This past week our Olivia turned 16 months old!
Olivia is walking independently. She still loves to take someone’s hand and walk around the house, park, waiting room, etc. But she can walk just fine on her own for long stretches. She’s not running yet. But obviously, she sees Tommy running all the time, and she’s ready to run with him. Olivia still reverts to knee walking at least a couple of times a day. Sometimes she wants to use the walker or push the little baby doll stroller. Most of the time, she just walks to walk.
Olivia remains obsessed with babies. She continues to look at her book of baby faces every single day. Each week she has more and more interest in Genevieve, often wanting to give her hugs and put the pacifier in her mouth. Of course, you have to watch Olivia like a hawk when she’s around Genevieve. But she really is so careful most of the time. Olivia loves her baby dolls, too. She picks them up and pats them on the back, talks to them, and gives them their pacifiers.
Olivia is also obsessed with the kitties. She says “kitty” all the time, even when there isn’t a kitty in the room. Olivia is surprisingly gentle with the cats. Hobbes is the most outgoing of the three cats and has always been the friendliest with company and with Tommy. Hobbes actually meows for attention from Tommy. Now he does with Olivia, too. While Apollo and Ares don’t seek out attention from the kids, they will sit and get pet for brief periods when an adult is right there.
The other thing that Olivia loves to do these days is open and close doors. We have a lot of interior doors in our house. She wants to open and shut them constantly. Olivia still can’t open most doors independently. So she spends a lot of time closing doors and then wanting someone else to help her open them again.
The girls and I made excursions on our own this month to Art in Bloom at the Milwaukee Art Museum and to the Domes for their spring floral show. I have pictures of Olivia from both of these outings in this post. She doesn’t want to be in the stroller for long stretches. So we always have to break up these types of outings with periods for her to walk around.
Olivia made such amazing strides with her eating this past month. She’s been trying all sorts of different foods and hasn’t been gagging on anything. One or two meals a day, she’s eating all regular foods. We still have a lot of purees on hand and will keep working through them over the next month. Olivia has also made so much progress using a fork and spoon. She is so motivated to learn and uses them all the time. The only downside right now is that Olivia is big on throwing both food and dirty silverware.
Olivia has also made amazing strides with using her sippy cup. When she decided she was ready, she went from wanting nothing to do with it to drinking out of it regularly like it was nothing in just a couple of days. These days I always give her a sippy cup with meals and always give her a bottle first thing in the morning and before bed. Then I switch up which one we use the rest of the time.
Olivia continues to need one more bottle after she goes to bed. The good news is that the vast majority of the time, she wants the bottle before 11 p.m. So I’m able to give it to her before I go to sleep. There have been very few nights that she woke up again after that. Olivia still takes one nap a day, right after lunch, always for at least two hours, sometimes closer to three hours.
Olivia has started having a little anxiety when she goes to sleep, both for naps and at night. The initial time when I leave the room is often tough. It’s rare it takes her more than a few minutes to settle, though. She’s only had a few nights where it took a long time to get her settled.
You can find all of my baby/toddler updates for all three kids as well as general family updates and other family-related posts in the family section of the blog.
