Freckles

So, my Olive Jane is now 7 years old. I am still continually amazed that she is no longer a baby. She is still the boss though.

She is in first grade this year and has really excelled. Like her brother Hans, she is reading several grade levels above hers and just has a general love of reading. Unlike Hans, she loves everything else about school. The order, the instructions and above all else, the rules. Several times her teacher has told me, "Olive could run this class on her own!" She adores her teacher and wants nothing more than to please her. She loves her friends and the one rule that she does break is the touching rule. She and her girlfriends love to hug each other. She is crazy about math and at least once a day begs me to write her a page of equations which she immediately does and asks to be graded. I hope that she will continue to enjoy math as it gets harder.

Her next great love would be food,  as is her Mamas. She is such an adventurous eater. She will try anything once and there is only a handful of things she dislikes. I know I have told this story to probably everyone that reads this, but I really want a written document of it. So, at the beginning of the year Olive was taking lunch because she was too nervous to learn the process of buying lunch at school. Hans is crazy for school lunch and we talked about it at length when I was working at the cafeteria. When Thanksgiving feast was approaching and our food deliveries came in I told him about all the great things they were having. Olive was in tears. She was so scared to try but wanted that feast, badly. Hans set up a replica of the lunch line at home and walked her through, over and over until she was confident she could do it at school. And she did! And loved it! It's old hat now, and we regularly discuss the days lunch. She will also happily recall her favorite meals. I love that.

Olive has really begun to get goofy as well. She works herself into a frenzy with her jokes and faces. She is not shy at home. At all. Her brothers have really rubbed off on her. She loves to take videos and spends most of it just making faces and different voices. She has an infectious giggle and once she starts will not soon stop. She sings, with great passion, if no one is watching. Do not be fooled though! She can turn on a dime and if you say something or do something not nice she will haul it to get in the house first to report. I have snuck peeks at her memo pad. It is amazing. If you have wronged her, she has documented it at some point. In her defense, she will also record kind acts.

Thank goodness she has Siobhan. She is lucky that her sister just adores her. In the last few months she has started sleeping in her bed and she loves nothing more than just laying quietly and witnessing all the teenage routines. Hair, makeup, texting, Olive loves it all. She also has all of her girl cousins that we sadly don't see enough of. There is no way you would mistake these girls as Lindgrens....

Luckily, she still has some Sheppard girl in her also. Something her Dad loves to bring up when she is especially moody. Olive really has turned out to be a sweet girl. She is a loyal friend, ready to help wherever she can and always happy to sit in my lap and hug me. I just love her so much.