Olivia 23 & 24 months

 helping me unpack our new apt. (she came walking into the room like this!)

 playing butterfly princess dress-up (her fave)

 visiting with abuela and grandpa kortman for a day

 I bought some foam letters at the dollar store. best dollar spent. these things entertained her for a good 45 minutes while I got things done around the house.

 this is from when she was 22 months, but she asked to play with Aria a lot after we left:(

 can you get over those buns? playing at the splash park.

 not olivia, but I did have to get 4 different people to take shifts watching her while we got away to Orlando (2.5 hrs away) for a weekend for Franc's b-day/one last horrah before the baby. It wouldn't have been so complicated, except my whole family left for my grandpa's funeral in St.Louis that weekend unexpectedly (I couldn't go b/c i was toooooo pregnant).

 she found a new use for the coffee table!

 happy 29th birthday daddy! rootbeer cupcakes and rootbeer floats for my rootbeer loving husband!

 working on her 24 piece winnie-the-pooh puzzle (which she saw in the theaters a couple months later and now calls him winnie the POOP!)

 12 days before she turned 2 her little sister Amélie was born.

 and she got a little jealous of Amélie in her swaddle

 she mounted her cow that Matthew won for her, and asked Amélie to join her on the pig

 I thought "we should do shaving cream marblizing!" duh. not with a 23 month old child. It was more like "Spread shaving cream everywhere you can think of!"

 softly Olivia. soft. She loves her sister and always says "eww Amélie!!!!" when she is awake.

 our first attempt at a girls only picture. not so easy turns out.... (Amélie was one wk. old)

 out of no where Olivia started saying "bawk bawk bawk bawwwwwwwk(the pitch gets very high at the end of the 4th bawk)" when we asked her what a chicken says (she knew before but didn't say it like this). And when she does it her mouth kinda looks like a chicken's I think!

 She tried dressing up Amélie like a doll one day. necklaces, headband, blanket, the works:)

 thinkin' she's just one of the girls-- hanging out with 8&10 yr olds (Gracie and Savannah Linares). Seriously she acts like their is no age difference when she plays with them. Can't explain it, but she acts differently than when she plays with kids her own age (to whom she is VERY bossy).

 so pretty on her birthday, playing in her paddling pool

 with Abuela who came to visit for the week! She was a ton of help and took Olivia to the park everyday.

 SHE TURNED TWO!!!! no stinkin way.yep. All we had was a family party (grandparents, aunts, and uncles) but it was super fun for her. I had wanted to do a whole big thing, but it was too hard to do with a 2 wk. old baby ( I was tired).

 She put on her princess skirt (from aunt Becca) for the party. She LOVED opening up her presents and got super excited for each one! It was so fun watching her, I am excited for Christmas now!

 super excited about her new princess-wear from andrew and christina!

 we had cupcakes because Olivia always talks about them and sees them in her books. She STUFFED that thing in her face!

 playing with all her new horses/caballos! (from us, momma/papa, and acr)

 when daddy comes home from work/the hospital she likes to make him dress up like a princess with her. Her he is with her new butterfly sunglasses and large-gem rings (from momma/papa).

 cute photo of the girls with abuela--except Amélie's eyes are crossed--oops!

 riding abuelito fernando

 we attempted to get a family photo the day of Amélie's blessing at church, but Olivia was NOT having it!

 Olivia requested this photo on the turtles at the zoo--5 days before Amélie was born.

 activities at the zoo.

 4th of July--3 days before the baby came--looking nice an HUGE! Olivia had a fun time on the paddle boat relaxing. IT was FREAKING HOT!

 When Olivia discovered watercoloring, she never wanted to stop, creating very intense masterpieces. And I was not allowed to move the paper or cut it off until she was totally finished.

 wearing her bird hat she made at the Library time. She went with Becca and made it completely on her own after seeing the example.

and finally, at 23 1/2 months she figured out how to do her entire pooh puzzle ALL BY HERSELF.

At 2 yrs old Olivia LOVES:
-her green flowered leather flip-flop/sandals
-Saying "Katie LOOK!!!" when she sees something exciting or interesting

-playing with horses and zebras. She makes them talk to each other and do cute things.

-she loves cereal cereal cereal, pb&j,  "apple juice" (which I now call all juice--including her spinach smoothies in order to get her to drink it), cheese sticks, popcicles (begs for these daily), and still eats her fruits and veggies ONLY pureed into sauces or smoothies. super annoying, and I need to start forcing it more, but I can't get her to even touch them with her fingers let alone her mouth.

