"Who is... Olive?"

Last but not least, we come to my baby Olive…

For some reason, I find it hard to really open up about Olive. I mean not in a bad way, it’s just hard for me to differentiate her from myself. She’s pretty much in my arms or right by my side for so long, I’m just used to having her with me. So I’m a little sad she is growing up; however, on the flip side I’m really excited about seeing her little personality start to spring up.

Olive Hope is clearly the “diva” of the house. It’s to be expected I guess. She’s the youngest of four kids all close in age. Plus she had a pretty significant speech delay, so she couldn’t really communicate her opinions or desires verbally. I could see on her face how frustrating it was. Now that she is talking, she is learning to “use her words” and starting get understand appropriate reactions to certain situations and what behavior is encouraged and which is not.

 Now before I start going deep into my little baby girl. I want to tell you one of my favorite Olive stories. This one is a little outlandish but completely true. I am not known for sugar coating anything (but my friends and family know I will exaggerate a little at times to juice up a story) haahaha. But, this story is 100% true…

                So this is when my parents had moved to Alabama and we were living in their house and taking care of my Mimi. In their master bedroom, they have a loft. It’s really cool. So anyways, Olive was just born. She was probably a few weeks old. She was still a “little tiny” (that’s what I call newborns :D ).  We put her to sleep in the loft because I it was a little quieter and more peaceful up there, but still in the same room with us. When it came to sleeping, Crissy (my exwife) slept like a brick. I mean, she was so awesome at always providing amazing care for the kids during the morning, daytime, and evening, but nighttime, that girl was OUT cold. Especially with Olive, I would go get her when she would wake up to eat, bring her to Crissy to nurse, and then change the diaper and put her back in her bassinet. That being sad I was pretty used to her little “hungry cry”. However, one night I get woken up to this bloodcurdling scream. This was not a “hungry cry”. It was an “extremely terrified and in pain” cry. So I ran up the little staircase to the loft.  The time was about 3am and I woke up so quick, I didn’t have even think to put my glasses, so it was very dark and I couldn’t see anything due to not having my glasses on. I run over to her bassinet and our cat sitting in her bassinet, and it was scratching Olive really intensely with her claws. Now since I was behind on sleep, it was so dark, I wasn’t wearing glasses, and I was jarred awake by my newborn screaming in pain. I look down and the cat is going crazy. It was just laying on Olive’s chest scratching her and Olive is COVERED in blood. I pretty much freak out. In my mind  So I just instinctively grabbed the cat and kind of threw it out of the bassinet. Don’t worry, I love animals J I didn’t chunk it as hard as humanly possible, but I did grab it and toss it as quick as possible because she was hurting my baby. Right when I did it, I notice a few little tiny things in the bassinet. So I squint my eyes to find out… HOLY FREAKING CRAP, the cat just gave birth to kittens on Olive. My newborn baby is covered in feline afterbirth and there are all these little slimy kittens crawling around on her. That whole thought process took place in about .4 seconds. Suddenly, my heart drops and my body goes cold. I turn around to see the cat flying through the air with her last kitten still dangling out of her mom by the umbilical cord. My body just kind of freezes because I think my brain went into overload. Immediately, I start screaming for Crissy to wake up. I mean SCREAMING, but of course, that girl is out like a light. So I kind of scoop up Olive who is covered in gooey cat stuff and then rush over to the cat and baby kitten. Luckily, they landed on a soft blanket. Everything was still pitch black dark, so I rush down the stairs to turn on the room light (and bang my head on the little overhang in the process). Ps. I’m still screaming for Crissy to wake up J I turn on the light and rush back up the stairs still carrying Olive. Thank God, by this time our cat has chewed off the cord and the kitten was moving a little and crying. In the end, all the kittens lived and I washed the gook off Olive. It one of the craziest three minutes of my life. I’ve never typed that story out. Sorry, I didn’t think it would be so long… Oh yeah, I’ll never forget this. Crissy woke up from her peaceful slumber and was like “man, I slept so good last night” and I remember just busting out laughing J

