More than meets the eye...

During the past few months Olivia has begun to see much more than the traditional functions of ordinary items around the house.

The other day, she walked by the cell phone charger plugged into the wall and said, "oh a jump rope!" She then asked me to take it out of the wall so she could jump rope. This type of thing happens quite a bit.

After we finished reading a book I handed it to Olivia and she said "oh my backpack!" and put the book on her back.

While re-organizing the cupboard in the bathroom, Olivia grabbed two curlers and said "Oh my cymbals" and started hitting them together.

Olivia came running out of the closet and was excited to show me her necklace.

After using a yardstick to retrieve a pen cap from under the couch, Olivia stood up and said "oh my cane."

Olivia found a box and sat inside and asked her dad to pull her around the house. Matt started to pull her and the front of the box immediately ripped. Olivia saw the ripped side as a perfect door and exclaimed "oh a house!" This house has become a favorite toy and she is constantly having us knock on the "door" and she says "come in."

The Artist

Olivia is turning into quite a good artist. She's not the biggest fan of coloring in a coloring book and when she brings home coloring pages from Nursery they are usually blank. She prefers drawing on a blank sheet of paper and enjoys telling you what she is drawing. These are some of her recent masterpieces.

Olivia told me this is a picture of 4 sharks, a snake, a bone and a hula hoop.

This is a drawing of a bird and an egg.

This is a picture of clouds and a clown on a computer.

Shoes

Olivia has always enjoyed going into my closet and finding some clothes or shoes to try on. Recently she has picked a favorite. At some point every day I see Olivia tromping around in my black high heels. Early this morning (Olivia is a very early riser, she doesn't mind starting her day at 5:30) while she was still in her pajamas Olivia took a spin in her favorite shoes.

Going to sleep

After we finish Olivia's bed time routine I wait outside her door until she falls asleep. Once Olivia is alone in her room she likes to talk to herself about anything and everything. Every night she goes through a long list of people who are sleeping, "Joe is sleeping, Ruby is sleeping,..." She always includes all of her family- her grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins and her friends. Her sleeping list seems to get longer and longer. Tonight she included all of the handymen and doormen who work in our building to the list. She then added some random items to the sleeping list, such as the BYU cougar, dirt, bugs, popsicles and the mop. After she was sure that everyone and everything was sleeping she sang two rounds of "America the Beautiful" (just the last part). Then she reminded herself that her nose hurt and as she was contemplating if she needed medicine she drifted off to sleep. I absolutely love to hear Olivia's ramblings, she makes me laugh every night.

Fun with friends

There are 2 girls who live in our building that Olivia is crazy about. A day doesn't go by that I don't hear Olivia talking about Madelyn and Sophia. She talks about them so much she has even combined there name into one, and sometimes refers to them as Madphia. She recently had a day of fun outings with her friends.

In the morning Olivia and Madelyn went into the city and went to Olivia's favorite place, the library. After we were there for a while they decided they wanted to lay down and relax.


Later that day, Olivia had dinner with Sophia at a nearby restaurant. Now whenever we pass by that restaurant Olivia reminds me that's where she ate dinner with Sophia. Olivia had a wonderful day of fun with friends.

Mother's Day

Yesterday was a wonderful Mother's Day-Olivia and Matthew made such an effort to make it a special day. Olivia was so excited all day, when I told her I wanted to take a Mother's Day picture with her she just kept laughing and doing what she calls her "big smile." I feel so blessed to be her mom-she has brought me so much joy!

Macy's

We took Olivia to the flower show at Macy's. She really enjoyed looking at and smelling all of the flowers. She especially liked the flowers that were hanging from the ceiling.

Olivia's excitement for the flowers completely disappeared when she caught sight of the purse department. She was thrilled to see all of the purses and immediately found a purse she liked and kept saying "Livy's purse, Livy's purse" while she was trying to take it out of the case.

It turns out Olivia found a lot of fun things to do at Macy's. She enjoyed going up and down the escalator with her dad over and over again.

She also had a lot of fun putting on a fashion show in the hat department. I would have never guessed that Macy's had so much fun to offer, but it did and we had a great time.

Don't leave home without them.........

