Olive has started saying Elmo. I think it's funny because I rarely say his name, and I certainly don't encourage her to like him any more than any other characters we see on TV. But when he shows up, she points at him and says his name clear as day. She must really like him! Lots of other words are making their way out of that little mouth of hers as well. She's really learning and growing a ton these days.

She has moved from 2 naps down to one. Our morning routine goes breakfast/scriptures, Sesame Street, and a little bit of play time. I used to put her down after that between 9:00 and 10:00, but now we wait until noon. She still goes to bed for the night between 6:00 and 7:00, sometimes 7:30, and always sleeps for a good 12 hours. Lately she hasn't been very resistant at all to going to bed, which I love. She just wants me to give her her cuppy, cover her up with her blanky, turn on the humidifier, and she's all set. She absolutely does not want to sleep with or even near us, which is a bummer sometimes when I wish she'd cuddle up to me to fall asleep. But it's mostly a good thing because she goes to bed so easily in her own room. Besides, she's pretty affectionate throughout the day. She gives kisses and hugs. And I love when she squeezes her arms around me and pats or rubs my back. Oh my goodness! What's better than that?

I know I've mentioned it about 1,000 times so far, but lately Olive's dancing has been happening way more often with way less compulsion and with lots more groove. Holy cow! Sometimes she'll even hold a "microphone" up to her face and dance and sing. Yikes, what do we have on our hands!? Such a little character!

18 months

For Family Home Evening on Monday night, we read a recent conference talk, sang "I Love to See the Temple," and then showed Olive pictures of the temple and tried to teach her the word. She said it! It was so neat.

"Shoes" is another word Olive has started saying lately. And she's also been wearing my shoes around. Very cute.

We got a turtle a few months ago. We're not sure if it's a boy or girl yet, but we named it Don Mattingly. Chris has been getting Olive acquainted with it, and she just recently started saying turtle. It's so cute to hear her say it. When Chris gets it out of its cage, Olive loves to watch it walk around and eat.

Olive wants to help take care of Lucy. She gives her her pacifier, and pats her back when I'm burping her, and is always pretty concerned and interested in her. She kisses her a lot, and she lays with her or on top of her. Sometimes her affection gets too aggressive. But mostly she just wants to be helpful and sweet with her, and I love that.

Olive pooped in the bathtub tonight. That makes twice! Chris and I were in the living room and we heard her fart in the tub. We looked at each other and laughed. And then when I went in there to get her out I realized it was more than just a fart. Yuck!

It's obvious that Olive is catching on more and more to communicating with us. I say the word yucky when I'm changing a smelly diaper or when she puts her fingers in her nose. You can tell she gets what I mean by it, and now she says it appropriately too. She also parrots a lot of words that she hears. Today she heard the word backpack on Dora the Explorer, and she tried to say it a few times. It seems like she's just dying to talk with us. I have a feeling once she starts it'll be a lot less quiet around here.

Yesterday after packing up our hotel room, I sat down and sort of zoned out for a few minutes. Olive brought me her flip flops, climbed up on my lap, and had me put them on her feet. After I finished doing that, she climbed off my lap, went over and picked up one of my flip flops, brought it back over, and put it on the floor beside my foot for me to put on. I obliged. Then she brought me the other one. Once we both had our flip flops on, she went to the door and slapped it. I guess she was ready to go!

