Hellobee

I haven’t written a monthly update for Olive in 5 months, but a lot has certainly happened since, so get ready for Olive updates and photo overload!

Olive has been sleeping through the night for the past 4 months. I can’t believe that Charlie slept through the night at 4 1/2 months, and I woke up with Olive for 16 months! It already feels like such a long time ago though that she was waking up multiple times a night. I guess the ability to forget the hard things is what makes it easy for people to have more kids. We sleep trained Olive very easily at 16 months after nonstop wake-ups during months 14-15 due to colds. Olive also transitioned to 1 nap a day at 17 months once she had been in daycare for about a month. Life is so much easier now that she’s on the same nap schedule as Charlie — I’d been waiting for her to drop that morning nap for a long time! Since sleep training and dropping to one nap, there isn’t much I’d change about her sleep (knock on wood!)!

Schedule

Olive has had an early bedtime for most of her life, but the past month her bedtime has been creeping later and later because Charlie’s bedtime is much later. This is a typical schedule for her:

8:30am – Wake up
1:00pm – 3:30am Nap 1 (2 1/2 hours)
8:00 – 8:30pm – Bedtime
Total Sleep: 14-15 Hours

She usually gets a little more sleep on the weekends because we let her sleep in in the mornings and take longer naps. I’m thankful that she’s not an early riser because I’m so not a morning person, but I’ve already paid my dues with Charlie in that department!

Breastfeeding

We’re still going strong! When Olive started daycare at 16 months, it was really hard to wean her off the post-daycare nursing session because she wanted to nurse as soon as she saw me. But we eventually dropped that session by me hiding downstairs while Mr. Bee fed the kids dinner. Then when I’d come upstairs she’d be full and wouldn’t want to nurse. Now we nurse in the morning and at bedtime. I never thought we’d still be nursing at this age! But Olive still enjoys it and though I’d be ok with weaning now, I thought that it might be best to postpone it until after our trip to the Philippines in August when nursing will really come in handy. It’s still a cure-all for sleepiness, boo-boos and everything in between. She’ll be almost 2 when we return, and she loves nursing so much, I’m sure that we will have a difficult weaning road ahead of us!

Eating

I think I’m doomed to have picky kids. They will have a good month or two, then a bad month or two. Right now they’re both not eating very much. Feeding them is probably my biggest parenting challenge. But Olive is a better eater than Charlie overall. She eats a bigger variety and feeds herself (she does not like to be fed), whereas Charlie still needs coaxing to eat most meals.

Walking

Olive has always been behind with her physical milestones because she has low muscle tone. She didn’t even start real crawling until 12 months, and I always expected her to walk around 18-19 months so it wasn’t something I worried about. She took her first steps just before she turned 18 months, and was walking well a couple weeks later. Life got so much easier once she was walking because I didn’t have to carry her everywhere, and I didn’t have to worry about her crawling around on the dirty ground in public anymore. At least she is slim so she wasn’t that heavy (she’s 20 lbs now and in the 3rd percentile), but I’d prefer for her to be a little chubster!

Talking

Olive is a little bit speech delayed, and we’ve really been working with her the past couple of months, constantly repeating words over and over again. At this age Charlie knew over 100 words, was speaking in 3 word sentences, and had great receptive language. Olive has about 40 words and her receptive language should definitely be more advanced than it is. For instance, she didn’t understand almost any basic commands like “open the door” until pretty recently. I think she has just been a little slow to hit both physical and cognitive milestones because she was born early. She definitely had some sensory issues, but she seems to have overcome most of them and she’s continuing to show huge strides so I’m not too worried right now.

Olive has been learning a couple new words each week, and her receptive language has also improved a lot. She’s also great at repeating words after you say them, so we don’t count words until she says them regularly without prompting. This is what she can say so far: mama, dada/daddy, Charlie, Olive, baby, ball, outside, cookie, cracker, apple, shoe, socks, eye, nose, mouth, bubble, waffle, fishie, doggie, meow, cat, banana, Elmo, leaf, ice, ice cream, hand, sit, wow/woah, uh oh, hi, bye, boop, no, up, mine, off, ouchie, oh no, excuse me, please, more, thank you.

Olive last summer (four teeth and she still had trouble sitting up!) and this summer wearing the same dress.

With Olive down to one nap and on the same schedule as Charlie, finally walking, and talking, these past couple of months have been awesome. This post walking, pre-2’s stage was my favorite with Charlie, and it is with Olive as well. Olive is so sweet, affectionate, and everything she does is adorable to me right now, I want her to stay this age for a little while longer.