We made a pine cone bird feeder together this afternoon.

Olive skips 5 when she's counting. It's always "1, 2, 3, 4, 6..."

She loves to play hide and seek, but she tells us where she's going to hide. She also loves to be chased. She'll say, "Don't get me!" and then run away.

Her latest thing is to gasp and then say, "Oh my goodness!"

I showed her X Marks the Spot recently, and now she wants me to do it all the time. I also showed her how to play doctor, and she loves that too.

Olive recognizes "O for Olive" all over the place.

She loves her bicycle (which is really a tricycle, but she calls it her bicycle) and rides it all over the house and driveway. She asks to bring it to the park every time we go, too.

She loves our phones. She says to us, "Ki hodju phone?" which means, "Can I hold your phone?"

She recognizes where we are all the time. She knows the church, the bank, the library, the park, and even when we go to Vegas.

Recently Chris and I explained to her about how Jesus was crucified on the cross. We showed her pictures in the children's scripture books. She said, "Oh he's stuck." And she often asks to see the "owies" in his hands.

She mothers Georgey and Lucy a bunch. When George cries she'll tell him, "I'm right here," and talks to both of them in her highest sweetest voice.

Olive loves when I bake. She pulls up a chair to stand on and watch what I'm doing. And of course, she loves to lick the spoon!

Olive tells me pretty often, "I like your boobies." I don't know what that's all about, but it cracks me up. I always say thanks!

Olive is very polite. She says "no thanks" and "thank you" and "excuse me." I love it.

Olive has started wanting to say the blessing on the food. She always starts her prayer with, "Thank you Father" instead of "Heavenly Father." It's pretty cute.

She and I have a bit of a power struggle everyday. I often have to remind her that I'm the mom. I certainly didn't think I'd have this issue with her at this age. When she doesn't get her way she'll often sit down on the ground in protest. She gets "2 minutes" when she's naughty. She is very bossy and really wants to be in charge of Lucy, George, and even me. When she plays with other kids, though, she doesn't totally take over. She is timid at times, and bossy at times. I guess it all depends on the dynamic of the group.

Bedtime is really hard these days. I dread it every night. We either have to lay on the floor of her room until she falls asleep (during which time I have to tell a million stories and sing a million songs), or be overly stern with her to get her to stay in bed. I really hate it. And then she usually gets in bed with us some time in the night. It's often more towards the morning hours, but sometimes it's right in the middle of the night. Ugh! Can't wait for this phase to be done.

We tell each other stories a lot. I always start with, "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Olive. And she had chocolate drop eyes, and a honey curl hairdo, and she was beautiful!!" She often tells me what the story should be about - a princess and a castle, or going to the park with Lucy. I love when she tells me stories. They mimic the ones I tell her, and they're really cute. The first time we ever told her a story, Chris made it up. It was about a princess named Olive who had 5 beautiful dresses. She had friends who didn't have dresses and they were sad, so Olive shared hers with them. So sweet.

Olive still loves to perform. She loves to dress up like a princess and dance. She loves to sing and dance, particularly to the Fresh Beat Band on television.

She's my hardest work right now, but certainly one of my 3 biggest joys too. Love her.

Olive likes to get in her princess dress-ups and then say to Chris, "Daddy, prince me!" That means she wants him to dance her around like a princess. He'll usually sing "I could've danced all night..." or something like that while he's twirling her and dipping her and dancing with her. It's really sweet.

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.

Olive just recently started riding the tricycle without constant help. It's really cute to see her go, and she loves doing it.

When we ask Olive, "What are ya doin'?" she says, "Nothin'." Chris especially loves it.

She calls going poop "pooping it." She'll say, "Mom, Lucy pooped it," or, "I pooped it a big one." It cracks us up.

Olive says, "I'm sorry," or, "I'm so sorry," all the time; and more often than not, there's no reason for it. She also says, "What are you doing here?" just to make conversation. She'll call my name, and when I answer her she just says, "What are you doing here?" We have that conversation probably 20 times a day.

She loves to say her name. She says Olib Shell Baygan. And she'll say other people's names with hers: Lucy Shell Baygan, Mommy Shell Baygan, Oatsie Shell Baygan. It's super cute.

I'm working with her on counting to ten. She does it pretty well. And because I've always used my fingers when I've counted with her she tries to do that too. She doesn't quite have the motor skills to hold her fingers in certain positions, so it's really cute to watch her try.

Her hair is growing out, and it's in her face a lot. I absolutely love watching her push it out of her face. It's so cute!

She's talking a ton, it's almost seamless to communicate with her now. And she echoes me a lot. Today I heard her singing, "I wonder when He comes again..." and I just loved hearing that.

She regressed with the potty training because of our vacations, but we started back up again yesterday and she's doing great. Peeing on the potty is no problem. Pooping is another story, but we'll get there again.

Sleeping is tough these days. We're doing a lot of bandaid measures instead of finding a permanent fix. It's hard because I think the kids all really need their own room right now, and we only have 3 bedrooms. I think they need their own rooms because George and Olive each need to just cry it out right now until they get used to it, and because Lucy does so well that I don't want her routine wrecked by one of the other two. Presently, Lucy is sleeping happily in her room, George just finished crying it out in his room and is asleep now, and Olive conked out about an hour ago on a spare crib mattress on our floor. It's tough. I keep calling it Sleep Crisis 2011. I'm really hoping to find a 4 bedroom house before too long. Because I really just don't know what else to do.

Olive is behaving surprisingly well considering her lack of good sleep routine. She's actually mellowed out a lot lately and it seems like maybe the worst of the "terrible 2s" are behind us. She's as energetic as ever, but there aren't nearly as many tantrums or freak-outs.

We're doing a lot of taking turns and sharing these days. It usually goes over pretty well, she seems like she's really understanding the concept. But I do think I'll have to work with Olive on being less bossy often throughout her life. She gets that from Chris.

The other day she was sitting quietly while I was in the middle of a conversation with Brandy in our hotel room in Vegas. I noticed only subconsciously that she had walked over to the bathroom and gotten a towel. And then she burst into tears. For Olive to genuinely cry means she's genuinely hurt or bummed or whatever, so I knew she wasn't just looking for attention. I went over to her and she had this towel wrapped around her hand. She didn't want me to look at her hand, but I finally got to it and saw that she had gotten a big bad paper cut on one of her books. She kept the towel wrapped around her hand for a long time. I was so sad that she had suffered quietly for the first few minutes and that she got the towel on her own. Poor kid! But she's a tough one. She was over it after a little while of me holding her.

Earlier today George was in the swing in his room and I heard him start to fuss. My guess was that Lucy was bugging him, and as I started down the hall to referee the situation I stopped and watched quietly as this happened: Olive had Lucy by the hand and walked slowly with her (Lucy's still wobbly on her feet) from George's doorway into our room. She sat her down and stood over her, and very sternly but lovingly said, "You can't get Georgey." Lucy just looked up at her seeming like she was earnestly listening to what Olive said. Then Olive sat down and they stared at each other silently for a few seconds. Then Lucy lunged forward and wrapped her arms around Olive's neck and they wrestled to the ground and laughed. Man, I hope I never forget what it felt like to watch that interaction.