Update.

Let's talk about what Olivia is up to lately, shall we?

- We've been experiencing some behavior lately. I mean, big time.  And actually, the last week or so hasn't been too bad, but the two before it were a gigantic nightmare.  It's like all the naughty behaviors she grew out of, and even ones she never previously exhibited, all came back at the very same time.  Little things would set her off (usually not getting what she wanted) and suddenly I would have this feral little animal on my hands.  I will tell you, this child had never purposefully bitten me in her entire lifetime until three weeks ago.  I have always felt fairly confident in my abilities as a parent, but in those two weeks there were times when I would just sit and stare at her because I had no idea what to do, how to react.  And I won't elaborate any further, but, MAN.  It was rough. Hopefully we're coming out of it!

- It is the weirdest thing.  Her 'help' around the house has actually become helpful.  Ever since she was small, she'd love to participate in whatever chores I was doing.  This always involved making a bigger mess than we started with or having the chore take three times longer than needed because I'd have to guide her every move to prevent the gigantic mess.  But now?  It's like, she asks to fold her own laundry, she does a great job, then she goes and puts it away.  She can actually lessen the amount of work that I have to do.  Same goes for voluntarily putting toys away.  She even scrubbed down my oven the other day with a sponge she named "Spongey" (totally original), and it was sparkling at the end.  I am still in shock a little.

- She insists on calling me 'sir'. "Yes, sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" and "Good night, sir!"  No matter how many times I tell her I'm a ma'am, I'm stuck as a sir.

-  The other night she called me into her room, crying, and said, "I just think you love Rusty more than me."  I was really surprised and said, "What are you talking about?  I love you both!" She sighed and said, "It's just... you love Rusty one hundred, and, and, you love me sixty-oooooone!"  More crying, but now I was laughing.  I love her sixty-one?  I assured her that I love them both one million, kissed her, and she was asleep five minutes later. 

- She is afraid of everything.  Suddenly the hall scares her if the light isn't turned on.  I come in to our front room to see her frozen, staring down the hall.  She always asks me to close the doors of dark rooms, and suddenly she can't possibly make it to the bathroom by herself if it means she'll have to turn on a light.

- With her fears have come nightmares.  I can tell she's had one by the way she cries, so I usually go in to comfort her.  They are usually very random, like the time she told me she'd dreamed that everyone got to watch a vine grow except her?  So horrible!

- "Wait!  I have an idea!"  These are my least favorite words, lately.  This kid cannot take no for an answer.  She always has to come up with a solution to try to appease us both; I'm glad she wants to compromise, but sometimes I just want her to take my first answer as the final answer.  The other day around dinnertime she was asking for chips.  I told her the obvious answer.  "Wait! I have an idea! What if I just had one chip? Just one. Oh, please, just one!"  Same answer. "Wait! I have an idea! I will just take one bite.  One bite of one chip, I promise!"  Same answer. "Ok, ok, I have an idea!  What if I just licked it? I will just lick one chip, nothing else!"  I did let her lick the chip, if only to see if she'd really do it.  She did.  She licked one single chip, then placed in on the table for further consumption after dinner.  And she was satisfied.

Michelle, Emily, and I took the kids to an indoor swimming pool on Valentine's Day:

Olivia was obsessed with shooting down the waterside, making gigantic splashes at the end.  It was so out of character for her to enjoy the water splashing in her face, I was really surprised!  But down, and down (and down, and down) she went.

My favorite is her scream on the way down.  At the end she says, "I'm the bad guy!  I'm the bad guy from Cars 2," because this is her new favorite character of all time.  We don't even know his real name except that they call him Professor something, so she just sticks with 'the bad guy from Cars 2'.  She pretends to be him all day, every day.  And he isn't even the real bad guy, just one of the bad guy's minions.  (p.s. MICHELLE, pay special attention to Rusty; this is when he decided he was going out to the other slides and I was just lucky enough to look right before he went into the deep end.  You can practically see the idea to go strike him in this video.)

Apparently his name is Professor Z?  I seriously didn't know that until I pasted this picture.  She'll be pretty excited when I tell her his whole name in the morning.  (She is so random.)

After swimming.  This picture was Olivia's idea because she loved the 'Ariel rock'.

Her hair is getting soooo long.  It needs a good 3+ inch chop again.  Anyone handy with scissors?  I do it every so often, but I always feel like it turns out crazy.

Robot tattoo shenanigans with her dad.  

Here's her bad guy Professor face.  

And a short little video:

Here she is pushing a shopping cart that's just her size.  She was so excited.  (And now I'm wondering if I've forever doomed my grocery shopping to trying to guide my own cart and hers at the same time, taking aisles at a painstaking pace, trying to keep her from clipping people's heels, and trying to avoid letting her place $100 worth of stuff we don't need in her cart because I let her do this once.  Do you ever feel like you can't do fun stuff with your kids because then you'll be stuck doing that stuff every time you go to that place?  That, or you'll be stuck fighting the battle about why you're not doing it this time even though you did it the time before?) 

And here's a picture I took of Mount Timpanogas as I was walking into my Micro lab Wednesday evening.  That's straight out of my iPhone, no editing whatsoever.  A storm was coming, and the sun was setting, and it all added up to glory, pretty much.