The last 24 hours of Olive's life have been exhausting...OK, probably more for me than for her. We went to a splash park with Amber's ward play group in the late morning yesterday. My girls are younger than her kids, and so they were done with the heat and the sun a bit sooner than them. (It's so hot right now, hovering right around 120). The plan was to go to Costco for lunch after the park, so I told Amber we'd just meet her over there after her kids were done playing. Amber said they'd only stay another 10 minutes anyway. The heat of the day had already sucked a lot of the life out of me and Olive and Lucy just in the hour we were at the park, and I was inclined to just head back to the hotel and stay in for the rest of the day. But I wanted to give Olive a little more time with her friends (I'm a big believer that keeping kids socialized helps them be well-adjusted and pleasant), so we went to Costco and walked around while we waited for them to get there. Amber's 10 minutes turned in to almost an hour, and I certainly understand that her kids wanted to play. But keeping Olive happy in a Costco shopping cart while trying to pacify Lucy and be a sweet fun mom all at the same time was a tough juggling act. Amber finally arrived, along with 3 other moms and their kids, and we sat down for pizza. The trouble was, with all those kids there, Olive was way too distracted and excited to eat anything. She's too little to sit at the table on her own, but too big and busy to be confined to my lap. So after several times of her falling off a seat or hitting me because she didn't want to be on my lap or running halfway across the store, I decided to call it. We came back to the hotel and stayed in the rest of the day. Coming in from the heat of the day to the cool of the hotel room was way refreshing. I figured I'd put both girls down and have a little time to myself to cool off and calm down. That didn't happen. Olive didn't go to sleep, and didn't even stay laying down for longer than 20 minutes. I let her cry for a while thinking she'd poop out, but she never did. Bottom line is she didn't get a nap all day. She usually takes a good morning nap, a decent afternoon one, and then sleeps a solid 12 hours at night. But not yesterday. So the rest of the day was full of trying to keep us all entertained and happy here in the hotel room. It wasn't bad. Olive had a couple of tantrums where she threw herself to the floor in dramatic protest of whatever it was we were doing at the moment, but other than that we had fun wrestling and reading and going for walks around the hotel. Around 5:00 I could tell she was starting to wind down. So I ordered some Chinese food, and we ate it, and then we began our nighttime routine. I put her in bed just after 6:00 (we put her crib in the bathroom when we're at the hotel - it's better that way for her and us). At about 7:00 it became clear she wasn't going to stop crying and go to sleep anytime soon. So I went in to reset her. That was when I discovered she had had diarrhea. Not only that, but she had opened her diaper and there was poop all over everything. So I whispered a little prayer for strength, put her in the tub, cleaned everything up, put her in some clean jammies, and then held her for a long time. She was shivering and clinging to me. I hated it and loved it. I brought her crib out of the yucky bathroom and put it next to the window. I gave her some cough medicine to help her get to sleep, put her back in bed around 8:30, turned off all the lights and TV and everything, and laid still while she went back and forth between scream-crying and self-soothing. She finally ended that volley and went to sleep around 10:00. She woke up to fuss several times through the night (she never seems to sleep well when she's in the same room as us). So between that and Lucy's night feedings, I saw the clock at least once an hour between 10:00 and 5:00 which is what time Olive decided to start her day today. Brutal! But it looks like she's feeling better, and that's the important thing. She ate a little breakfast, was laughing and playful all morning, and just woke up from a relatively good morning nap. I think we'll all be glad when Daddy comes home.

I have so much I haven't written about that needs to get down before it escapes my memory. I'm sure there are a million tiny details that have already escaped, but here's me trying to get out what I can.

Olive is becoming more and more communicative these days. Today it became clear that she knows what the word "hot" means. It's about 110 degrees, and every time we get in and out of the car I say the word hot as I try to avoid letting the metal seat buckles touch her skin. Tonight I grabbed us some pasta at Fazoli's for dinner, and it was still very hot in the bag. Olive touched it when it was on the counter, and she said "hot." She gets it. Some other words she gets include cuppy, doggy, Jesus, cookie or kaka, poop... I'm sure there are more. Chris says he can't wait for her to start talking, but I already feel very tuned in to the way she communicates. But I guess that comes with being with her nonstop. I can read what she means in pretty much any situation.

I mentioned that she understands Jesus. It didn't take more than one or two times of me pointing to our "O Jerusalem" print while saying "Jesus" for her to get it. Now, wherever we are, if Chris or I ask her, "Where's Jesus?" she looks at the walls for a picture of him. And she recognizes him in pictures other than just the "O Jerusalem" one. It warms my heart to see my little girl recognizing the Savior. It seems like she can tell when I'm singing songs about him as well. She can feel the difference between those songs and more fun playful songs.

