Olivia is a cyclone of creative energy. She's either drawing, singing, dancing, propping up her dolls and critters for a dramatic scene or acting out an epic narrative. It's no wonder that she falls into bed exhausted at the end of the day. I try and keep up with all of her ideas and help them become realized. For instance, last week we were at Cathedral Park and Olivia found a handful of long, gray bird feathers. She decided that we should use them to make hats. My first instinct is, oh geez, how am I going to do that? I asked her to make some sketches of the hat she wanted to create and she did. Her hats were incredible flights of fancy with lanterns hanging off the ends, sparklers shooting off the top and lots of feathers. We settled on what looked like the easiest one to make and set about doing just that. We came up with a felt topper that Olivia thought her father would look good in. Chris was a good sport and tried it on. That made Olivia laugh because he looked like an elf.
She and I do some sort of collaboration every day; drawing, making dresses out of random fabric or whatever. Lately, she's been very helpful in the garden and she helped me pick out and then plant all of our flower boxes together. She also wanted her own garden (that's her in Olivia's Garden above) which is on the Roseway side of the yard. In it are lots of yellow dandelions, one very well taken care of strawberry plant and a container of pink fuzzy ground cover. My mom used to do this for me as well, to call one small area of the yard my garden. I hope it's giving her a love of gardening or nature.
Other than that, Olivia is almost done with preschool and we're still trying to figure out where she's going to kindergarten next year. I think she's excited but a little worried that none of her Little Lights friends will be there.
