This past week our Olivia turned two years old!
I have a separate birthday post for Olivia here.
Unfortunately, we had to push back Olivia’s two-year checkup at the doctor, so I do not have updated height and weight numbers for her yet.
I’m making many apologies for not writing a 23-month post for Olivia. Truthfully, I’m very burned out on not just writing baby/toddler updates but making sure that I have enough pictures each month. I didn’t have a lot to share last month in the midst of celebrating Genevieve’s birthday and finding a new normal for the Christmas season without being in the midst of an adoption.
But I wanted to write one last toddler update for Olivia. Even experiencing toddlerhood for the second time around, I’m still blown away by how much Olivia changes from week to week. Especially watching her in music and gymnastics, every single week, she’s able to do new activities and she gains more confidence. Just in the past few weeks, Olivia has started participating verbally for the first time. Olivia loves running, jumping, and climbing and still never gets tired of going down the slide.
Olivia’s newer words include no, mine, water, cracker, help, bowl, and stuck. She and Tommy love the Gerber baby puffs that I buy for Genevieve. Olivia has her own word for puffs. It’s hard to even describe it ha. Olivia says Bubba for Grandpa and wawa for water. In the past month, Olivia has started saying a few two-word phrases and even one three-word phrase: I did it.
I taught Olivia the word please because in typical toddler fashion, she just demands things all the time. She caught on right away. Initially, sometimes I would prompt her using the sign for please when she was demanding something. Now Olivia says please all the time unprompted. It’s a very useful strategy for getting toys, snacks, etc. when I might otherwise say no.
Olivia loves babies, books, musical instruments, dogs, animals in general, Grogu, both sets of grandparents, snacks, milk, and of course, slides. We got Tommy a rocking horse that sings and talks when he was about her age. Olivia loves it now. She rides it and pushes the sing and talk buttons all the time. Olivia also pretends to feed the horse and give him drinks out of her cups.
Olivia’s favorite foods include cheese (she eats multiple varieties regularly), breakfast sausage, French toast, baby puffs, crackers, pretzels, yogurt, pizza, and most recently, skillet gnocchi, cottage cheese, and fruit snacks.
Olivia’s favorite show right now is Blippi. It’s actually the only show she requests to watch, and it’s something of a thing when other people want to watch different shows. She does sit and watch other shows with Tommy sometimes.
Olivia remains my little helper. She follows me around the house constantly and wants to help out with everything. She is able to do some tasks, such as pulling clothes out of the dryer, handing me silverware out of the dishwasher, and putting dirty laundry in a basket. Olivia is also very particular about things like the pull-out garbage in the kitchen getting closed right away. While she does make toy messes daily, she is a pretty willing helper for cleaning up afterward. I just hope that Olivia continues to want to help out as she gets older.
We call Olivia our goat because she headbutts people for no apparent reason ha. We also joke about Olivia being a goat because she’ll scavenge for food. After turning down half a dozen different foods at dinner, she’ll wait until Tommy leaves the table and then eat his leftover toast or pizza crusts.
I was hoping that I would end Olivia’s regular updates by telling you that she’s sleeping through the night. Unfortunately, she’s not. Olivia remains a champion napper, almost always going down right away and sleeping for a couple of hours. We had a couple of really bad weeks where she’d wake up almost every hour sometimes at night, throwing everything out of the crib and screaming. At best, Olivia still wakes up at least once or twice at night. Usually, she needs her pacifier, which she’s thrown on the floor, and more water in her sippy cup.
This is my last toddler update for Olivia. I’ll continue to share pictures of her in family updates and write birthday posts for the foreseeable future.
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.
