Fearless

Today I took Olive to this toddler romp room down at the YMCA. Its intended for ages 9mo-2.5 yrs. The room was packed full of tots and parents, large soft play structures, tunnels, slides... ect.. Olive seemed a little young for it, but she wasn't! She went bonkers crawling on, around, and through everything! She watched the big kids, and then did what they did. She stood and pushed a toy car that her friend, Lili, was sitting in! She loved it!

Towards the end of the time, they pulled out a parachute for the kids to play on and under. For those of you who dont know what this is, its a very large, colorful, round, tent-material thing that kids go bananas over. The leader told all the kids to sit in the middle, and the adults to grab the ends. I thought "no way. This will be terrifying to Olive!" So I held her, and we held on to the outside. She started squirming and insisted that she go on too. I looked over, and the other "babies" were too scared to go on there, and I think when I put her down I might have gotten some weird judgy looks from the other moms, but I thought... "lets see...."

This is just a picture of the activity- not of this actual event.

So I put her down in the middle with all these big kids, and the sides came up and the adults started walking in a circle to some dumb song. the big kids kinda sat there, watching. I would think this would be really scary for any 10 month old... Olive, on the other hand, thought this was the most amazing thing ever! She immediately starting crawling in the direction of rotation, climbing it higher to the edges. She was SO excited! All the parents started laughing, and she became the star of the show. The parents were all looking around like, who is this kid, where is her mom? I ran over to where she was, she looked at me, smiled, and kept on climbing. Totally fearless. When I finally grabbed her, one of the moms said to me, "wow, shes really brave!" Yep. Thats my girl.



 Its funny because I am so proud of her fun, bold, fearless personality, but at the same time, I kinda wish she would maybe check in with me a little bit before running off into a brand new environment crowded with strangers. Maybe have a little fear of the unknown? This is Olive though and I love every single thing about her. She is amazing. I can be that proud mom on the sidelines rooting her on in whatever she wants to do. I can be there when she falls. I am really good at kissing boo- boo's.