Mother's day

Thanks to a couple of sms and Facebook messages, we realised that it is in fact Mother's day today. My first one, and it's been pretty good. Olivia is now so comfortable with Dad, that he let Mum go back to bed and sleep for an hour after breakfast  - BIG thanks :-) Not that we actually would lack any sleep if we could figure out to get to bed a little earlier, so that Olivia's 5 am wakeup-call would not seem so incredibly early.

We are learning more and more about Olivia's personality each day. She is generally in a very good mood most of the time, and her naughty behaviour is almost always a cheeky way of getting attention. Therefore it is relatively easy to draw her attention to something else, but we are at times starting to get a taste of the challenges that all parents of two-year-olds experience :-) 

One thing we have learned is that she is very orderly. When playing with blocks, she often gets them out and arranges them neatly - all facing the same way - before starting the game. When finished, she always packs away her toys and places them neatly in the corner of the lounge room, and often this is how she indicates that she is ready for bed. Today, she was being naughty and kept drawing with her crayons on the floor tiles in stead of the paper (laughing and looking at Mum). So eventually it was "game over", crayons were packed neatly back into the box, and Olivia was then as excited about playing "we wash the floor together" as she was about the crayons (and she kindly pointed out bits that we had missed, when I went to pack away the sponge).


Being such an orderly person,  we also figured out that she does not like to mix her food items, and that this was probably the cause of some hesitation at the dinner table. If you keep carrots, potatoes and chicken neatly separated in the bowl, and she will happily eat all of it: First the chicken, then carrots, and then potatoes (in order of preference, we guess). The girls got special treatment again today with chocolate mousse. Olivia was kind enough to feed Dad some of hers, but when I tried to film it, she did not have enough chocolate mousse left on the plate to be so generous anymore :-)

Today was pretty much the same as the last couple of days - morning in the pool, and afternoon strolling along the beach.

Olivia is slowly opening up to Aaron and today she was quite comfortable in his arms as they took a stroll around after our swim, and played on the floor later in the afternoon.

Finally, the highlight of the day was at bed time. Although Olivia is playful and also seeks comfort, we have not received affection as such. She does not give hugs or kisses, or touch us in an affectionate way. At bedtime, she fidgets around in the bed for a while before going to sleep, always facing away from me as I lie next to her. I try to give her comfort by stroking her back. Tonight, she suddenly turned around to me, calmed down, and let her little hands gently feel the skin of my arm, neck and face for a few minutes, and then she relaxed into a deep sleep while I lay there with a smile on my face and tears in my eyes :-)