Olive: 21 Months and 13 Days

I love 21-month-olds. They are so fun. So smart. So talkative. And so NOT terrible. Not yet, not for a few more months (years? Can you tell we're dealing with a slightly different breed of child in the older spectrum?).

Olive is becoming a funny little person. She does things that she is intending to be jokes, like opening her mouth as wide as she can while there's food in it. Or making funny faces while shaking her head back and forth. Lots of little things. She loves making us laugh.

She puts 5-6 words together. "Dere it is, righ dere!" is a frequently heard phrase. She actually said her full name the other day. We were quizzing them (Milo mainly) on his name and address, and Olive said "Olive Lanefurrr." Pretty good.

She loves books. Favorites are Brown Bear Brown Bear, Farmer in the Dell ("Farmer Dell!"), Moo Baa La La La, and Cat Skidoo.

Olive likes to dance, especially to spin around and get dizzy. Mostly just dancing to the Dora clean-up song. After we play it 3 or 4 times to clean up, we play it one more time to just have a dance party. Both kids love this part of the routine.

Lately, Olive has gotten into her babies. She has a couple of dolls that she will carry around. She doesn't do a lot of nurturing or pretend play with them, with the exception of grabbing dishtowels and tucking them in. She does ask me to give them hugs and kisses sometimes. This is the one instance of a toy that Olive led the way on, and Milo picked it up from her. He's into the babies right now too.

Speaking of toys, Olive loves trains and puzzles, both of which came from Milo's interests. They also both love watching Dinosaur Train, and not much else in the way of TV. (Actually, Milo likes other things, but Olive has no interest in Thomas.)

She is a decent eater. Finally has 4 molars, though still missing a few teeth back near the back. She often asks for us to "cuddit" meaning cut up her food. And then she only eats the part that hasn't been cut. She's big on bread and always eats the bread portion of her meal first. Then fruit. Then maybe the rest of it. Or not, you just never know.

She is still a cuddler, though she is often too busy for it. She gives excellent hugs and kisses. Wonderful smiles, adorable dimples. Her hair is getting long-ish, still has bangs. She still refuses to keep hair clips or bands in.

She has gone pee in the potty once. I am considering using Thanksgiving weekend for potty training, but we have a lot planned (away from our house, and I just don't know how the grandparents feel about a bunch of pee on their floor). I guess we could do it the pull-ups way instead of the panties way.

Olive has a husky little voice, and also a high shrieky voice. Whatever she's in the mood for, I guess. I've caught her singing to herself a few times, mostly the ABCs I think. Hard to say.

I don't have any official stats for her, but I think she's tall. She weighs 29 pounds according to our bathroom scale. She wears size 6.5 W shoes. She's super picky about shoes, too.

What more can I say? Olive is adorable and fun and sweet and kind (she says "sorry sorry sorreee" to Milo if she hurts him. Sometimes tries to hug him (which he usually shrugs off). Super cute.). I'm just so glad she's mine.

Notes and Things I Wanted to Tell You

• Milo got hand, foot, and mouth disease. Another kid at daycare has it. Olive probably has it too. Thankfully, Milo's case is about the mildest possible. Just a few blisters on his hands, and basically not other symptoms. We'll see what happens with Olive.
• Olive peed in the potty for the very first time last week! Her diaper was dry in the morning, so I asked her if she wanted to sit on the potty. She said uh-huh like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then a few minutes later, she peed. She earned two M&Ms for her efforts. She has gone in the toilet once more since then. Perhaps we're on our way to a diaper-free house...
• I ran a 10K a few weeks ago. This was perhaps the biggest accomplishment of my life to date. Or at least the thing I least expected to do. I ran the whole way and finished in 1:08. Since then I have only ran about 4 times. Oh well, I'll get back into it one of these days, when things are less crazy. (Ha!)
• The Gender Reveal is going like gangbusters. We're gonna be rich! (Ha!)
• I missed writing Olive's 20-month update. There's still a chance for me to get to her 21-month update, though, so stay posted for that.

 

His first pun?

My darling son picks his nose. A lot. As you can imagine, this is a habit we would like to break. Which led to this little gem of a conversation:

Milo: (picking nose)
Me: Milo, stop picking your nose; that's gross.
Milo: (still picking nose) Mommy, I'm just a picky guy.

Spooky, Spooky, Spooky!

