3T, still fits some 2 T and 24 months

Height and Weight: 3 feet tall and 32 lbs

Eating

Well, she loves food. Tacos, spaghetti, and breakfast foods remain her favorite meals. She loves all fruits, and I got her to eat some carrots for a hot second, but cucumbers are really only the real vegetables she will eat, unless you count cooked or sauteed mushrooms or spinach in a smoothie. Really, I don’t consider her a picky eater, because though there are meals she won’t eat, I can get her to try most of them at least. She’s pretty good at eating burgers now, and will eat some chicken. She’s still weird and won’t eat things like chicken nuggets, fries, mashed potatoes. You know, things that are delicious. I’m finally trusting of her drinking from an open cup, which she does really well with and even can remember the rules when I ask her what they are: “NO HANDS!” as she waves them around. We made up that rule when I would catch her happily splashing in her cup.

We’ve been letting her cook with us as much as possible and it’s one of her favorite things. She’s actually not bad at it, with dumping in ingredients, stirring, measuring.

She’s nursing mostly in the mornings and some afternoons before nap unless she falls asleep in the car and I can transfer her to bed. We have to wean by October and according to her, there’s no end in sight.

Sleeping

She’s in a full-size bed now! Her sleep sort of sucks because of that and going to bed can be a hit or miss. Sometimes she will stay in bed, and on a good night she’ll come out once and want to go potty. Otherwise, it’s twice and sometimes three times. I’ve been staying away while Chris puts her to bed, or else she’ll want to nurse. Once she’s asleep, usually around 8:00, she’ll sleep all night, occasionally waking to come in bed with us and nurse. However, she’s now up for the day anywhere from 5:30-6: 30 am. When she was still in her crib, she’d sleep until at least 7, so that’s been the hardest adjustment.

She’s still on one nap in the afternoon, an hour and a half, and sometimes will sleep for two hours. It doesn’t give me a lot of time for myself.

Potty Training

Ah, potty training has commenced. Since April 26th to be exact. So it’s about three weeks into this and it’s going as well as can be expected. We started out trying to keep her as naked as we could from the waist down and kept her Minnie Mouse potty in the room we were hanging out in. I’d say she’s had 1-3 accidents a day, so it hasn’t been too bad. She’s perfectly fine using the Potette Travel Potty when we’re out in the backyard or at the park. I don’t know. It’s kind of going better than I expected, sort of. It’s still challenging. There are still frustrations. I mean, as long as we are on top of it, she does pretty well. She won’t tell us she has to go, but sometimes she will run to her potty and sit down without prompting. There’s hope for us.

Health

She was sick with a cough and cold almost all of March and April, and I think I caught the tail end of it, but for the most part, it wasn’t too bad. She had a random puke episode at the end of April, right after she started at daycare and of course, I was in total panic mode, but it was just the one time and it was possibly related to the sudden hot weather we had. Regardless, she’s been good in that department since then. She has two of her two-year molars coming in and the other two are about to come in, if they haven’t popped through already. I took her back to the pediatric dentist we saw last time and she did a bit better, being that instead of screaming bloody murder for her whole exam, she smiled a little and talked to the dentist before screaming bloody murder for her whole exam. But she’s been flossing every night with Chris like a champ after brushing her teeth, so everything looked good.

Language

For the longest time, we were Mamo and Dado. She recently started her “eey”s at the end of words and suddenly one day it was Mommy and Daddy and we’ve never looked back. That also includes my sister Natalie going from “Nano” to “Nannie” which is all sorts of adorable because it was and still is my nickname for Natalie. Her little cousin’s nickname has gone from Baboo to Babo. Funny how her names for us evolve as her language comes together.

She’s been obsessed with asking us what our names are. Bless her heart, I’m “Ri”, he’s “Ki” and the only one she can actually pronounce is my dad’s name. Still doesn’t stop her from asking us incessantly about everyone’s name. She’s even been asking now about other people: “What dat name?” as she points to the random boy across the street.

Her speech articulation has been getting a lot better. I’m her main translator, but even I can’t decipher everything. Like, I remember, a month shy of 2.5, she says to me: “I want pee poo.” “What?” “Mommy, I want pee poo.”

Yeah… Playdough. Who knew?

But overall, she’s doing so well. She’s stringing together 4-6 word sentences, and sometimes even a 7-worder. Yes, there is no end to the number of words she can speak a day. Whew. Girlfriend is a chatterer.

Milestones

She’s been doing awesome at saying the names of her friends and she is obsessed with asking us what our names are, and the names of her grandparents and aunties. She doesn’t quite get that some people we call by name, is actually their, well, name. Like, she’ll ask “Wha Toby’s name?” And then we tell her Toby’s name is Toby and she’s all “Ohhh!! Toby!!”

She can throw a ball overhand (which doesn’t end too well in the skeeball machine at the arcade) and can jump up and down. She’s getting bold and starting to go downstairs without needing a railing. Most of the time she’s successful. She’s been pretty good at naming colors and gets it right most of the time. She can also count to ten and it’s mostly understandable. In fact, she’s obsessed with counting things. She can put her socks on and sort of get her pants on.

Activities

Since she’s been in daycare two days a week, which she loves, we’ve toned down the activities. Her last day of ECFE was today and I brought some cards and coffee gift cards to her teachers. We’re not doing a summer class, but I have no idea what we’ll do in the fall since she can’t do the pre-preschool type class that I was hoping for because she won’t be three by the school year. We were doing Tot Time at the community center, but that’s ending too for the summer. We’ve done some parks and playgrounds and she loves climbing and swinging. She’s still way into her art projects and started becoming interested in puzzles again.

This girl. She’s sassy. She loves to eat. She loves to run, talk, give kisses (with a stern warning that french kissing is between Mama and Daddy only), blow bubbles, and make sure everyone around her is taken care of. She’s my extroverted baby that wears her emotions right out there for everyone to see and I wouldn’t have it any other way.