Ollie Update

Sibling Rivalry

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Oliver and Evie have always gotten along a pretty well. She obviously loves him very much, and for his part, he generally puts up with the abuse. When he got old enough to take an interest in her toys, things went downhill a little bit, but it was still okay. Now, however…I think it is a combination between his greater mobility and interest in objects in general, and her realization of just how much attention he gets, or how much attention she *doesn’t* get.

I tell you, it gives me a much greater appreciation for what it is like to be a younger sibling. I feel like I owe my sister an apology! It’s not just that they get beat up, although they do, but it’s more all the things that they don’t get that the older sibling got. Especially just in terms of amount of attention paid, or amount of one-on-one time. And you just can’t help thinking about him without comparing him to your older child.

With Evie I felt like we just spent the whole time holding our breath, waiting for her to do the next amazing thing. With Oliver, it’s almost like he’ll do something and then I’ll be like, “Oh yeah, that’s amazing, I almost forgot. When Evie did that, I jumped on the blog and put it up immediately.” Evie never had to share the limelight for her big achievements.

The ironic thing is that, in a few years, Evie is going to be annoyed with Oliver wanting to do what she’s doing, following her around, copying her, etc. But right now, it’s exactly the opposite! Any toy Oliver grabs, she has to have it, even if she’s never shown the slightest interest in it before. We will watch Oliver walk over and pull a toy out of the toy box, and then Evie will shout from across the room, “I had it first!”

The past few weeks, whenever Oliver is getting any kind of attention, Evie has to insert herself in there. And 3 year olds are not subtle. If Oliver is crying, she starts fake crying. If we’re taking a video of him, Evie tries to stand in front of the camera. If we’re just not paying attention to her, she will just punch her brother in the face.

Obviously this stuff is not acceptable, but on the other hand, I totally understand where she is coming from. I really feel bad for her. I try to make sure to give her attention when I notice that we are giving him some attention, or when she gets that look in her eye like she is going to push him over.

But isn’t this just another way that older sibling have it better? When she was little, she got all the attention. Now, when it’s Oliver’s turn to get some attention, we have to remember to give her *more* attention, so she doesn’t get upset. It seems like it’s not fair to Oliver, but I guess that’s just the way it is.

So, Rachael, if the 3 year old version of me treated you even a little bit the way Evie treats Oliver, then I apologize completely!

Tickle Monster

/ Shane / Leave a comment

There is nothing Oliver likes better than tickling. He just can’t help himself! If he sees some feet, toes, exposed skin, anything, he’s right on it. “Tickle, tickle, tickle!” he crows, or sometimes it sounds more like, “liggle, liggle, liggle!”

It’s not just people either. He’ll tickle anything: the bathtub, closet doors, clothes from the laundry basket, whatever needs tickling. Whenever he’s feeling silly, something’s got to be tickled. Whenever his sister body-tackles him, she’s getting tickled.

It’s almost become just an expression of emotion; I’ve seen him tickle in anger. Someone will be doing something he doesn’t like and he’ll be sobbing and just get this look on his face and you think, “Oh man, here it comes!” and then he fiercely grabs you and says, “Tickle, tickle, tickle!” It is absolutely adorable, and it makes it pretty difficult to take him seriously.

The only thing he does that even approaches the cuteness, is when you ask him, “Oliver, what does a cow say?” and he says, “Mooooo!” He also says “more”, “Nala”, “ball”, “banana”, “book”, “shoes”, “uh oh”, and “cheese” (and “mama” and “dada” of course). He signs “water”, “milk”, “more” (although he doesn’t sign this much now that he can say it), “book”, “night-night” and “train”. He shakes his head for “no” (usually in connection to not eating whatever food you’re trying to give him). He will occasionally blow kisses and wave hello or bye-bye (usually only when the person he’s waving at isn’t looking). Obviously though he understands a lot more than this, because he’s able to follow complex instructions, such as “Oliver, go find your shoes and bring them to me,” or “That looks nice, go show dada!” He loves necklaces and getting dressed, and will take any article of clothing or necklace and put it on as fast as possible (especially hats). His desire to do this outweighs his ability to do this, so he usually just ends up with clothes on his head, or upside down hats. Once he gets a necklace on, it stays on for the rest of the day.

On the other hand, the thing he does that is not so adorable, is bite everybody. Constantly. Biting is not really something Evie ever did. I’m starting to learn that second kids do a lot of things that first kids didn’t do. It hasn’t really been a problem yet, but you do have to be aware of where his mouth is at any given moment, and sometimes we have to tell Evie, “Get away from him fast Evie, he’s trying to bite!”

So if you come ’round these parts, expect some ticklin’. Oliver has no other mode. At least if he’s tickling you, he’s not biting you!

The boy just wants to go to sleep

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I feel like every time I write a post about Oliver, it is a compare and contrast with Evie. I guess that’s just how it goes for the second child (Rachael or Anna, care to comment?). But lately we have transitioned to Oliver falling asleep on his own, and it was night and day different than it was with Evie.

Currently, Oliver is sleeping in the travel crib in our room, as Sara is not quite ready to lose her overnight cuddle buddy to Evie. He is absolutely a joy at that time of the day. After he comes out of the bath and gets greased, he signs night-night to everyone and gives kisses, followed by blowing kisses. I take him into our bedroom and read him a few books, which he anticipates with such joy that he usually giggles uncontrollably. After we read a few books, I put him into his crib. He settles his lion in the crook of his arm and I cover him with his blanket. He also usually points furiously to his lion, because I used to always ask him where his lion was, so he got into the habit. Then we usually play a little peekaboo over the side of the crib, and I turn off the light.

