Olivia is independent. This is wonderful because she can entertain herself or grab something herself when I am busy. She plays great on her own with toys, but can also play well with others. She always tries to reach and grab toys before asking for help.
Olivia is stubborn. Being stubborn can be good, because it means she is not a pushover...but...it can also be bad. Olivia takes her stubbornness to the extreme. She is the only child of mine that I cannot convince to change her mind if she doesn't want to change it. For example, she can be mad at me about something in the middle of the mall and she will stop walking. I can walk so far across the mall while keeping her in eyesight and she could care less. She won't walk to me. She demands that I come and carry her. We can be leaving somewhere and she will refuse to climb in the car (which is completely not her norm, because usually she insists on climbing in herself). I can buckle everyone else in and start the car and she could care less. I have definitely met my match with her.
Olivia can be wonderfully cute, too. She has a cute giggle. She always is the first to greet Jon when he comes home from work, often with a hug.
She's a pretty good eater. As long as I'm serving her what she wants, she eats well. There is no convincing her to eat when/what she doesn't want to eat, so she usually gets away with not eating it. Matthew and Kayla were always forced to eat everything because I felt they needed every calorie they could get (being on the smaller side) and Nathan didn't need the calories, but always ate everything anyways...but Olivia, well, she's fine size wise and I just don't have the energy/desire to fight her with meals. We fight often enough right now anyways :).
She has no fear at playgrounds and can climb higher on the spacenet at school than Nathan can.
If (who am I kidding? WHEN) Olivia wakes up in the middle of the night she knows that she is more than welcome to join us in our bed. She won't climb out of her crib herself, but cries/calls for me and waits for me to call her over. We have an extra pillow on the ground by me so that I can add it to the middle of our bed as she comes over. She usually sleeps right where hers and my pillow touch.
Olivia has started to learn her colours, and probably can get them right 50% of the time. We have been trying to make an effort in teaching her since I realized that she was quite a bit behind Kayla in this developmental department. Her favourite colour is green. So shocking, since I've tried to always give her the pink and purple utensils/plates/bowls/cups at meal time so I assumed one of those would become her favourite.
She knows that "green means go" and "red means stop".
Olivia needs two things when she sleeps at night: her baby and her water bottle. I don't know how the water bottle thing started but it's going to be a royal pain to deal with when we start potty training again. And speaking about...who knows when that is going to happen. She has no idea when she goes. Or even if she does know, she could care less.
She has started to be able to watch cartoons/movies. She won't watch the whole thing, but they definitely capture her attention for a duration of time.
Nathan has such a deep love for her. Unfortunately, Olivia can only handle him in small doses. When she is not open to his never-ending hugs and kisses, she screams at the top of her lungs.
Olivia has really taken an interest in colouring in colouring books. She understands that there are certain areas to colour, and focuses on trying to colour in the lines and not miss any areas.
She loves milk, and gets angry when I give her less than her siblings.
{She finally has enough hair for a full pony!}
Olivia's talking has progressed like crazy this past month. She easily speaks in six word sentences, and is getting really good at not skipping/missing any word. I haven't noticed any major speech issues with her. Kayla is "Kayla", Matthew is "Sahew", and Nathan is "Mathan".
