Even More Catchup Photos

More Catchup Photos

Some other photos from earlier this summer. Family, friends, Olivia bouncing off her environment in general. Apologies for their delay.

Olivia in the Summer of 2010

This little girl is becoming a Big Girl this summer. Olivia recently moved up to the Four Year Old Room at school. She has had a very good friend move to another town. And she has had to share more time with more active siblings. This hasn't been easy for her, but I think I see her working on it every day, finding ways to calm herself down, to wait a little bit to be heard, to find something else to do until we have more time for her. Sometimes this is when we're reading books before bed, and she will hold questions until then. Not that she refrains from asking volumes of questions all the time, but the quieter times are when she asks her more important questions. She is a little worried about what Sunday School will be like. She tells us that she misses Graham. She will ask about what certain comments mean that she may have heard adults talk about during the day. I'm very proud of her for all of this: her patience, and her considered thoughts.

She is also defending her right to wear what she wants. This is probably her main means of controlling her environment or schedule right now, so she maintains this with a strong voice and sense of justice. She angles for McDonald's on the drive home from school and, when told she should use her own "stars" money for special meals like that, she gets angry with the injustice as well: "No, I don't have to buy food! Grownups are supposed to buy the food! I don't have to do that!" The stars money is a reinforcing of good behavior we have been trying for months to help inspire her in the mornings, and which has been very beneficial when we happen to be shopping: we can tell her that she should save her stars money to buy the item she happens to see and ask us for in a department store. She is surprisingly good at deferring gratification and I can't tell her often enough how proud i am of her for this, mostly because she doesn't understand yet that this is pretty difficult and that i can appreciate how difficult it must be for her.

Like i said, lots going on for Olivia right now, and I'm very proud of her for so many reasons.

Sleep-Out

Friday night turned out to be a nearly perfect night for Olivia's first (pseudo) camping experience.

Daddy set up his big tent on the back porch, so we had double bug protection, and cool night weather (60s). We both actually slept quite well, which is ideal for getting her to ever do this again, maybe actually outside next time.

She was very cute and very excited and a very good girl. Daddy appreciates this very much.

Happy Mother's Day

I am a very fortunate Daddy and husband.
I can't explain why Olivia would be wearing a poison control phone number sticker, other than it is a sticker?
Photo from March, but the kids are all so mobile now that I can't get these four together very often.

Fraternal Love

This is probably the best photodocument of how Olivia interacts with her infant siblings right now.
She gets a teeth-clenching grin on her face and shakes her head slightly as she goes in for what appears to be an intense hug around the neck. It ends up being not as severe as it started out, and the kids don't seem to mind her hugs, though they tend to push her away a bit when she comes at them like this. I don't know if she is just trying to control herself rather than tussle with them, as she would a more durable school friend?

Sleeping Beauty

She would really like the reference from the title - Olivia inhales Princesses right now, and has for about the last 6 months. We catch up to her as she has taken to sneaking into Mom and Dad's room occasionally, when she's supposed to be in bed. Kind of hard to be mad at her when seeing this. And her current and instinctive challenging of her parents means we can use all the mercy-inducing thoughts of her we can find. This meets the criteria.