Miss Independent

Little miss Olivia is now 18 months old.
And what a feisty 18 month old she is!

Olivia has become extremely independent lately.
She insists on doing everything all by herself.
Mealtime takes forever because she insists on using her own fork, by herself, with no help. And then she gets frustrated because she can’t poke anything with her fork so she starts yelling “HELP” but when you reach for her fork to help her, she gets mad at you.
So much fun.

She also insists on walking all by herself everywhere we go.
She doesn’t even want me to hold her hand most of the time, which doesn’t work for me since she either runs super fast into the middle of the road or walks ridiculously slow.
And most of the time, she refuses to let me help her step up or down on the curb…she wants to do it all by herself but usually she falls on her bum and cries. If only she had let me help her…

Olivia is still completely obsessed with Riker and wants to do whatever he is doing at all times. It was torture for her to sit on the sidelines watching Riker in his swim class, she so desperately wanted to join him! Just like any brother and sister, they don’t always get along…but telling them they can’t play together is probably the worst punishment ever! Olivia even follows Riker into time out (even when he’s in time out for being mean to her!).

This little girl is absolutely the sunshine in our house.
Her goofy grin, her silly laugh, her sweet and snuggly personality…I just want to bottle her up and keep her forever!

Swim Lessons

For the past 2 weeks, Riker has been going to swim lessons every day.

He absolutely loved it.
Riker loves to be in the pool and loves to swim…as long as he has his tube. Without his tube, he’s hopeless.

Riker is pretty much a chicken without his tube on.
He absolutely hates floating on his back or belly, even when the instructor was holding on to him!

Eventually he’d chill out long enough to float for a few seconds before she let him back up.

His favorite part of swim lessons was kicking his feet.
All the little kids would hang off the edge of the pool and kick their little feet as hard and as fast as they could!

“Superman floats” were the worst, since the instructor only holds Riker’s hands out in front of his body to encourage him to kick is feet and swim. Superman floats were always preceded by tears.

See that distressed look on his face?
That’s a result of the teacher telling him it was time to stand up and jump into the water.
Typically, Riker doesn’t mind jumping off the edge…just as long as you promise not to put his head under the water.
But he knows that when he jumps in, the instructor wouldn’t grab him until he was fully submerged and he wasn’t having it.

But of course, he did it (because I told him we could stop at QT and get a slushy if he did!) and it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

He was sad when I told him that today was the last day of swim lessons, but I think the fact that we will be spending most days at the pool anyway will more than make up for it!