Naylors Head North: Catch up!

Apologies for writing about Christmas in March. I'll try to at least post every month if I can!

First of all, Olive hit 18 months on January 1 and she's enormous! She was 33.5" tall (91st percentile), 23 lbs, 14 oz (65th percentile) and her head was in the 99th percentile (back on the charts for the first time in months!). How did she get so big??!

As I mentioned in the last post, the weather has been pretty lame this winter. We've had some warm days, which can be nice, but many of those have come with rain, not snow. We've been enjoying a lot of indoor activities over the past couple of months.

Olive is my best helper around the house these days. I can pretty much always rely on her to respond when I say "Come help me!" which is a helpful tool whenever I want her to stop doing something. I've been on a big organization kick trying to make our house feel bigger (since all the toys and toddler junk keep multiplying and taking over the house) One day, we moved all of the food in the kitchen into the hall closet to actually use it as a pantry. She was so helpful with her shopping cart!

We find new and exciting games to play around the house like laundry basket rollercoaster...

and "selfie"...

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the zoo. Now that she's really good at walking, she doesn't like to be confined to the stroller.

Hey you! Musk ox! I see you!

She swapped hats with dad while she was on his shoulders. Andy doesn't look too happy about it.

She loved the otters, who were playing with her through the glass...

What else is new.... Oh! We're planning to upgrade the Subaru! Not that we dislike the car, but when we have visitors, it's no fun to cram four adults and a car seat (and usually Ripley) into the forester. We're thinking three rows is the way to go. A couple of weeks ago, we hit up the dealerships around town to check out our options. Olive loved the Toyota dealership because they had about 10 different cars in the showroom she could play in. She was a big fan of the rav-4. Too small, Olive!

She's cuter than the toyota girl.

We finally picked something after a few long days of looking. It's on the boat from California as we speak. I'll do a whole post about it when it gets here (and we give them all our money!).

In January we started Olive in a tumbling class. It's really fun to see her run around with about 10-15 other toddlers between 18 months and three years old. Some kids really love it and go crazy (mostly the boys). Olive hated it until about three weeks ago. Now she can't wait to go to 'nastics every week!

This was week one... a little bit cautious...

She is working on getting confidence with the bigger stuff. She doesn't like to jump off of things (thankfully)

This was her a couple of weeks ago. All smiles and enjoying the class!

And this was last week! yay!

The rings are her favorite! She loves to hang and swing her legs around. She's getting strong!

Last weekend we went to Potter's Marsh to see if any birds had arrived yet. It was FREEZING cold and windy. We stayed about three minutes, but Olive loved walking on the boardwalk. It will definitely be a fun place to visit this summer!

And this weekend was the start of the Iditarod. We braved the crowds and went downtown to watch some of the dogs run. We had so little snow this winter, and it warmed up so much in recent weeks, that they had to haul seven box cars full of snow on the railroad to Anchorage from Fairbanks just to have a little starting path. It was pretty sad and then, by some miracle, we got a couple of inches of snow on Friday. Just enough to make the roads treacherous and make it look like winter again. I think the dogs appreciated it!