Olivia at 20ish months and exciting news for her!

Since its been a little over two months since my last update on Olivia, I thought it might be time for another update!  Our sweet little baby girl has in fact no baby left in her, she is now for sure full on toddler!  And in less than 4 months she will be TWO!  Seriously, how?  Olivia is running, climbing, and is actually quite hard to keep up with these days!  In the past few months, she has FINALLY mastered the art of sleep!  And we are forever thankful.  If she could just teach our dogs, now that would be something of a miracle.




This summer has been spent:
* Going to Busch Gardens, the pool, and the zoo
* Enjoying eating strawberries and peaches
* Enjoying cat snuggles
* Hating our car seat and not getting our way
* Spending time with family* Sporting a new ponytail
* Spending as much time outside as possible
* Taking part in Home Depot Kids Club
* And generally being cute!

 

 

 

She has now traded her first morning word from kitty to Daddy and is always looking out for her daddy.  She adds almost daily to her inventory of words, lets see how many I can count:

Daddy, Mommy, Kitty, Puppy, Meow, Thank you, blueberry, Night, Yeah, Banana, Ball, More, Yes, No, Bye, Mwah (for kiss), Nannie, Oma, Hi,  Boobie, Juice, Mmmmm, Cheese, head, ear, happy, baby, bubble, BoBo (our neighbor's dog), Brutus, Brando, Hot, water, tea, newman (Our neighbors cat), Gigi, pink, fishie, hello, and she says a number of animal sounds (Moo, Baaa, Neigh, Meow).  I am sure there are more words but that is what we could come up with.  So she now has 40+ words in her vocabulary and at our 18 month NICU follow up (more on that below), the speech therapist said once she gets about 40-50 words, we should see her start to string two of them together to make sentences like "More strawberries" or "No Milk" so we are anxiously waiting every day for that fun!

    

Olivia can (though she doesn't always prefer to) follow directions!  She has certainly gotten a more defiant streak in her since the last update and "No" has become a much more common word in her vocabulary.  I guess we should be lucky it took her this long to figure out she has a say (somewhat).  She has also become very vocal about being "finished" with the car seat even after just 15 minutes or so.  So our upcoming 7 hour car ride to Tennessee should be fun! 

 

As far as daycare, Olivia continues to do well with it, we have some days where she cries when mommy tries to leave but more often than not, she is fine!  Her teachers all say that Olivia now "rules the class" and apparently she has them trained well as one of her teachers told me one day, Olivia was so tired I didn't have to rub her back to get her to fall asleep.  I said Olivia does not get that kind of treatment at home so I think she has been playing you all :)  Apparently her desire for back rubs comes straight from her dad!

 

She is very comfortable around regular visitors and will still cling to mom and dad around strangers, but if she spend a day or two with you, she is more comfortable.  She is a very pleasant little girl to be around, she makes everyone smile and laugh and her personality is amazing!  We feel so lucky to call her our daughter!

 

She is still obsessed with balls and her pacifier and more recently babies!  I think this might have to do with the birth of our newest nephew (her newest cousin), Stanley!  Every time she sees a picture of him, she says baby!  It is fun to show her pictures and videos of her as a baby and try to convince her that that is Olivia, her response, no, baby!  Another fun adventure with meeting her new cousin, was that we got to make a quick stop in the NICU to see her old nurse.  I have so enjoyed documenting her growth next to her NICU nurse and its fun to see Olivia now (left) versus her day of discharge at 2 months old (right).

And if you have hung on this long, some exciting news!  Olivia officially graduated from the NICU continued care clinic for Developmental and Special Needs.  We have been very blessed to be followed by this clinic for our journey.  They have all the specialists on staff there (OT, PT, Speech, Pediatrician, and sometimes a pediatric dentist) and each one comes in for about 15 minutes to assess your child and see where they are hitting based on various tests they preform and questions they ask mom and dad.  At our July appointment (her 18 months adjusted age), Olivia was aging exactly with her actual age of 20 months, so she was given a sweet book and discharged from all services.  It has been 20 months of extra doctors and specialist and we can finally say we are done!  No more PT finally after almost a year of services!!!  We could not be prouder for our sweet little girl!