Dear Olivia,
You’re so special, you get two posts in one! I’m sorry, I hope this doesn’t translate in to how I’ve been treating you since Miles arrived. Truth of the matter is, you’re much more independent lately and I’m taking advantage of that. It’s not like I’m letting you play in traffic or anything it’s just your brother requires a great deal more of my time and if I can catch 10 minutes to myself while he’s sleeping, I’ll take it.
Thankfully the holidays are over. They came in a hurry and they left even faster. We went in to the holidays with the conscious effort of going easy on gifts for you. After last Christmas, you were so visibly overwhelmed you crawled in between 2 boxes and sat quietly for a good hour. When you watch your child that catatonic on Christmas, you know as a parent you may have gone slightly overboard. Now we went in to the holidays saying only a few gifts and somehow it still grew to be much larger than we anticipated. What was once a bedroom for 2 children is now looking more like a playroom with room for 1 squirmy toddler. Poor Miles will have to sleep in a basket in the closet. I’m not converting bedrooms anytime soon so we’re going to have to get clever. Sometimes I wish I had a smaller house so I could have a valid reason for not having so many things. My argument fails when we have open rooms. Although, if I keep filling rooms with toys, our house is going to start looking like the apartment in the movie “Big.” I’m cool with that but I want a trampoline dammit!
The tumultuous behavior you were exhibiting a few months ago is starting to fade away. I should clarify – you’re not using the word “no” as often but you’re more hyper than ever. Now I’ve heard horror stories of what a hyper lunatic I was as a child. In fact, I have seen video of me as a child but it never registered with me that my offspring could be crazy. It never registered until recently and I thought to myself – please don’t come back twice as crazy. I’m hoping this newfound energy is just typical toddler behavior and not some extreme hyper trait that has been passed down. Your Grandparents get a good chuckle everytime they visit and they watching you bounce off the walls. They mention something about payback. All I can say is if this is hereditary, I will be enjoying every minute when I’m a Grandma watching your crazy children drive you nuts.
Your vocabulary continues to increase exponentially every month. Some of your favorite words/phrases are “Momma stop,” “go away,” “hold the pony,” “wait,” “Momma, are you sad?” and my personal favorite, “it happens.” Now when you look at these phrases as a collective whole, you’re probably thinking there is some crazy shit going down over at the O’Donnell household and you’re right. There is some crazy shit going down over here because we are in survival mode. Dive for the trenches because crap is flying everywhere and I’m operating on a hour to hour basis. Someone asks me what I’m doing tomorrow and I honestly can’t think that far in advance without having an anxiety attack. I feel confident that once your brother is over whatever nightmare he’s going through, that things should start to become a little more maneagable. Until then, you just have to proceed with a little caution. Case in point, if you find me cursing at the shredder because it decided to take a dump on my day, that’s probably not the time to ask for a snack. I’m a live wire Olivia. Live wire.
You’re a bright lady and sometime that doesn’t always work in my favor. I love that I embarrass you with my dancing. I love that you place a tiny goblin man on your finger and in a deep raspy voice say “hello.” Visualize the kid in “The Shining” saying “redrum” and you will understand what I’m trying to explain. You’re disturbingly honest for a toddler and you have more energy than I have had in the last decade. There are days that I think I would love nothing more than to be deserted on a desert island for a substantial amount of time but when I’m away from you for more than an hour, I miss you. This is our relationship and I love it.
I’ll try to be on time next month. No promises.
Love,
Momma
