All By Herself

Olivia has an independent streak that has served her well over the years. She’s needed this little bit of backbone that makes her want to do things herself. Things more often than not don’t come easily to her (unless they have something to do with fashion or makeup, then it’s a snap for her) and so she’s needed nerves of steel and an iron will to make things happen for herself.

This morning Tom got O her raisin bran and sat down with her as she started eating it. She looked at him through narrowed eyes and informed him, “I can feed myself.”

He nodded and remained seated, as if to make her prove her statement.

When she was finished eating (and yes, she fed herself the entire bowl of cereal, including drinking the milk) he took her bowl and started to pull her chair back for her. She put up her hand and declared, “I know how to get down!”

My girl is tired of being babied and I couldn’t be happier.

As she bathed this morning, she told me she was getting her hair wet so I could wash it. She poured water over her own head several times, sputtering and laughing at her own antics.

One of the potty training tricks her developmental pediatrician gave us when we saw her back in 2011 was to watch O for cues and when we thought she had to pee, to tell her to tighten her muscles and tell her, “Don’t come out, Livie’s peepee.”

Then, once we got her on the toilet, we’d say, “Okay, come on out Livie’s peepee.”

This has worked wonders for her. Low muscle tone often means not being able to actually hold urine in the bladder or even not being able to feel the urge to go. This tactic helped Olivia learn what it felt like to have to pee and how to stop the pee from coming out before she was on the toilet.

Because it’s kind of fun I still sometimes say, “Come on out, Livie’s peepee.” She almost always rolls her eyes at me.

Last weekend we were at the library and she had to pee. I took her into the restroom, she did the work of getting her pants down, sitting on the toilet, etc. and then she looked up at me and said, “Come on out, Livie’s peepee.”

I laughed along with her as she made fun of me. I love that she’s so funny, that she has such a great sense of humor, that she gets jokes and can make them herself.

She’s constantly reminding me that she’s not a baby and she doesn’t need us to do nearly as much for her as we might if she’d let us.

She can climb up and down stairs without help, she can wash her own hands in the bathroom, she can pick a movie, put it in the dvd player and push play on the remote control. She can turn the volume up and down using the remote.

Last night I was reading to her and I sounded out the first word in the title of one of our books. I showed her the second word and she started to sound it out herself. I waited to see if she’d need help. She didn’t. She read ‘moon’ all by herself.

She’s showing interest in learning to ride a bike. She wants my mom to put training wheels on a bike that Alyssa had when she was smaller. I’m not going to be the one to tell her she can’t ride that bike. Nope, I’ll be the one standing right next to her, pushing her along until she figures it out and tells me she can do it all by herself. And you know what? If she wants to ride that bike? She will. Of that, I have no doubt at all.