Easter Sunday

When I got Olivia ready for church on Easter, I was so surprised she kept taking her hat off. Olivia has worn a hat or large headband on her head almost everyday since the day she was born and has never had any interest in trying to take it off. After explainging to Olivia how exciting it was to wear a special Easter hat to church on Easter Sunday she was sold and kept the hat on her head the rest of the day.

Last night

Last night when Olivia was in bed she called her dad to come to her bedroom. Matt went to her bed and Olivia said, "I heard a rumbling noise dad." Matt told her if you hear the rumbling noise again you can call me. Olivia responded, "It's OK dad, if I hear it again I'll say a prayer."

Easter Egg Hunt

Olivia had been looking forward to the Easter Egg Hunt in our neighborhood. I can't believe it has already been a year since we were taking a picture with the Easter bunny last year. Last year during the potato sack race Olivia jumped in the same sack as her dad, but this year she was ready to take on the race by herself.

She was very excited for the actual egg hunt. Her strategy for the egg hunt did not lend itself to collecting a lot of eggs. She would find an egg, sit down open the egg, put the candy into her basket and then discard the plastic egg. She may not have collected very much candy, but she sure had a great time. Olivia was thrilled to be able to take part in all of the egg hunt activities with one of her favorite people, her friend Sophia.


It had been pretty cold and windy the whole egg hunt, but at the very end the sun came out. Olivia tore off her coat and started to dance, it was very funny.

St. Patrick's Day

Olivia had really been looking forward to St. Patrick's Day. She was so excited to wear green, she told me that she wanted to wear a green shirt, green pants, green shoes and she wanted to turn her hair and hands green. We weren't able to do all of that, but she was very pleased with her green outfit, especially when we went to the St. Patrick's Day parade and everyone "matched" her.

She was really excited to go to the parade, we thought if we went to the very end of the parade we would avoid the crowds, we were wrong. Olivia spent most of the time viewing the parade from Matt's shoulders

At one point some people made some room so Olivia could stand on the ground near the front and watch the parade. Once on the ground Olivia immediately started dancing to all of the different marching bands that passed. It was so cute, the people around her became fans of her dancing skills. I tried to take a picture, but was sandwiched so close that all I could get where her curls swinging back and forth.

The Met

We had been really excited to take Olivia to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we finally went a couple of weeks ago. Olivia was really looking forward to the outing and she wasn't disappointed.


When we walked into the first gallery, Olivia was captivated by the enormous paintings. She loved them and couldn't get over how big they were.


The Met is a huge museum so we selected the galleries that we thought Olivia would like the best and focused on those. On our way to the next gallery, we walked through a wide passageway with small paintings on the wall. We weren't paying any attention to the paintings, at least Matt and I weren't, but Olivia stopped me and and said, "That one is like the Mona Lisa." She wanted me to take her closer to one of the paintings. Sure enough she was right, it was painted by Leonardo DaVinci.


Olivia's favorite book right now is "Chasing Degas", which talks about a number of 19th centry artists, so I new she would love the Impressionism gallery-- and she did.


Although, Olivia told us her favorite part of the museum were the Degas ballerina paintings, she acted a lot more excited and vocal when we were in the Modern Art gallery.

We ended our visit at the foutain. Olivia loved the museum and wanted to stay longer, but unfortunaley it was time to go. Olivia's one request at the museum was to see a painting of George Washington. We weren't able to see a George Washington painting before we left, but I'm sure she will be delighted to come back again soon and we will make sure we see it next time.

Olivia's chart

Throughout Olivia's two and a half years she has gone to bed a number of different ways. We have rocked her to sleep, pushed her in the stroller, carried her back and forth across the room, but she has never gone to sleep by herself. Recently she had been falling asleep in her crib, but only if someone sat in the rocking chair until she fell asleep, which could take up to an hour. A couple weeks ago while I was getting Olivia ready for bed I decided to try a new routine. I told Olivia I would sing her songs in the rocking chair, put her in her crib, read her Goldilocks and the Three Bears, say good night and then she would go to sleep in her bed and I would go to sleep in my bed. As I was saying good night I was certain I would hear her calling me back to the rocking chair, but she didn't. After 20 minutes had passed I was shocked that we hadn't heard a peep from her and she had fallen asleep. The next morning we decided to build on this achievement and start a sleeping chart for Olivia. Olivia absolutely loved the idea of a sleep chart and was so excited to put a sticker on her chart if she was able to go to sleep all by herself. I would usually wake up to a very joyful declaration "I went to sleep all by myself!!" We told Olivia if she went to sleep all by herself 5 nights in a row she would get a surprise. Last week Olivia put the last sticker on her chart.

And now she is the proud owner of this ballerina costume.

She wanted to wear the costume immediately and went right to work showing us her ballet moves.

Gift from Dad

Matthew has a tradition of bringing home a little gift for Olivia every time he has to travel. His gifts have included a book on flamingos when he had to go to Florida and a little red dress when he went to Argentina. Well last week Matthew went to Maine, he got home right as Olivia was going too bed and told her he had a gift for her when she woke up in the morning.