Anyways, back to Olive. Since she is the youngest of four, she does love to be like her older siblings. She is starting to color a lot like Stevie, love “aminals” like Neela, and act silly and dance around like Titus. She starting to experiment around with different hobbies, but one thing is for sure, as long as I can remember that girl is a water baby. Used to, when she was a lot younger I would just run a warm bath and she just lay on my chest in the warm water. I remember she would just play with the bath water with her little fingers, but never pick up her head off my chest. That innocence soon gave way to her crazier water ways. That girl is always begging to go swimming, jump in  a puddle, or pulling some end table into the bathroom to cannon ball into our garden tub (she gets in trouble for that, btw). When she can’t do any of that, she has this secret hobby of dumping out all of the toy containers and filling them up with water and dragging them to her room.  She would do it in secret. With four kids so close together, they learn the best time when dad is distracted. J For about a week, I stumped on why the entire house was just getting soaked. Finally, I just kind of spied from the couch. I watched her sneak out of the playroom with an empty bucket of toys and walk into the bathroom and fill it with the bathtub spout and a cup. I watched her drag this huge thing of water across the house, stopping every 3 seconds and saying “uh-oh.”  to herself because it’s sloshing out everywhere. By the time she made it to her room, there was like ½ inch of water left. She proceeded to strip down butt naked and just sit laughing and playing in her new bedroom “swimming pool”.

Hanging with dad in the pool. 

Her dream activity :)

I believe she is also going to the most musically inclined child I have. Ever since she was a tiny, she has just sitting in my lap playing the piano. Now that she is a little older, I’m trying to teach her some basic things to play and she loves it. Her current favorite song to play together is “Bennie and the Jets”.  Just likes it because there is a lot of just banging the crap out of the keys J

Playing piano together is our little fun thing

She is also my dirtiest child. You would think maybe Neela (Nature Neela) or Titus (the all american boy), but no. It's differently Olive. She is always sweaty, dirty, and sticky. I promise, I have no idea how she is also so sticky, but she is. ALWAYS.

Yep. That's her.

She absolutely loves Minnie Mouse (pretty much any Mickey Mouse character). Her last two birthday parties have been Minnie Mouse and Pluto. I think it’s so cool that she prefers the old school Mickey Mouse cartoons over Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She has a Minnie Mouse tea set and has a ball, setting her own little tea parties. I used to let her set them up herself. She would get water and carefully fill up the little pitcher and get saltines or something for the food. However, I think the other kids’ goofiness and silliness is starting to wear off, because yesterday I said they could do a little tea party while I was finishing up some projects for work and I walk in and she is pouring raw eggs out of the pitcher into all the little tea cups. If you have never seen a raw egg being strained through a tiny pitcher spout, just think of thick, yellow snot being squeezed out of a toothpaste bottle. Luckly, I stopped that party before anyone drink the "tea", but I can't shake the image from my brain.

Hostess with the mostess

 She is also the sweetest little girl ever. Every day her teachers are always so happy to she her because she is ALWAYS sure to pick them a flower every morning and give them a huge hug right when she walks in the door. Yes, Olive can be pretty intense at times. But the older she gets the more she is starting to understand appropriate behavior and the little talks we have about what is right and what is wrong. It’s really fun seeing her blossom into her sweet little self.

Olive with her ever "all by herself catch" from our nightly frog hunts

Her favorite toys in the entire world are Megablocks. I promise she plays with Megablocks all the time. She loves to build things. This is really neat to me, because she is the first of my kids to ever get into to physically creating things with blocks. She takes her little block creations very seriously and loves to show them off.

I know this might not have been the most descriptive post of Olive. Honestly, I know her so well, but I have a hard time putting “Olive” down on paper. I think because so much of our extremely close relationship has been non-verbal, we just kind of communicated for so long like that. So it’s hard to explain in words a really tight non-verbal kind of relationship. However, she is starting to talk ALL THE TIME now, and I’m sure she will be learning more jokes soon.  Seriously, I really pray she learns a new joke. The one she tells all the time now is:

Olive:  “Dad, guess what?”

Me: “What?”

Olive: BOOTY BUTT! *and then runs off dying of laughter

Side note, she made that joke up all by herself. It even rhymes. Besides when they are being nice or kind, I think I am the most proud of her kids when they are being hilarious or creative. J

 And remember…

 

  

-Seth