Olive is a little fish in the water. She loves going to the pool and the beach, and she's a really confident really strong little swimmer.

She is way into coloring these days. There are always piles of colored pages around the house. She can easily make an O for Olive. And she is recognizing other letters and numbers more and more. She is an absolute whiz on the iPad. We have a few educational apps on it, and she loves doing them. She'd really do it for hours if we let her. Sometimes we do! She also really knows her way around our phones. She loves doing puzzles, and there are several 12-piece puzzles that we have that she can put together by herself. It's neat to watch.

I think we finally got through the nightmare of getting back into a good sleep routine. But before we did, she slept in our bed with us for several nights. And I would rub her face and tell her stories that always start with, "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Olive. She had chocolate drop eyes and a honey curl hairdo. And she was beautiful!" She loves it. And once in a while she does it back to me, rubbing my face and telling me a story. She can't quite say it right though, so she says, "Once atotatime..." It completely melts me. Anyway, she's back to sleeping well. She takes a decent nap on most days, and she sleeps in her bed all night every night. I made her cupcakes last week to celebrate her sleeping in her own bed (she calls them cupcapes). I'm happy and relieved! She recently tore a hole in her blanky, and now whenever we tuck her in we have to make sure she knows where the hole is. She thinks it's soothing, I guess. And when I cover her up with her blanky, she wants the striped side down. She'll say, "backwards," and that's what that means.

Olive often says, "I'm so scared" even when there's nothing to be scared of. She says "stuckin" instead of stuck. She went through 3 really big bouts of sickness lately, but she kept telling us, "I'm so better." She's catching on to mine and Chris's spelling, like when we say P-A-R-K, for example. She'd say, "Mommy I wanna go to the P-R-K." At first she thought that one was the pool, but now she's figured out that pool is P-O-O-L. Such a smart little cookie.

The other morning I got really frustrated with her. I had to walk away, and when I did I stood there and cried. She came to me and said, "Mommy?" I didn't answer her, so she said, "Mommy, talk to me." It melted all my frustration.

Last week Chris was sick, and she went in to check on him and said, "Daddy are you all better?" He said no, and she said, "A little bit?" and made a little pinch with her fingers.

She asks Georgey, "You love me Georgey?"

She loves her tricycle. The other day the mean neighborhood dogs scared her when we were out for a walk. She jumped off her bike, and climbed up me till I picked her up. But she had one hand holding the handle bars and she was crying, "My bicycle!" I guess she feared for her bicycle's life too.

Love that kid.