Olive is 16 Months Old

She's not a baby anymore, people. The other kids at daycare have even (for the most part) dropped "Baby" from her name. For a long time, she was Baby Olive. Now she's mostly just Olive. I guess that's how you know she's arrived as a legitimate toddler.

The most amazing thing about Olive this month has been the incredible explosion of language. She's been great with language from the start, but I can't even keep track of her words. And sentences! The girl puts two and three words together to form sentences. Commands! Exclamations! She says it all. Notable words: truck, big truck, grapes, apple, Thomas, train, airplane, fork, big, up, milk, hug, Zadie, on, stuck, it's stuck, cow, blocks, potty, pants, shorts, shirt, yum, car, yay, uh-huh, spoon, hat, hair, nose, teeth, paci, cereal, Cheerios, no, hello, hi, byebye, all done, boom, kaboom, duck, poop, light, cheese, book, No David, bang, thank you, A, outside, bath, Momo (for Milo). And probably lots more that are slipping my mind. I know she understands so much more. She knows to start tickling when she hears that word. She will appropriately answer uh-huh or no to questions (only rarely seeming to get it wrong).

Her hair is getting noticeably longer and thicker. I debate cutting bangs, but the process of growing them out seems awful. I just want her hair to get long enough that it naturally falls to the sides instead of directly into her face. Barrettes and hair ties don't stay in for long.

Olive climbs, throws her body around, wants to go where the big kids go, and wants to go where even the big kids don't dare go. Like throwing herself face-first over the big wheel and onto the street, for example. Let's just hope she makes it to her second birthday without any broken bones.

She has an adorable giggle, sort of throaty and deep. But she also has high-pitched shrieky laughter that comes out unexpectedly. She's ticklish, especially on her toes and thighs. And her knees.

Still has six teeth. 

Loves her paci. For awhile there she got even more addicted. She had some kind of virus (we think) called roseola that gave her a fever then made her super cranky for days and days. Cranky and needy and constantly wanting to be held. We gave in a lot and let her have her paci all day, when normally we just give it to her at sleeping times. She was not happy when she started acting like herself again and we didn't let her have the paci. "Paci?" she'd ask, repeatedly. When we said no, she would a) throw something, b) hit us, c) glare at us, or d) all of the above. If you guessed d) you are a winner! (Sadly, though, we were not.)

Olive and Milo love to chase each other around and play. Sometimes they wrestle, though that rarely ends well. Lately Milo has been really sweet to her, sharing his toys and offering to bring her things. She returns the favor by smacking him or stealing his other toy. Sigh.

Olive is into stacking block towers and knocking them down. Great fun.

She also likes reading books. No David is a particular favorite.

She plays with cars and trains and trucks, and pointing out trucks she sees on the road is perhaps her favorite pastime. 

She occasionally cuddles her baby dolls or carries around her blankets, but these comforting gestures are pretty brief.

When she's tired, she's ready to sleep. As soon as she is laid down in her crib, she's out. She seems to hit her tired wall around 6:45, and is easily angered from then until she actually goes to sleep around 7:30.

She does enjoy bathtime and doesn't get cranky in there. Unless you tell her to quit drinking the bath water, anyway. She doesn't like to be told no. But seriously, drinking the bath water is gross. There's just no need for that.

That pretty much sums it all up. My little ball of fire continues to burn bright and I wouldn't want it any other way.