The Lee Family: Olivia at 3 1/2 Years Old!

Olivia is growing up so fast and it seems like her hair is finally starting to grow along with her body. She is now 40 1/2 inches tall and weighs 39 lbs. CK and I took Olivia to get her haircut the weekend before last for just her second hair cut ever. In the last two months or so she has to have her hair braided in either a french braid or two braids, "like Anna." Until then, she didn't want anything in her hair and always wanted to "wear it down" which meant it always looked absolutely crazy! So, the braid or double braid is a huge improvement and looks really cute on her. She loves playing with the plastic horses and dinosaurs and makes up all sorts of stories, just like Sofia used to do at that age (and still does now). Her other favorite thing to do is to read stories and she loves all of her princess stories, but especially The Little Mermaid. Ariel is her absolute favorite princess and she could read that everyday and we go through weeks of doing just that before bedtime. She also loves the books "Dark, Dark Night" and "Ponyella" which are her recent favorites.

Olivia still loves to pick out her clothes herself and will just about only wear dresses or skirts with leggings. Despite having all of Sofia's former clothes, Olivia has three princess shirts and she just about wears those exclusively! She doesn't actually have an Ariel shirt, but I'm sure if she did she would wear it every day! She doesn't only like her clothes, but also has to pick out her own shoes every day. She seems to go through favorites that last for a week or two before moving on to a new favorite. For the past few weeks, she's really loved wearing her pink cowboy boots. As soon as she is dressed, she wants her hair down and usually wants her blue Cinderella hair bow at the bottom of her braid.

In the past two or three weeks, I've tried to cut her nap out. Until then, she would sleep 2-3 hours and wake up a little cranky around 5pm. Dinner and playing with Sofia would re-energize her to the point that she would often struggle to get to sleep until 10 or 11pm! We would always put her to bed at 8pm and she would stay in her room for a while but would emerge wanting water or to go to the bathroom a few times before we would finally go to bed! It just became too much, so we thought of trying out bed time without a nap. So far, it's gone ok. Unfortunately the few hours before bed can be a little cranky, but she definitely goes to bed at 8pm when we put her in her bed after stories.

Up until two months ago or so, Olivia slept in a pull-up at night. She would almost always be dry in the morning and we'd offer to let her sleep in her panties after 5 days of being dry. However, on the night she wore her panties, she would inevitably pee the bed! That went on for a while until she finally started wearing just panties with her pjs and very rarely has a mistake. She also rarely wakes me up in the night to help her go potty, as long as we make sure she goes potty before bedtime. The other day, I decided to throw all of her left over pull-ups and random diapers away since we no longer need them, and it was so liberating!

Our girl loves apple juice, apples, grapes, oranges, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrots, chicken and steak and is pretty willing to try anything. She really hates when she gets hiccups, which she still gets pretty often and starts to fuss and sometimes cry until she drinks water and they go away. She hated them ever since she was born. Much like CK, she isn't much of a breakfast eater and will usually eat nothing or snack on cereal in the car ride to drop Sofia off at school.

Olivia absolutely adores her sister and looks forward to her return from school every afternoon. She loves to play with her in whatever games Sofia comes up with and goes along with just about anything Sofia tells her to do. On any given afternoon, the girls play with the horses and/or dinosaurs, pretend they are part of an owl family, act like they are dragons, or run around like pegasus.

About two months ago we went to a Beauty and The Beast play at a children's theater. Olivia was SO excited to meet Belle, she could hardly sit still!