Speaking of songs, she loves music! I know I've mentioned that more than a few times in her journal. But really, she loves it so much. She stops and listens whenever there's music being played. She sings "ebah, ebah" a lot. She loves for us to sing silly or sweet songs to her. Often Chris will make up one of his fun little songs, I'll clap or snap to the beat, and Olive will just thoroughly enjoy every minute of it. She dances all the time. It makes us laugh so hard. I really need to get it on video. She bends her knees and opens her legs, and gets her elbows and shoulders into it. Sometimes she'll do this fast little wiggle. Oh man, it's the best.

Olive really adores Chris. She likes me, she's soothed and comforted by me, and we do have fun. But it's obvious she and Chris are special friends. She definitely seems to have his social astuteness. Like him, she thrives on the company of anyone and everyone. She has been a little moodier lately (mostly due to teething, and I think she's beginning the "terrible 2's" a little early), but she's usually pretty delighted by having any audience. And that is so much like Chris. But she really prefers her dad's company to anyone else's. They wrestle and tickle and play. She's had a little trouble sleeping lately because we've been traveling and she's been out of her routine, so there have been several nights where she'll sit in Chris' lap and watch Sportscenter or something like that late at night while I doze in and out. They both look very satisfied when that happens.

Chris and I are amazed at the things Olive figures out that we definitely did not teach her. The dancing is one thing, but there are others. She started saying "cheese" when we aim the camera at her. She must've heard it somewhere, but neither of us taught it to her. At a friend's house recently she picked up a toy gun and made a gunshot sound. No idea where she got that. There are other examples that I can't think of now, but it's just really interesting.

Oh, how could I forget this one - Olive is a fish!!! She absolutely loves the water, and has taken to it so naturally. She doesn't need help when she's wearing her floaties, and she needs very little help when she isn't wearing them. She's fearless - she'll just walk off the steps and go under the water and come out smiling and laughing with her eyes open and everything. It actually startles other parents. We were in Santa Cruz a few weeks ago, and when we got to the beach she went running for the water just as a wave came breaking right over her. She was totally pummeled by it, and loved every minute of it. (She also ate lots of sand that day, and pooped out sand patties for a few days afterward). She loves the water. We swim every week at the aquatic center in Havasu. We also swim at the pool at the hotel in Henderson we stay at regularly. That hotel is not far from the Vegas airport, so there's lots of planes overhead. She loves to find the planes and point at them as they go by.

Olive's hair is getting a little longer. It's pretty light, and pretty curly. It usually ends up getting all nappy and frizzy by the end of the day. Her eyes are so dark, you can hardly tell where the pupil ends. We call her Chocolate Drops. We also call her Lolla and Goodny, among a few other nicknames.

She's so so sweet and affectionate to Lucy about 90% of the time. My cup runs over when she kisses and hugs on her. The other 10% of the time she's a little jealous or sick of her, and so she'll get a little rough with her.

Olive loves phones and cameras and computers, and all things electronic. She eats crayons and hair elastics (and has pooped both out recently), and puts just about everything in her mouth. Yesterday I found her eating my strawberry chapstick. She loves pens too. I try not to let her have them, but today she got a hold of one and wrote all over her shirt. My little darn-it.

She loves PBS shows; we watch Sesame Street just about everyday, and sometimes we watch the whole lineup of shows. I don't let her watch Caillou because he's whiney, and there are a couple Nick Jr. shows that I don't like. I'm pretty prude about what I'll watch myself, much less what I'll let her watch. I try not to keep the TV on longer than an hour or two each day, but she enjoys pretty much anything especially if there's music involved.

Olive loves to take things out of drawers and cabinets. If I had a nickel for every time I put all that kinda stuff away... She seems to like organizing things too. She's lined up her bath toys in the tub a few times, and the other day she lined up our 4 coasters on the coffee table and put cups on each one.

She loves bananas and blueberries and cheese, and just about anything sweet. She also loves to drink from her cuppy. She needs it and her blanky to go to sleep. Lately she's been tucking her hands behind her head when she's sleepy or asleep. I love that. I think I'll go look at her sleeping now. It warms my heart to do that. I love my girl.