Halloween 2013 will go down as the first highly successful Halloween for the Langford kids. Let me give a quick recap of the previous years:

2012: Milo was terribly sick, which actually turned out to be a good thing because he was so scared by the entire holiday he didn't want to wear a costume. I don't even recall what he had planned to be before he a) changed his mind, b) got too scared to dress up, and c) got sick so it didn't matter anymore anyway. And Olive was so young she wasn't walking yet, she couldn't eat any of the candy, and she just didn't give a shit about any of it. She did look pretty cute in the chicken costume I forced upon her though. When she wasn't crying, that is.

2011: Milo was a bumblebee. The costume was fleece, and it was HOT that day. He roasted. I was pregnant, and I roasted. Milo didn't get the trick-or-treating thing at that point, and he got so bored. He sort of played along during the daycare party, but then we made the mistake of taking his costume off to eat dinner. He did NOT want to put it back on to go real trick-or-treating. I think we made it to one, maybe two houses before giving up.

2010: Milo's first Halloween. Too little to get it/eat candy/care. My first Halloween as a mom, so of course I put way too much pressure on the whole thing. He wore both a kangaroo costume for some early photos in the leaves, and a pumpkin costume for trick-or-treating. We went with some friends who had older kids, and we had to basically carry Milo up to the doors each time. Not so fun, really.

So! That brings everybody up to speed. This year was fantastic. Milo was Captain Hook. He had been requesting this costume since August, so I bought it for him in late September. In early October, he decided that Captain Hook was "too scary" and he wanted to be a pumpkin "with a smile and happy eyes, not a frown or mean eyes." Thankfully, he returned back to Captain Hook. Our neighbors gave us a little girl pirate costume. My mom gave us a watermelon costume for Olive. We let her pick. For weeks she refused to wear either. Well, frankly, she didn't try either of them on. On Halloween we sent the pirate costume to daycare and hoped that Ms. Kristin could get her into it.

We showed up for the daycare Halloween extravaganza at 4:30. Lo and behold, both Milo and Olive were in their costumes, and they looked awesome. Milo even had his hat and his hook on. Olive wasn't wearing the head scarf that came with hers, but no surprise there--she does not like stuff on her head (except for hoods...and some hats... OK, she just doesn't like having her hair done. But either way, I wasn't surprised about the lack of scarf.).

They sort of let me take their picture. Awfully wiggly and not very patient, those two

They did the daycare trick-or-treating. For awhile Milo didn't seem too into it. They were handing out little toys and stickers and such at the "houses" and I think Milo just wanted candy. As soon as they did get a piece of candy, they wanted to eat it right then. It was hard to explain that no, you can get MORE candy if you keep following the other kids. But overall, they both had a good time.

We came home, had dinner. This time I was smart enough not to take Olive out of her costume. I hadn't planned to take Milo out of his costume either, but he really wanted to take it off. I figured that was probably for the best, since his costume had these dangly sleeves. Anyway. Dinner. Then everybody get excited because it's trick-or-treating time!!

We set out with no expectations of how many houses we'd hit. We started with our cul-de-sac. Then a couple houses up the street. Then Ms. Kristin's cul-de-sac. Then down the hill to that cul-de-sac. Total of 10 houses, I think. Then the kids were getting worn out and started to be less happy about the whole thing. Back up the hill to home. One piece of candy to eat, then off to bed.

I was so stinking proud of these kids. Especially Milo. He rang the doorbells, said "trick or treat" every time, said "thank you," waved goodbye, and was just generally very agreeable. He kept his hat and hook on. Just such a nice guy. He did try to open doors and even walk into people's homes at first, but he got the hang of it before too long. Olive was so cute too. She started out just holding out her basket and saying "my candy!" as they dropped a piece in her bag. She did say "thank you" and "bye!" while enthusiastically waving. About 2/3 of the way through the evening, she started saying "chickee cheet!" So so cute.

Milo still got pretty nervous about Halloween this year, so I am especially proud of the way he didn't let his fears stop him from having fun. From the costumes to the trick-or-treating to the excitement of the whole thing, he participated--and he can often be the kid that hangs back and does his own thing.

Last night, sometime in the middle of the night, he came into our room upset, saying "Is Halloween over yet?" So even after having lots of fun, getting to eat lots of candy, he still worried about Halloween. I'm hoping next year he remembers all the fun and doesn't let the worries slow him down. And I hope Olive tries on her costume before the day of the holiday. Milo has already informed me that next year he wants to be a rubber duckie for Halloween. We'll see, kid. We'll see.