Well this post is about two months past due, but luckily we’re officially transitioning to annual updates now that Olivia is TWO. How did that even happen? And then I look back at photos of her being super teeny tiny and I’m like oh yeah that feels like a lifetime ago, and also yesterday. Time is a funny thing.
| STATS |
Since her last update she has had a 2 year checkup where she weighed in at a whopping 30lb (85th), was 34.75” long (70th), and they no longer measure their heads after 2. Also. NO ONE prepared me for the fact that she no longer gets weighed and measured on the giant table, and now stands on the adult scale like a big girl! Also 30lb? No wonder my arms are so sore all the time. If you’ve been following along with her growth over these past 2 years then you’ll understand how elated we are that she is in the 85th percentile for weight. She’s never been in anything higher than 60th, and usually hung out in 30-40th. So we have made huge strides in her first two years of life.
| EATING |
Where do I start? I wouldn’t say Olivia is a picky eater, but she’s not an adventurous eater. She’s also weary of new textures, and will randomly hate something she used to love and then love it again a few weeks later. This is toddlerhood though right? So from 12m until 18m probably, she ate overnight oats every single morning for breakfast and then one day just refused. I assume she just grew tired of them as her tastebuds were expanding and realized there were other things out there. So now breakfast is all over the place from cereal, to fruit, to waffles, to pouches, to fig bars when she just won’t eat anything. Lunch tends to be a sandwich with fruit and cheese, a quesadilla, waffles, veggie tots, bagels, but mostly sandwiches. Dinner tends to be a smaller version of what we’re having, pesto tortellini is life, pizza fridays, mac & peas, and vegan corndogs. When all else fails and we know she is going to fight her meal (usually when she’s overtired or sick) we’ll give her pesto tortellini which she devours every time. We have also learned that a full belly = a happy toddler, so we push the snacks alllllll day. Her eating routine goes something like this: wake - breakfast - snack - lunch - snack - dinner - bed. Without fail. We know within minutes if someone forgot to give her a snack haha. But usually she wakes up from her nap saying “cookie pouch!” which means a fig bar or a fruit+veggie pouch. Or both. I think her first combination of words was “more please” (“mo peas”). Hey at least she’s polite.
| SLEEPING |
Olivia has been on the same sleep schedule since about 13m probably. She goes to be around 6pm, wakes at 9am, and naps from 12-2:30 everyday. I know I know, this sounds like an amazing sleep schedule (and it is!!) so if you are in the throws of an infant sleep schedule (or are struggling with sleep regressions) I highly recommend this post to read about the method that worked for us and in turn created this incredible sleep schedule and happy child. If she wakes early from her nap and isn’t crying (she rarely does), we’ll just leave her in her crib for some quiet time and we can hear her just quietly playing with her stuffies or singing songs. Speaking of stuffies she used to hate anything in her bed. Pillows, blankets, stuffies, you name it. She wanted to be completely alone and unbothered. Now she has to sleep with the whole gang (which she has named) Roo Roo (a lab puppy from Ikea), Foo Foo (a little grey bunny Derek randomly bought for her), Lulu (her Madame Alexander babydoll), and Puppy (a big fat puppy lol). We’ve also since given her a muslin blanket and an afghan my mom knit for her, and a pillow. If anyone from the stuffie gang is missing we have to hunt them down before nap and bedtime. It’s fine. We created this obsession.
| DOING |
Wow so many things have happended since her 18m update. She completed an entire year of Little Gym classes. She started as a Bird and moved to the Beasts class at 19m where she was thrown in with much bigger kids from 19m-2.5y so she started to see what the bigger kids were doing and learned to face her fears and perfect her skills. She literally never cared about the bar. I’d have her try to just hang from it and she’d immediately let go and walk away. Not anymore! At around 23 months she was swinging from the bars with the best of them. To the point where that’s all she wanted to do and wouldn’t do any of the other skills lol. We spent the end of summer, fall and winter going to parks, enjoying splash pads, music class at the arboretum, and exploring our favorite museums. She loves to help around the house, tell us where to sit, throw her own trash away, pick out her own clothes, feed Geoffrey, and practice playing cups (the summer camp cups song that Anna Kendrick does in Pitch Perfect).
| MILESTONES |
Olivia has 16 teeth now! For the longest time she just had the four center ones on top, four on the bottom, and the same 4 molars. And then all 4 of her canines grew in at the same time like a little vampire. Prior to two her vocabulary was pretty minimal and only had about 25 words at her 2 year checkup (which has since escalated but more on that on her next update!) by 2 her words included: mama, dada, hi, night night, Geoffrey (“ghee” - and points at him), ball, yo-yo, nose, no, apple, uh-oh (when she drops something), kitty (“key”), hi, buh-bye, banana, nana, yes, sure, puppy, me, this, bubble, push, moo moo, roo roo, grover, elmo, foo foo, lulu, please, and more. She loves to say “hi” or “buh-bye” with a full arm wave to anyone she passes. Which always makes strangers say it back. Except for when they don’t and I hope she doesn’t notice because she is just so sweet with her little greetings. She also calls any and all bunnies “foo foos”. Even if it doesn’t look like an actual bunny. Like the gold bunny sculpture at Northpark, she pointed at and yelled “hiiii foo foo!” I was blown away because prior to that her only concept of a bunny was my finger shadow bunny I made when I sang Little Bunny Foo Foo. Even though up to this point her vocabulary is limited she understands everything we are saying and asking her. After six months of treatment, she received a clean bill of health from her Ophthalmologist who had us patching her right eye for 12 weeks to help build up the muscles in her left eyelid, which would droop when she was tired. He was concerned that if we didn’t correct her weaker eyelid now, she would need to start wearing glasses to help prevent a lazy eye from developing. Which honestly didn’t surprise us as Derek wore glasses at a young age, but I was hoping that my (not as bad) eyes would help balance things out, and so far so good! That was a huge (and expensive) relief! We’ll still go back annually to evaluate her progress, but so far we are on the right track and her eyelid is stronger than ever. We took our very first flight at 21m to Chicago and while seeing family and my favorite city was beyond fun, traveling with a toddler was horrendous and we won’t be doing it again for A WHILE. We took Olivia to her first Christmas tree farm, and had our first successful photo with Santa! And about one week before she turned two she started Preschool full time! Which she absolutely loves. With me going back to work full time, this was a happy milestone for everyone!
| FAVORITE MOMENTS |
This season was full of favorite moments since it took place during the holidays! Olivia was a carrot for Halloween this year and trick-or-treating was so much fun! We weren’t sure if she’d grasp the concept yet, but it only took about two houses before she quickly learned the drill, and would immediately point at a house and then point at her pail. Christmas was also THE BEST this year, as she’s getting old enough to start to get excited about the magic and sparkle of it all. We gave her Derek’s old easel that his grandfather made him as a child, and she is obsessed with it. She could literally spend hours coloring her little heart out if we let her. Which she calls “bubbles” thanks to a Baby Shark coloring book she got from her Grammy and Grampy and my mom taught her to color in bubbles, so now all coloring = bubbles. We moved out of our temporary apartment into our “forever” home in January and it has been so nice getting to see Olivia (and Geoffrey) really have room to run around. She has her own playroom now and a big yard to play in and is so much happier. You could tell that the 800sf apartment walls were quickly closing in on everyone and we were all ready to spread out. We also loved celebrating her 2nd birthday with (her favorite thing) a puppy paw-ty!! More on that later. It was so cute and she loved all of the puppy themed items.