Our little gymnast!

Mike took Olivia to a toddler "gymnastics" class this morning.  They offer weekly classes at a price that is much higher than we are comfortable paying but they offer a trial class so we thought we'd see how she'd do following instructions.  I had to work :-( but Mike said she did really well and followed the instructions most of the time.  Most importantly, she had FUN!  We probably won't be enrolling her in classes but it sure made for a good Daddy/Olivia morning.  Here are a couple of videos that Mike took:

Next up on our list of activities - Kindertots dance class at the Rec Center!  MUCH more affordable (30% of the price!), and who doesn't love a little girl in a tutu??

One for the history books

We document many of Olivia's milestones - first words, first foods, first steps, in addition to important events like holidays and birthday parties.  I felt the need to go ahead and declare today "Most Frustrating Mommy Day" (so far).  Mike is out of town visiting his parents and his son, Cooper who you might remember from his visit last year, which means that I had to work from home.  As much fun as it sounds to work in your PJs, it can be a little stressful trying to keep an almost 2 year old entertained and get anything done.  The work day ends and I tell Olivia we can go to the pool - "hurray poooooool"!  And so it begins:

We get to the pool and Olivia doesn't wan to put her puddle jumper (pool floatie) on, which is a new development given that sometimes she wears it around the house.  I said ok and let her get onto the first step thinking that as soon as she was in the pool she would want to take off swimming and would want the puddle jumper.  Wrong.  She wanted to keep going down the steps and towards the open water but did NOT want the puddle jumper, "no fwoaty, no fwoaty", and did not want me to hold her.  That's a pretty interesting combination because she can't swim.  Hmmm, time for choices - "Olivia, would you like to put on your floatie or would you like Mommy to help you?".  "No fwoaty!"  "Olivia, if you won't wear your floatie, we have to get out of the pool.  Will you put your floatie on?"  "No fwoaty!".  I probaby repeated that exchange a couple times more than I should before I told her we were going home.  Bring on the EPIC meltdown.  Picture me, in a bathing suit, trying to keep a towel around my waist (gave up on that), trying to gather our stuff and all the while holding the arm of a screaming and writhing child who is trying to hurl herself in the pool.  I was finally able to get the pool bag over my shoulder and pick her up under her arms and carry her kicking and screaming out of the pool area.  I gave her one last chance to wear her floatie once we got outside the gate and when she refused, we headed to the car.  This whole time I'm mortified at the way she's acting and terrified that I'm going to drop her on the concrete and she's going to crack her skull open.  We get to the car, skip the changing into dry clothes part, and head home.  Thankfully it's about a 4 minute drive but that was long enough to soak her car seat AND she had the audacity to ask me for an orange lollipop.  Are you kidding me?

We get home and I get her into my bathroom so that we can get out of our swimsuits.  Well, she doesn't want to take hers off.  Tough tookie at this point so I take off the top, take off the bottom, take off the swim diaper . . . and she pees on the floor.  Are you KIDDING me?

We talk to Daddy on FaceTime (God bless technology) mostly so I could vent and so Olivia would stop asking to talk to him, and then we went outside so she could play in the back yard and I could sit on the deck and breathe.  You'd never guess that an hour ago, this child was hyperventilating with tears and snot streaming down her face.  She was now perfectly content to throw her balls around and go down her slide.  I had to carry her inside because she didn't want to go in for dinner but that was nothing compared to what I had already gone through at this point. 

Fast forward to bath time . . . I was running her bath and opened the bathroom closet door to get her towel out when I heard a crash.  I turned around and she had fallen in the bath tub.  With her clothes on.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!  After I assessed that she wasn't hurt, all I could do was laugh.  I mean, really?

We capped off the evening with her hitting me hard in the face with the back of her head to the point where I'm a little surprised she didn't break my nose.  When I cried out in pain, she rubbed my shoulder and said "sowwy mommy" and all was forgiven.  My nose still hurts like hell but she was forgiven, it's not like she did it on purpose anyway. 

So that was my day, one for the history books.  This evening I had to remind myself that we are very blessed to have a very good little girl but even good little girls have very bad days.  I know that picture-less blog posts are boring so here's one of my favorite pictures ever taken of Olivia.  Matt, my sister-in-law's husband, took while they were visiting last week.  I LOVE this pictures and LOVE my sweet Olivia a thousand times more . . . but I sure am glad she's in bed.