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!

Christmas Morning

We had a nice Christmas morning. Every time Olivia opened a present she wanted to play with it for a while before opening the next present. I think the doctor kit from Santa was her favorite. After presents were opened we played doctor on and off all day long.

We bought a microphone for Olivia since she is always singing. She was so excited about how loud it made her voice. She immediately put a show on for us.

Olivia was excited about the lip gloss in her stocking. Unfortunately the lip gloss kept ending up in her mouth, but I guess that is to be expected with cake batter flavored lip gloss.

Olivia put great thought into picking out my gift. She was so excited to give it to me, she couldn't help but telling me what it was before I opened it. She picked out lime flavored gum.

More Christmas Fun

We went to Rockefeller Center to see the big Christmas tree. Olivia was so excited to see the enourmous tree. Grandmother was in town, so she was able to join us.

A second shot at sitting on Santa's lap. She still wasn't sold on the idea, but she was much more eager to sit on this Santa's lap because she noticed he was handing out candy canes.

After seeing Santa we headed out to the Santaland set up on the piers. It was absolutely freezing. Olivia didn't seem to mind, she loved the inflatable Christmas decorations.

Olivia made her first gingerbread house. I learned a valuable lesson, you shouldn't order a gingerbread house kit online, it turns out the gingerbread cookies don't ship well. Despite our best efforts the gingerbread house kept falling apart, but Olivia was still very proud of her work.

Santaland

Christmas has past, but I still wanted to remember some of the fun Christmas memories we shared with Olivia. I was anxious to take her to Santaland at Macy's. She loved walking through the North Pole while we were in line for Santa. The marching band of bears was a highlight for her.

Her favorite part were the dancing ballerina bears, she wanted to join them on stage so bad.

Last year she screamed when we even brought her near Santa. I was anxious to see how she would react this year since she had been so excited about Santa Claus. She was willing to sit on his lap, but wasn't convinced she actually wanted to be there.
We have a tradition of Olivia getting to pick out a new ornament each year. We went to check out the ornaments while we were at Macys. Olivia enjoyed looking at all the different Christmas decorations.

I asked her to find her favorite ornament, it turned that every ornament was her favorite. She finally narrowed it down to 3 and selected the green dancing lady as her favorite.

Ice Skating

Olivia has been so excited to go ice skating. Whenever we would meet Matthew in the city, we would stop at the ice skating rink across from his office and watch the ice skaters and she was always so anxious to get on the ice. We finally found a Saturday that wasn't freezing and went to the ice skating rink.
As soon we put on her skates she hopped up and started running around. Matt and I were impressed with how well she was moving around on her skates.

However, it was a different story once we got on the ice, she turned into a rag doll. We spent most of the time with each of us at her side and dragging her around the rink. I was worried that being drug around the rink probably wasn't very fun for Olivia, but I realized I was wrong when she shouted "I'm having so much fun!" She also got excited when they started playing "12 days of Christmas" over the speakers and said "Ooooo my favorite song."

She decided to ditch skating and wanted to just sit on the ice and collect little piles of ice. We decided this was not the safest place for her and decided to call it a day.

After skating we went and bought some hot apple cider. Olivia said this was her favorite part of the activity.

Trimming the tree

Olivia has been talking about ornaments and gold stars for a while now so when we bought our Christmas tree she was ready to decorate.


She had a blast decorating the tree, I can't tell you how many times she would stop what she was doing and scream "I'm so excited!"


She was having a little bit of trouble with her ornaments staying on the branches. I noticed that she came up with a solution to this little problem by hanging all the ornaments on the garland.


Olivia has been talking for weeks about putting a gold star on top of the tree. When we asked who should put the star on top of the tree Olivia started shouting "I I I I!!!" She didn't seem to mind that our star was silver not gold.