Correction

Olivia inherited a super cute coat from her cousin, Megan. It's a red coat that has toggles as fasteners. I taught her the word "toggle" a couple months ago, but had never heard her use it. Today when I was putting on her coat and I said "you have buttons on your coat!" She said, "no, toggles!"

(BTW, I was talking about the buttons on her coat sleeves :)

Flashlight fun

Olivia has been really interested in flashlights as of late. She loves taking the flashlight into the dark bathroom (she's totally unafraid of the dark) and shining it on different surfaces. She discovered that when she lays the flashlight on the ground, it makes a triangular shape which she calls "arrow." The other day when we were going through the flashlight/bathroom routine, I noticed there was a rainbow ring around the center of the light when we shined it on the wall or ceiling. I pointed that out to her and we had a fun time checking it out on the bathtub, sink, and ceiling. Today, when we were playing (again) I noticed that if we shined the light on the corner of the tub, the middle refracted and it looked like a heart. We were amused by that; then we looked at the rainbow again. Seeing how much fun the flashlight could be, she said, "Make butterfly!"

Sorry babe, I'm out of tricks...

Boom!

Olivia and I were driving home from the grocery store at 4:30 this afternoon. She was a champ during our shopping trip and on the (very short) trip home, she requested some goldfish to snack on. Her bag was in the back seat so I tried to blindly feel around in it while I drove. Unsuccessful in my attempts, I dragged the bag to the front seat. I quickly glanced down to see if I could locate the snacks and as I did, I have grazed the shoulder of the road, plowing over the icy chunks of snow laying by the snow bank. The sound was sort of clunk-cu-clunk-ba-boom. From the back seat, Olivia yelled, "thunder!"

How Big?

I taught Olivia a new song this week. It's one that we sang at Sunday school with the three- and four-year-0lds last week. It goes, "My God is so BIG, so STRONG, and so MIGHTY! There's NOTHING my God cannot do!" And we sing it like that - emphasizing the important words and using actions. We sang it a bazillion times and then I decided we should talk about the theology behind it. I said, "Olivia, God is bigger than you, and bigger than Mommy and even bigger than Daddy." This blew her mind, so she thought bigger. "Paul Bunyan?" she suggested.

I guess the water park is still fresh in her mind from our Brainard weekend last month... (note the mural of Mr. Bunyan on the back wall.)

Who?!

Yesterday I was going on and on to Olivia about how cute she was. After a minute of "you're so sweet, you're Mommy's cute girl" etc., I said "who's cute?" She replied "Jonny!"

"Uncle Jonny is cute?" I asked her.

"Yes! Auntie Nicki cute, too!"

At least all my gushing hasn't made her think she's the only cutie-patootie in the world...

(She has become an expert at using "too" properly. It's pretty hilarious.)

Quick Fix

Last Christmas, when Olivia was only a few months old, she received a music-playing, plastic ball-shooting toy that she has grown to love more with each passing month. She is now old enough to understand how it works ("whack it!" she says when she pushes the dowel to make it start), and how to keep it moving (by collecting all the balls it spits out and shoving them back in.) What she hasn't mastered it how to fix it when it jams. Over the weekend, one of Olivia's playmates stuck a part to a different toy into the ball feeder so when she "whacked it" the thing only hummed and buzzed but spit out no balls. After a few failed attempts at starting it, Olivia said to me "Batteries!"

That IS usually the solution...

Deep thoughts, with a 17-month-old

Olivia's great-grandfather died a few weeks ago. Since then, we have talked a lot about Great Grandpa being "at home with Jesus" and "in Heaven with Jesus." Yesterday when Olivia woke up from her nap, she asked (per usual) "Where Daddy go?" I said, "Daddy's working. Daddy is at work." To that she said, "with Jesus?"

Wellllll, sort of.

P.S. I did clarify that Jesus was with Daddy at work, but Daddy was not in Heaven with Jesus. Did I say "clarify?" I meant "confound."