2 years old!!!

Wow. I just can't believe that in two short years, we've gone from this:

To this:What an amazing little person Ms. Olivia has turned out to be. I remember wanting to hear her voice, to hear her first words, and now she's singing Jingle Bells and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

As a now-2-year-old, Olivia is running, singing, and jumping through life. There's not one thing she's mostly interested in, she loves everything and can find a way to enjoy whatever she's doing. If we're at the play gym, she's equally interested in throwing the basketball in the air as she is riding the tiny tractor or putting rubber ducks to sleep in the doll house. She loves dancing and swill usually order one of her parents to join her by pointing to the floor and saying "You dance!" She also likes to sing and sing loud. When we went to see a children's music performer at the local cafe, Olivia stood up on her chair and belted out the ABC song along with him.

Like every toddler, there are breakdowns. We've tried not to give in to her demands of chocolate milk or more cartoons, but sometimes she wears us down. We're old, we get tired. So, we watch Madagascar for the 8 millionth time.

But she is also very caring. If you cough or sneeze, she's look right into your face and ask, "You OK?" If she wants to be held or hugged, she'll say, "Hold you!" And we do.

She's recently been able to say her name, and she'll shake your hand and say, "It's nice to meet you." You ask, "What's your name?" She'll answer, "That's O-wiv-ia."

Olivia the singing machine!

Stars!

23 Months!

Almost two!

Miss Olivia is full of words and many many feelings. She sees and hears things all day long and tells me about them. When we went downtown to the library, she saw a white glass lamp and pointed to it and said, "moon!" Sounds are very interesting to her too, she'll stop whatever she's doing and point to her ear and announce the source of whatever sound she hears: bird! big truck! train! She's also enjoying singing, especially the alphabet song which she can sing all the way through, though L-P sounds more like "lemon na na pee."

Her favorite book right now is the Ponyo comic, she especially likes the drawing of Ponyo kissing the baby's face. Ponyo is also her favorite movie and go to entertainment in moments of parental ineptitude. She loves animals, especially penguins and hippos and has a growing menagerie of small plastic animals in her toy collection.

Like many toddlers, Miss Olivia can be a bit of a tyrant. She has no problem telling us, "That's enough!" especially when she sees her parents hugging.

Next month will be very exciting with her birthday and Christmas as she becomes a full-fledged two-year-old.

Halloween 2010

Olivia in the Halloween costume that I made for her. Chris and I worked on the design together and he made the hat. I made the pants from a bloomers pattern and then used one of her shirts to create a pattern for the top. I think it came out real cute. :) Here's Gus, I mean Spiderman and Olivia before Olivia put on her costume.

And after.

22 months!

Q. What's your favorite thing about Olivia right now?

Chris: Her smile and that she likes to sing her ABC's.

Alisa: Her non-stop dialog, most of which sounds like Japanese, but still pretty convincing dialog.

Q. What does she do that makes you laugh?

Chris: When she asks: "Are you a chicken?" and I say no. Then she asks, "Are you a turtle?" And I say no, and she asks, "Are you a chicken?"

Alisa: When she wants me to "cry" and then she consoles me. Then she wants me to cry again.

Q. What is something you don't want to forget about this time?

Chris: That she actually wants to hold my hand and she asks me to hold her. I don't want to forget how much she loves funny things like pumpkins and carrying her little pumpkin everywhere.

Alisa: How she likes to pick mint leaves and then bring them to me to smell. And when she wants me giver her a piggy-back ride, she calls it riding on mommy's shoulders. And how she sits in the bathroom reading Time magazine.

21 Months!

This month, (last week) Olivia took her very first plane ride and did very well. I'm what you might call a nervous flier, but more like a cat on the ceiling who needs a Valium. But to Olivia, the plane was just another place to meet people, go "weeee" when the plane went in the air, and then a cozy and loud environment for a long nap. In order to see all of the places that I want to see with her and Chris, this is the attitude I hope to adopt.

Our plane ride was to Austin for the week where Olivia enjoyed the pleasures of Texas: tacos, grackles, butterflies, and swimming pools. We had lots of fun taking the Zilker Park Zephyr, a kid-sized train around the park, checking out the Austin Children's Museum where she hardly left the train table, and riding on Daddy's shoulders on South Congress. One of the major highlights was a visit to Toy Joy, an amazing toy store where we got some ideas of what toys we should be looking into when her birthday rolls around.




Other than being a world class traveler, Olivia's very fond of her new drawing table where much of the coloring happens on the table itself, rather than the paper.

Thinking of her next crayon masterpiece:

The crinkle face has returned! This is the face she gives you when you ask her to smell flowers:


She also says "It's mine," a lot. She's not fond of sharing.

Quite a kid!