Olive loves this time of year because we're in the water nearly everyday. There's a splash pad in town that Chris has taken the kids to a few times, and we have a bunch of water stuff in the backyard. She's a little fish.

She loves to wrestle Chris, and I'm figuring out that she definitely plays rougher than other little girls her age.

Olive scrunches the right side of her face when she's explaining something or when she's confused, or whatever. It's pretty cute. She knows I like it, because I do it back to her, and so she does it even more.

She will follow up most questions with a selection of answers for me to choose from. Like, if she asks a yes or no question she'll say, "No or yes?" after she asks it. Or like if something doesn't fit her, she'll say, "Is it too big or too little?"

She still adores singing and dancing. She sings on key, and she has rhythm, and it's fun to watch those talents arise in her. She is very excited to start "ballerina school;" her dance class starts in July.

Olive is like Chris in that she gets over things pretty quickly, I mean with regard to being in trouble or getting in a fight with Lucy. She just forgets about it and moves on fast. Lucy, on the other hand, is more like me.

Olive has always been pretty independent. Lately she's been scooting chairs or stools to places she can't reach. She does it several times a day when she wants to get a snack. And she even knows how to unwrap a package of popcorn, scoot the chair over to the microwave, and push the popcorn button. I don't know who taught her that one, but we've had a million popcorn messes lately to show for it. I appreciate her independence, but I love it when she wants to cuddle and rest with me too.

Olive has had a few nightmares lately. She wakes up upset, and tells us details of the dream. I've noticed it's started happening around the same time that she's begun to pretend. She pretends things all the time. So I think it's just her little imagination running wild. Still, I don't like her having bad dreams. Poor thing.

She's energetic and creative, and always wants to know what we're doing next or what friends we're seeing today. She runs the show, or at least thinks she does. She's charming and witty, and I adore her.

Two Sundays ago we went to Utah. We went to Jenny's where everyone was having a Sunday dinner together. Before we got there, and actually a few times in the previous weeks, I was thinking about how much I don't like trampolines. And I thought to myself, I better give Olive a big talk about being careful before she gets on. We got there. Olive ran into the house ahead of me. I took about 3 minutes saying hi to everyone before I headed out to the backyard where she went. I was going to give her that talk. As I was on the way outside Shane was on the way inside, carrying Olive who was shrieking in pain. That's how fast it happened. The way witnesses explained it, she was trying to do a front flip (What the heck?? She's never done that before in her life!), and landed funny. She cried for an hour straight, nothing could distract her from the pain, and that's how I knew something was really up. We went to the ER, the nurse there said we were the sixth trampoline accident case in 2 days. Sure enough, Olive had a tibial buckle fracture. No cast, and the doctor said a splint really isn't necessary. The thing I found really interesting was that upon Googling "tibial buckle fracture" a couple of the articles that came up near the top talked about how it's kinda common for a kid near Olive's age to suffer that exact injury when jumping on a trampoline with older kids or adults. Olive was jumping with Dane, Brock, and Shane, so it makes sense. And it only affirms my dislike for trampolines. You can bury it or put a safety net around it, but this injury would still happen. Olive went 8 looooong days of crawling and being carried, and then finally started walking yesterday. She's still limping and favoring it, but she's definitely on the mend.

in the ER

sporting the unnecessary splint