Bright and early Olivia was up and excited to see the surprise. Matthew pointed to Maine on her map and reminded her that there are a lot of lobsters in Maine. He told her that he brought her home one of the lobsters.


Olivia seemed excited and Matthew told her the lobster was in the bathtub. As Matthew was opening the bathroom door, Olivia looked a little concerned and wanted to confirm that the lobster was pretend. Matthew told her the lobster was real. While I kept my distance, Olivia was eager to see the lobster. I was surprised that she leaned over the tub to get a good look.


Olivia asked why the lobster wasn't walking. Matthew tried to prod the lobster with a yard stick, but it still wouldn't move. Olivia decided the lobster must be sleeping. Sadly that was not the case. The night before, Matthew told me that the surprise was a lobster. He told me that his plans were for us to boil the lobster and have it for dinner after he showed it to Olivia. That seemed very sad to me so we decided we would let the lobster swim around in our bathtub that night and when Olivia woke up we would all go down and release him into the East River. Unfortunately the lobster never made it to the river and died in the tub.

Valentines Day

Olivia had really been looking forward to Valentines Day. We had a little Valentines Day party with a couple of her friends. She had a lot of fun making valentines cards, going on a treasure hunt and the highlight was decorating cupcakes. Olivia loved the cupcake there wasn't a crumb left and she licked the wrapper clean it looked like it had never been used.
On Valentines morning Olivia woke up to the wonderful surprise of having Grandmother there, although she was only in town for one day Olivia was sure happy to see her.

For breakfast we had heart-shaped pankcakes. After a few bites Olivia was far more interested in the strawberry jelly on top than the pancake.

As a second surprise Matthew came home for lunch to see Olivia and bring her flowers and a box of chocolates. Olivia loved it!

Random Thoughts......

***Olivia and I were walking outside and we could see our shadows. Olivia was very excited and shouted "I can see my eye shadow."

***While we were walking outside Olivia asked if she could take off her gloves, I asked her why she wanted to take off her gloves. She said "My hands are hot, these are my spicy gloves."

***Olivia's favorite painting is the Mona Lisa. At random times she will say "here you go...I'm giving the Mona Lisa my eyebrows." She finds it very amusing that the Mona Lisa doesn't have any eyebrows.

***Olivia has always liked the color pink, but now I think it is becoming more of an obsession. We were at a restaurant and Olivia announced to everyone "I love wine!" because the lady next to us was drinking a glass of pinkish wine.

***Olivia informed me what she wants to be for Halloween. She wants to be the intestines, then she said and mom will be the brain and dad will be the skeleton. I love that she has caught onto the fact that I like our family's Halloween costumes to coordinate.

California trip

We arrived in California just in time for Olivia to go to bed, when she woke up in the morning she walked outside and said, "wow, nice weather." The weather was definitely an improvement from both New York and Utah.

While we were in California Olivia's cousin Luke had his birthday party. There was a reptile show where the kids could touch and hold the different reptiles. Olivia wasn't thrilled about being that close to any of the animals, but I was able to coax her on some of them.


She was willing to go up and see the big skink lizard as long as she was able to stay behind her cousin Max.

Olivia showed great bravery when they brought out the 15 foot python. Not all of the kids were willing to touch the snake, but I convinced Olivia to help hold it.

Olivia really enjoyed playing with her cousins. She was able to spend a lot of time with Scarlett while the other kids were at school. She had a lot of fun pretending to be a wedding planners, chefs and I think her favorite activity was dressing up like princesses and dancing at the ball.

California was a lot of fun. We left 70 degree weather and came home to another blizzard- luckily Olivia loves playing in the snow.

Trip to Utah

Our plan to fly out to Utah Christmas day was significantly delayed because of a blizzard that completely shut down New York City. We didn't end up leaving until 5 days later. Each day that passed Olivia would grab her suitcase and say I'm ready to go to the airport. She was always so disappointed when we said she would have to wait. It's a good thing Olivia was so excited about the airport because we ended up staying at the airport for almost 24 hours trying to get out. Olivia was such a good sport. I am grateful Olivia has such a wild imagination, we spent our time in the airport swimming through swamps, grinding wheat and being every animal imaginable- it made the waiting in the airport quite enjoyable. When we were finally heading down the jet way to get on our plane Olivia kept shouting "I'm so excited!"

Olivia sure had a great time in Utah, she was so excited to see everyone there. She especially enjoyed playing with Ella. There was a lot of hugging, jumping and laughing.

Olivia had fun with her cousins, and also enjoyed being with her aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Olivia discovered a new favorite activity. Emily and Olivia would take turns playing the piano while the other person danced. Olivia loved it!

Fortunately, we were able to squeeze in some time to see a BYU basketball game. Olivia was quite interested in the game, but was even more interested in watching Cosmo. She thought Cosmo was great and really wanted to take a picture with him, unfortunately we weren't able to.

Utah was great, we sure loved our time there!