This past week our Olivia turned 22 months old!
Olivia’s newest favorite word is “ball.” Ever since she learned how to walk, she’s been obsessed with learning how to kick a ball just like Tommy. She and Tommy get out soft balls and kick them all over the bonus room just about every day lately. While Olivia still tends to shake her head for “no,” she has started using the word on occasion. In typical toddler form, Olivia is big on the word “mine” right now. She shouts “mine” whenever she’s worried that anyone might take away her toy, book, food, etc. or when she wants something that someone else is holding.
Olivia loves to name people. She’ll point constantly and say “mama,” “dada,” and “baby” (it’s always “baby” for Genevieve). We’ve talked a lot about the words “brother and “Tommy.” Obviously, Olivia knows exactly who we mean, but she doesn’t have a word that she uses for Tommy yet.
Olivia is obsessed with opening and closing doors. Our house has had multiple additions over the years. Each of those rooms has French doors. So there are a lot of interior doors in our house that simply push and pull open without having to turn a knob, which she’s able to do independently. Olivia almost always says “bye” when she closes a door. Then she gets all excited to see us again when she opens the door. Olivia also loves shutting doors that do have knobs. She’s still not able to open these doors on her own, which gets her frustrated.
When we’re out and about, Olivia also loves pushing the wheelchair button to open doors. The Domes in Milwaukee has wheelchair buttons at the entrances to each dome. Tommy loved the wheelchair buttons at this age. It’s fun to see Olivia get so excited about them now, too.
Olivia has done so well transitioning into Tommy’s old booster seat at the table. She loves being at the table with me, Jake, and Tommy. Both kids enjoy seeing Genevieve eating alongside us so much. Olivia still throws a lot of food, which can be wearing. But she almost always eats well and is slowly doing better sitting for longer stretches of time.
Our outings this past month have included a couple of visits to the Domes, a trip to Betty Brinn, and a day trip to Chicago. We also had Tommy’s final soccer practices and games for the fall season. Finally, my mom and I took just Tommy and Olivia to the Halloween jack ‘o lantern show at the Racine Zoo. Both kids had a great time.
Olivia dressed up as a dragon for Halloween this year. Some of you may remember Tommy as a dragon for Halloween at this age. It was so much fun to see Olivia as the dragon now. She had a blast wearing the costume and only put on the headpiece long enough for me to get a few pictures. Olivia napped through most of trick-or-treating and enjoyed getting to watch the last of the trick-or-treaters. She got to wear her costume to her music class and to a trick-or-treating event at Tommy’s school.
I’ve almost finished getting all of the girls’ clothes transitioned up a size in preparation for cooler weather and making sure that Tommy has everything that he needs for the cooler months ahead. Olivia can still wear a handful of 12-month items, mostly onesies and leggings/sweatpants. Her 12-month jeans have gotten too short. 18-month jeans fit great, but most 18-month leggings/sweatpants are way too long. I’ve transitioned everything else up to 18-month items and am starting to add 2T clothes into the mix, too.
For the past few months (possibly even longer), Olivia had all but given up her pacifier except for in her crib. All at once, she went back to wanting it again all the time. Olivia started calling her pacifier “nummy” (just like she says for food). Now she asks for “nummy” constantly. Not only does she want a pacifier all the time, but she wants a new pacifier all the time. So it’s more important than ever to keep a little stash handy. I let Olivia rotate through pacifiers as she likes during the day but limit it to one at night. Otherwise, she asks for a new one multiple times during the night. I let Olivia keep pacifiers in the car. But I’ve held firm on not bringing them into activities like her music and gymnastics classes. She hasn’t put up too much of a fuss about it.
Aside from a couple of nights where both Olivia and Genevieve woke up multiple times, most nights, Olivia only woke up once in the middle of the night. Most nights, she woke up once or twice before we went to sleep, and once or maybe twice she slept through the night. Olivia continues to be a great napper, going down right away anywhere between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and sleeping for at least two hours.
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.