For a while I would sing to him until he fell asleep, but he just kept going to bed easier and easier, until it got to the point that I would just lay there in the dark quietly (and possibly *ahem* fall asleep for a bit) until he fell asleep. Finally I kept saying to Sara, “I think I could just leave, and he wouldn’t mind. I think he would just go to sleep.”

So I started doing exactly that: after I get him settled with his lion and his blanket, I turn out the light, say goodnight and leave. For the first week or so, I was sure he was going to howl at some point, but he never really did. He just lays quietly until he goes to sleep.

Compare that to the completely depressed and defeated post I wrote a few years ago on the same topic, except regarding Evie. And the interesting thing is that Oliver is almost exactly the same age as Evie was when we moved her out, so even that is about the same. In some weird way, I feel like this sort of justifies all the trouble we went through with Evie’s sleep: all the trouble we went through WASN’T because we are awful parents! Kids are just different, and “conventional wisdom” doesn’t always work the same for every baby. That girl just doesn’t sleep! She still doesn’t, to this day.

Now it’s not completely resolved as of yet. He still wakes up occasionally in the night (at least once, usually when we come to bed, and sometimes that’s it), and our ultimate plan is to put him in his crib in Evie’s room. So we’re not there yet. But there’s not really any reason to think these things would be that difficult, based on what’s gone so far.

In addition to personality differences between the two of them, there’s probably an aspect of this that’s on us. It could be that we’re a lot more laid back about the whole thing, or maybe just too busy to spend much time worrying about it. But it’s a chicken and an egg kind of problem, because maybe the reason we’re so laid back about it now, is because he’s so laid back about it.

I really can’t tell you how relieved I am about how the whole thing is going down (before I jinxed it by writing this, of course).

I think this is a bad sign of things to come

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Since about 9 months, Oliver has been able to turn the handle on the back door. However, recently we have gotten into something a little more troubling: climbing. This is something that I have seen other parents deal with, but we haven’t had to deal with ourselves. Evie was never even the slightest bit interested in climbing things. But here’s Oliver, barely able to walk yet, and he’s climbing all over everything.

The other day, he climbed up on the open dishwasher and took a bread knife out of the silverware drawer. He’s scaled the stool in the bathroom and turned on the sink at least 5 times. He’s also gone headfirst into the tub a few times, trying to climb over the edge.

How is he old enough for this? How can he climb before he can really walk? Clearly, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

He has been learning some new words lately. His previous words were “Nala”, “more”, “book”, “tickle”, “mama”, and “ball”. For ball in particular, he gets it pretty easily from pictures or even from the cover of a book about balls that doesn’t even have a picture of a ball on it. So he definitely understands the concept.

His new words are “uh-oh”, “cheese”, and “Ella”. The last refers to his favorite book of the moment, Ella Elephant, which he is constantly requesting. He’s also put together a couple of two word sentences, such as “more book” and “book mama”. (In other words, his obsession with books has not ended)

He pretty much babbles all the time, so sometimes it sounds like he says things. Sometimes it is hard to tell if he really learned a word, or if he’s just repeating the sounds back. And then sometimes there are a few words that he’s said a couple of times, but I’m not sure if he completely gets, such as “up” (to be picked up), “Elmo”, and “shoes”.

As far as physical things, he finally got his 6th tooth, after it teased us for weeks. He still has very little hair, except in the very back, at the nape of his neck. He’s shaking his head no, though he doesn’t understand why yet. He signs “more”, “book”, “milk”, “train”, and “night-night”.

He gives kisses and also blows kisses. His favorite game is to play chase around the bed at night. He washes Evie’s back in the bath. He pretends to put ointment on himself, putting his finger to the tip and then rubbing it on his chest. (I’m sad that he has to get so much ointment on himself that he has started mimicking it!) When you pick him up, he often lays his head on your shoulder to cuddle.

That’s Oliver! Our cuddly, climbing, talkative boy!

First Steps

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Last Tuesday, May 3rd, Oliver finally took his first steps.

You might be wondering why it took me so long to get a blog post up about this, and that would be a good question. The thing is, he has just been so reluctant to do it on a regular basis! I was hoping to get a good video, and I’m still waiting!

We were so sure he was going to walk shortly after his birthday. He was doing everything but walking. He really seemed like he was ready. But day after day, he just didn’t quite get there, despite all of our encouraging. Of course, when he finally did walk, I was in Detroit for work. Sara called to tell me he finally took a few steps, and I could almost hear strains of Cats in the Cradle playing in the background. I felt pretty terrible about missing it. But he only took two steps the first day, and really wasn’t in a hurry to repeat it.

It was so different than Evie. It’s kind of funny because, personality-wise, Evie is a pretty cautious person and Oliver seems to be more of a risk taker. A bit more rambunctious, perhaps. So you would expect that he would be the one trying to let go and do it. But, in fact, it was kind of the opposite. When Evie figured out how to walk, she was all about it. She was pretty much done with crawling at that point, it was all walking from that point on. Oliver’s preferred method of locomotion is still crawling. He’ll walk from one thing to another now and again, but if you try to get him to walk, he just drops down to his hands and knees right away. With Evie it was more like she felt pride in mastering the challenge, but to Oliver it’s all about the practicality of getting to where he wants to go, and crawling is much more efficient at this point.

Still, he’s getting there, and he’s walking more and more. I think the most I’ve seen so far is eleven steps, but he’s more comfortable in the seven or so step range. I try to practice with him by holding his hands and letting him walk, but he rarely wants to go in the direction I want him to go in. Again, for him it’s all about getting where he wants to go. He’s not content to march up and down the hall for practice, he wants to lead you over to something he wants to get at.

Obviously the first birthday was a big, recent milestone, but somehow walking seems so much more official. He’s really old enough to walk? Where does the time go?