-showers with mom, playing with her foam shapes and numbers
-PUZZLES! she will sit and do puzzles for a good 30 min. and she can do a 24 or 30 piece puzzle all by herself (in less than 10 minutes), once I have done it with her a couple times. Smaller puzzles she can figure out all on her own the first time, by herself.

-don't judge, but in the mornings after she wakes up and I am still tired, I put on the tv.... her favorites are: Beethoven (the movies), my little pony, Ice Age, Shrek, yo gabba gabba (she calls it gabbO gabbO).

-painting. she has created several large watercolor paintings (with paintbrushes) and a couple finger paintings. sometimes she would wake up in the morning and ask to paint right away.
-loves when Franc and I give her kisses at the same time. She will say "And TWO!!!" to get us to do this:)
-playing princess. "ding! ding! ding!" with her magic wand "ding! horses! ding! cows! ostrich! zebra! ding! rhino!
-hopping around like a kangaroo. and jumping in general.
-being the bossiest girl around. (and saying the funniest bossiest things to everyone)
-she knows her abc's and if you show her a letter she can tell you a few words that start with that letter
-she can count to ten in english AND spanish (though she won't do these on command. she has to WANT to do them herself)

CUTE THINGS SHE'S SAID:
"yeah! I get my swimming soup (suit)"-when told we were going to the pool
she is super cute playing "hide and go seek" she goes up to the wall and counts a few numbers and then says "ready not! I come!"
"amen!" at the end of books
she calls strawberry shortcake, "strawberry CUPCAKE"

 At 23 months:
-said "stop! no eat! no mass!!!" to daddy who kept asking her if she wanted more chicken over and over (this was at 22 months but I forgot to include it).

-she is BOSSY: at church there was a 4 yr old boy whining and crying and she went up to him and said "stop crying! no crying! stop it!"---a little boy was pushing french fries into his burger and she was next to him. she didn't think that was right so she said "stop it! no fries! stop it!!!"---a 12 yrd old girl was over for a bit one night and Olivia started bossing HER around, telling her to go sit in my room (and then olivia left to go play with toys). Tells other kids "SHARE!!!!" when they aren't sharing with her. Sometimes she shares as well:)

-conversation I overheard her create between a big alligator and a baby alligator: BABY:wahh!!! waaahh! BIG A: No whining. BABY: pleaaaaaase....! BIG A: (she feigned a deep voice) ooohkay. BABY: thanks daddy!!! (Franc and I turned to each other and realized the same thing... she's been working her daddy over and she KNOWS what she's doing!!!)

"Bye mommy! Gimme a kiss!" (when leaving with "mama" and "papa").
she says "no thank you" (usually to food she doesn't want) and "you welcome"

when we need to go somewhere and I tell her we are leaving, she will say "hold on, just a second, be right back." (and usually gets her shoes or toys)
-loves doing puzzles but needs my help
-knows most shapes: square, rectangle, oval, circle, rectangle, triangle, hexagon, crescent, star, heart (she learned them from an iPad game....)
-knows all her colors, and actually will say the right one more often now (she has known them for months, but for some reason when asked would just spout out the same color for all of them)
-says "oops! I fart." when she farts:)
-We take showers together. As I take off her clothes she says "no shirt!" no pants! no diaper! with the cutest little voice ever. Its my FAVORITE part of showering now.
-sings "CLEAN UP!" when its time to clean up. she learned it at nursery I guess. And Ring around the Rosey which she asked me to do with her one day and I was baffled as to where she had learned it. nursery.
-loves to sort. we were at her Spanish Immersion class one day and the kids were supposed to count some rocks and put them in buckets, but she was waaay to consumed with sorting everyone's rocks by color into separate buckets to bother counting them. (btw the child barely ever spoke a word, let alone in spanish, at this class all the times we went. and she knows it! I kept trying to tell them I SWEAR she speaks spanish!!!
-another sorting incident: she has all the ribbons she STILL plays with. She will sort them and hang them on her rocking rhino, separating them by solid or patterned.

- started giving us "passionate" kisses where she grabs your cheeks, closes her eyes, and kisses you softly!!! Franc finally figured out that it was from Snow White (when she kisses the Dwarfs).
-gives prayers and says "mama, papa, matthew, etc etc" naming off everyone she can think of. AMEN!
--the other day I told Olivia to please come here. She wouldn't and then she said to me "MOMMY! come Here! ONE! TWO! THREE!!!"
-everyday while at my parents' house she would jump on their bed. One day my mom said she kept jumping weirdly and then sort of squatting. My mom was concerned... until we smelled what she had been doing:)
-sometimes Olivia talks in her sleep. One night, while franc had been still living in GA, I heard her talking about daddy in the middle of the night, for a few seconds, and then it stopped. cute and sad.