Olivia has decided that she doesn't like to leave the apartment without something in each hand. They can be the most random items, like the top to her puzzle box and flashcards that she quickly grabbed before going down stairs to say good-bye to her dad.

But she does have some favorites, for a long time her favorite items to take with her have been the vacuum brush and a role of masking tape. Recently purses and her dolls are taking over as her favorite things to take, but she still holds a special place for the masking tape and vacuum brush, just yesterday she asked to hold them while eating her lunch.

Even when we are going on a long outing to the city in her stroller, she holds on tightly to her selected items the whole trip.

Easter weekend

Easter weekend was filled with a lot of fun!

General Conference:
Olivia watched part of General Conference with us. She was very excited when it came time to sustain the general authorities, she kept wanting to raise her hand and sustain them even after it was finished.

I had her try to find the pictures of whoever was speaking. After President Monson finished speaking she said "more prophet, more prophet."

Church Easter egg hunt:

On Friday there was an Easter egg hunt for the Primary and Nursery children, Olivia was very excited. We had explained to her how an Easter egg hunt worked and she was ready with her basket and excited to find eggs. She did a really good job and ended up with a basket full of eggs.

As she was collecting her eggs one of them fell open and she realized there was candy inside. Trying to get to the candy became her focus the rest of the afternoon.

Long Island City Easter Egg Hunt:

The next day we went to an Easter egg hunt in our neighborhood.

Olivia remembered that the eggs had candy, so as soon as she grabbed one egg she sat down to enjoy her candy.

After the egg hunt Olivia had a lot of fun dancing.

Olivia was excited to see the Easter Bunny and wanted to give him a hug, she kept saying "please go to rabbit, please go to rabbit."

She also won a bunny hop race. She actually just competed against herself, this activity was set up for the older children, but Olivia wanted to give it a shot. All in all it was a really fun day!

Sports Fan

Last week when Olivia told me she was leaving to the city to go to work, I asked her what work she did in the city. She told me she plays ball and throws in hoop. I asked her if she was a professional basketball player, she said yes. She has also described to me that she is a professional baseball player and soccer player. I think this girl must like sports!

St. Patricks Day

Olivia was excited to go to the St. Patricks Day parade after I explained to her that there were going to be a lot marching bands playing instruments and making music. There were soooooo many people walking to the parade and it was a really rowdy crowd so we decided to listen to a couple bands that were warming up down the road. After they finished we thought that would satisfy Olivia's parade experience and headed for the park. Olivia immediately started to say "go to music, go to music." She was so excited to see more bands we decided to join the big crowd.

The crowd, which was 99% college students took a turn for the worse so we found another side street and listened to more bands warming up. We listened to some men playing the bagpipes and Olivia loved it.

Olivia waving to the band

Matthew and Olivia

Matthew was looking out the window and called Olivia over and said "Look at the boat on the river." Olivia went over to the window and said "a barge, a barge." I looked out the window and Olivia was right, it wasn't a boat on the river it was a barge.

Pretending

Olivia loves to pretend. She loves tea parties and picnics in our living room with her stuffed animals. She enjoys being a mom to her doll. Last night when she was going to sleep I heard her singing "twinkle twinkle little star" in her crib and she was putting her doll to sleep the same way we put her to sleep.
She likes to pretend she is in a marching band. Everyone present must participate in the parade. She gathers all her musical instruments and we march around the kitchen island playing our instruments.
Olivia also likes to pretend she is a new born baby. She will tell me "like a baby, like a baby" and wants me to cradle her in my arms and feed her a bottle.
Olivia's favorite thing to do is to pretend she is going somewhere (usually work or the city). She tells me she is going to get her stroller and doll, she asks for her hat and shopping bags and goes through the house saying good bye to everyone and then heads for the door. She never goes past the door, but will usually come back and tell everyone good-bye again and then back to the door. She will repeat this again and again. Her favorite part of this game is for us to beg her not to go and pretend to cry...she thinks it is so funny!

Cleaning

Olivia asked me for a toothpick the other night. I gave her one and watched to see what she was going to do with it. She walked over to her booster seat (where she eats every meal) and used the toothpick to deep clean the crevices around the buckle while saying "dirty, dirty." She actually did a very good job and now her booster seat is sparkling clean.