When all of a sudden, you realise that the condition you once thought would dominate your child's life, has in fact become a back seater in all the goings-on.

The Girl is almost two! Well OK, it's still a few months away but she is now 21 months and that is a lot closer to 2 than 1. She is a bright wee 21 monther as well. Olive is already talking in sentences of up to about 4-5 words. She has great manners and thanks people appropriately for anything they may give her or do for her . She apologises if she thinks she has done something wrong ('Oh sowweee Mummy'). She has grown up etiquette when people arrive to visit ('Hi Rach, come in!'). And she surprises us with the 3 syllable words she manages to pronounce to almost-perfection (delicious, attitude).

Olive is at a mischievious but oh, so fun stage in her life and it is starting to drive me bonkers, though I can't help but laugh. She is testing the boundaries, with the odd swear word thrown in mid conversation (always in context mind you! I really must watch my language more :-\), climbing eeeeeverywhere, running away when she is naughty, amongst other things.

One thing that infuriates me, is she bites shoes. Jandals, in fact. Meisha's jandals looked like a puppy had got to them, with all the knaw marks and chunks around the front of them. Then she started on her own. More chunks and bite marks. So we got them all new jandals for Christmas - you know, brand new, lovely clean looking new jandals. Except, after today, they are all brand new, lovely clean looking jandals with great chunks of the toe part missing.

Yesterday we rescued a young kitten and have made it a home here while we look for her owners. Olive has taken great delight in welcoming this kitten, Sadie as we have named her for now, to our family (as have the big kids). Olive bounds after her like a miniature ogre, stumbling and fumbling to touch this little ball of fur. She also tries to take some responsibility by helping with feeding Sadie...by putting kitty litter in her milk, and cat biscuits on the floor.
The 'help' aside, she is lovely with Sadie and pats her with a soft fat hand whilst nodding and repeating her mantra of, 'gentle, hi cat! Nice cat. Gentle...Hi cat! You right cat?...gentle. Niiiiice cat'. She likes to prepare herself for a hold by sitting down, getting her legs all in the right position and farting around for far too long and then having a quick 2 second hold before Sadie's tail scares her again and she is off to the next thing.

Amongst all her character building and quirky days, she has had a few rough days as well. Our New Years Eve was cut short as Olive came down with a fever which at the time I didn't know the reason for. It appears it was due to a new tooth erupting and was giving her grief, poor little mite.

She has also had a few instances lately where she has scratched her back. One was on my bracelet, another on my sisters bracelet and another on something unknown. All 3 times, her nevus skin has broken and bled. It has reminded us how sensitive and fragile it is. She is such a regular toddler and lives her life so normally that it is easy to forget sometimes a little extra care is needed with some simple things. In saying that, while these scrapes have obviously hurt her and she has cried, she is tough as guts at other times! She falls over and scrapes her knees, gets up and soldiers on.
There have been so many times lately where we would expect tears and sobbing, that I actually asked Eddie if he thought she felt pain! lol.

For all her funny, and humourous things she does and says, there is still nothing better than waking in the morning to this little face saying, 'morning Mummy!' and snuggling her tiny body into mine to spoon.