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.

Story of my life.

If you are my Facebook friend, you've likely read a shortened version of this story via my status, but it stands to a full telling, I think.

On Friday, Isaac surprised me with the bookshelf I'd been pining after.  Oh, I was so excited!  We carried its hefty boxes in from the car (and don't tell anyone, but my arms are still a little sore), and even though we had more pressing things to do, we opened them up right away.  After carefully sorting the pieces, Isaac began to build her, right in front of my eyes!  I sat on the floor eating peanut butter filled pretzels (SO DELICIOUS, I AM OBSESSED), chattering, and passing tools or parts when requested by the builder.  

It was nearly finished when Isaac unsteadily maneuvered a heavy part, attempting to lay it in a very precise position.  Feeling guilty for my pretzel-eating laziness, I leapt from the floor with the words, "Can I help you?" and just as I took a step forward, my foot tangled with a hammer.  Down I went, crashing into the bookshelf.  

I managed to forcibly rip three shelves from their rightful places and mangle my elbow in the process.

Horror struck, all I could do was stare at the splintered pieces and hyperventilate.  Isaac, in shock, simply answered my earlier question with a quiet, "Nooo."

AHHHHHHHHH!  So frustrating!!  And you should know, tromping around my house like a mountain troll is kind of my specialty.  I break things like its my job.  Remember this?

Olivia, a witness to my spectacle, saw my stricken face and started chanting, "Don't feel bad, Mom.  Don't feel bad.  It's ok, Mom.  We'll just buy another one!  It's ok!" She was so worried for me, it was pretty cute and sad at the same time. 

I pulled myself up, noting my aching arm, and began apologizing profusely.  That poor guy.  He didn't say a word for a good (actually, bad) five minutes.  He just picked up the pieces, nodded to me, then set his mind to trying to figure out a way to salvage the shelves.  The real victims were these little wooden sticks which connect each shelf to the other; a couple were intact, the others were splintered and stuck in their holes.  Amidst my alternating apologies and desperate fix-it schemes ("What could we use in place of those wooden thingies?  Could we whittle some wood chips from the park??" I really said that.), Isaac managed to drill the stubborn little wood guys out and I think he used magic at one point?  But somehow he figured a way to cover up the parts that were destroyed and keep the thing standing in one piece, despite having too few of those connecter pieces.  

AND he was never even mean to me about it, which I think means he deserves a golden statue of some sort.

Here is the book shelf- I haven't filled it yet, obviously, but you can see her in all her non-destroyed glory:

I took out the three shelves on the far left.

We had the most glorious day this week with my car reporting 60 degrees!  

 I mean, yes, it was the proverbial warm-before-the-storm (Is that an everywhere thing or just a Utah thing?  You know, where it's super warm the day before a big snowfall?), and it hasn't stopped snowing today, but it was kind of a best of both worlds thing.  Super warm, jacket temperature one day, winter wonderland the next.

Olivia zipped around outside for the first time on her birthday scooter.

 

And when she got tired of zipping, she ran and ran until her cheeks were pink and she was gasping for breath.  It did my heart a lot of good to see that rosy color since we so seldom have the opportunity to really exercise in the winter.  Can you find her racing little body in the picture above?

I will help you:

That park is a whole lot prettier today, all covered in fresh snow.  

More running.

Nest-building.

Olivia's Yogurtland from last week.  I love that place so much.

She paints such pretty pictures.

Well, this should be up with the other park pictures, but moving it seems like quite the hassle.  She loves to swing, which made my arms all the more sore.  This was an Instagram February photo a day with the instructions "sun". 

Another February photo a day with the caption, "makes you happy".  Ice cream and Olivia, my two favorites!

And this is a picture of Thomas trying on his brother's hat.

P.S. Here's a little video of the little man walking.  It's my favorite.  Sorry the quality is so poor, I can't figure out why since it looked great before uploading.  

The End.

A witty title which fits this post perfectly.

So, I was thinking.

It is the silliest thing.  So often I find myself appreciating some random character trait in someone, or I'm admiring their really great eyebrows, or I'm wishing I could be so composed in front of people as is the girl in church, or I read a blog post that really resonates with me, or the girl in front of me with the screaming toddler is sticking to her guns even though it'd be easier and less embarrassing to give in, and I  a l m o s t say something.  I formulate a compliment inside my head, but then I swallow it for fear of seeming weird or insincere.

What a selfish thing for me to do!  Good, sincere compliments are the stuff of star dust and fairy glitter, and I'm sure I could live off of one for at least two weeks.  5 year old compliments still ring through my brain every so often and give me a little boost on a difficult day- and I'm sure their givers have totally forgotten their kind words.

What a better place this world would be if we were all verbalizing the good we see in others.
(Even if it's only about someone's fantastic hair, which is probably the number one thing I notice on people walking around.)

I'm going to try it.  At the grocery store, at church, with my friends, and total strangers.

And now I'm going to tell you a totally unrelated story:

A couple days ago, Olivia woke up and told Isaac (I was at school) about this amazing dream she'd had where she built a basketball hoop out of Legos.  She was so enthusiastic about her dream that when I came home two hours later, she told me all about it, too.  So finally she pulled the Legos out and recreated her dream.  It barely took her five minutes; she knew exactly what she was doing.

I mean, yes, you may not have known what it was without me telling you first, but here is her dream come true.  And why does she even know what a basketball hoop is?

Mustachioed Olivia. Don't mind her tired eyes, we had some DRAMA the night before.  Bed-wetting, nightmares, screaming, all of it.

A carousel at the mall.  I am not given to spending $1.50 on 2 minute rides, but she had such hope beaming when she asked and I just so happened to have the exact change, so I let her.  She thought I was the coolest mom ever for about 20 minutes until she asked for a milkshake and I told her no.  

I am doing a February Photo A Day thing on Instagram; it has directions for a picture to share for each day of the month.  I'll share some of those here every so often.  The directions for the photo above were "your view today", so I took one of the snowy mountains and my school as I walked in for a Micro lab.  It's terribly blurry because I didn't want to stop walking long enough to take a picture.

This day was titled "hands", so here are Olivia's hands holding the tiniest speck of Play-Doh.  Apparently, it was a baby orange. 

Today's was "10 AM", but I missed the deadline, so here's an 11 AM photo as we walked out the door for church.  The dead winter foliage really adds to the picture, I think.

And you're going to be really proud of me because I FINALLY figured out a way to keep my eyes tear-free while onion chopping!

Voila!  My physiology goggles still have some use PLUS the extra bonus of GORGEOUSNESS!  I mean,  really.

Ok, I was going through my pictures from our family party tonight, and I came across this gem:

I was trying to get Thomas to walk to me; you can see from his disinterested stare that this was not going to happen, BUT!  The real gold of this picture is in the background.  My family's faces are priceless.  Especially Emily and my dad who are on the edge of their seats like they can't believe what's happening and Cameron's cynical smirk from the corner like he doesn't really believe that Thomas can do it.  

And then Thomas, who could not care less.  

Babies (who will soon be toddlers)!  Am I right?