18 Months of Olivia

Olivia

This past week our Olivia turned 18 months old!

Olivia Water Table

Olivia started saying “uppy” this month, usually when she wants to get out of her crib. Hilariously enough, she’s also learned the word Grogu. Olivia has Grogu pajamas, and she always points to the little guys. So we started working on the word, and she says it all the time. Olivia has also started saying “baba” for brother on occasion. Her “mommy” and “daddy” just get clearer and more intentional.

I love watching the imaginative play and motor skills take off at this age. Every week, Olivia plays more with Tommy and has more fun making up games on her own. I also love watching how much Olivia understands and how much she’s able to communicate, even without a lot of words. Her skills just grow more and more every week.

Olivia Pool

Olivia embraces the concept of needing a snack in both hands fully. You can never hand her just one cracker ha. Tommy has also been eating more than ever lately. It’s good, but I’m pretty much always feeding someone something different all day long.

Olivia is very into cheese right now. We almost always have a smoked cheese on hand, usually something pretty strong like gouda or gruyere. She loves them. Yogurt and oatmeal are two of her other big staples for meals these days. Olivia also tried blueberries and grapes for the first time recently and loved both of them.

Olivia

This past month Olivia had her worst round of teething yet. Since her very first round of teething, getting teeth hasn’t been too bad. During this latest stint, Olivia was working on at least three teeth at once. For a solid week and a half, she had every teething symptom on the list. It was a doozy. I’m so glad that she got through it before our June vacation and has been doing well ever since. I’ve lost track of how many teeth Olivia has now.

During the awful teething stint, I stopped giving Olivia milk at night and switched to water. A couple of weeks later, I caved a few times on vacation. But she was able to switch back to water when we got home. I used the vacation as an opportunity to get her off bottles. It’s tough, as Genevieve still uses bottles, so she’s constantly reminded of them. But she’s done well with the transition.

Early in the month, we made our first trip of the year to the Milwaukee Zoo with friends. Most of the weather in May was so lousy. It was so nice to get a beautiful day that we were free to do a bigger excursion like the zoo.

Olivia Baby Animals

In June, we also went to a local farm with my in-laws for a baby animals weekend. The kids all had such a fun time. Olivia loves animals and isn’t afraid to pet the goats and whatnot. She’s also finally getting more comfortable with my in-laws again (we didn’t see a lot of people during the winter with Genevieve being a preemie). As such, Olivia doesn’t insist that Jake or I stay right at her side at all times during these outings.

Olivia With Grandma

The weekend after the farm, my in-laws came over for Father’s Day. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and we were able to be out on the patio all afternoon into the early evening.

One of the highlights this month is that Olivia started her first Kindermusik class. She’s been going to Kindermusik with Tommy since she was a month old. But this is the first time Olivia has been in her own class with kids who are all her age. I feel ridiculous going on about how much I love this class, as we all already know how much I love Kindermusik. But it’s been years since I was part of a class with such little kids. And it’s so much fun to see her personality shine when she’s on her own without Tommy. Her class has been the absolute best.

Olivia Playing in the Sand

The other big highlight of the last month is that we took a family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. Olivia was only eight months old when we went to Michigan last summer, and she was coming off of RSV and her first-ever round of teething. It was so much fun getting to see her enjoy this vacation so much more.

Olivia Feeding the Deer

Olivia rode her first pony at Circus World, feed deer at the Wisconsin Deer Park, and enjoyed lots of time at the beach on Lake Delton. She also had her first success drinking out of a straw and then got to practice her new skill on multiple occasions during this trip. Additionally, one night at dinner, Olivia enjoyed her ice cream so much that she did a little dance after every bite.

Olivia and Tommy

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.

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