Olive

The first time I ever heard of Olive was way back in September when we were vacationing in Maine. We were at the back bay one morning. Riley, Casey and the dogs were walking around in the marsh while Chase and I stayed back on the sand so Chase could drink his bottle. When they came back from their adventure, Winston and Wrigley had been renamed Wilson and Olive. They retained those names for our entire stay in Maine. Not long after we returned, I saw the roster of names for the kids in Riley's class. On it were Wilson and Olive. It all made sense.

I didn't hear Olive's name again until mid-October. By then, the renaming of the dogs was a distant memory in my newborn-induced fog. It was during this time that Chase learned how to put himself to sleep and I had more time to spend with Riley before his bedtime. The two of us would lay in his bed with the lights off and stare at the ceiling. Sometimes we'd pretend we were watching fireworks -- pointing to different spots on the ceiling and talking about what color we saw and if it was big or small. Other times, he just wanted to talk, and somehow in that uninterrupted setting in his dark room, he started really talking to me about things that were on his mind. Sometimes it was questions about things he'd seen and didn't understand. ("Monny, why is Uncle Scar mean? Why did he hurt Simba's daddy? Did he killed him? Why did it make Simba sad?") Sometimes it would be silly stories that he'd made up. All of those conversations were precious to me. And then one night out of the blue he looked at my feet and said, "Monny, I like you shoes. Olive has shoes like yours." And with those ten words, I knew his life had changed. He had his first crush. So I asked him if he'd tell me more about Olive. He replied, "Olive is a princess." So I asked who the prince was. "Riley." (Big grin.) He then proceeded to tell me, "Monny, Olive likes dresses. She likes dresses with stripes. We match." (Immediately, a light bulb went off in my head: so THIS is why he had insisted on wearing exclusively stripes to school for the past few weeks. Prior to that, he had never voiced an opinion about his wardrobe.) Is it weird to admit that for a minute I was almost jealous of little 3-year-old Olive? I had Riley point her out to me the next day at school when I dropped him off, and I actually eyed her to make sure she was good enough for my baby. I wonder if this is how Casey's mom felt about me 13 years ago...

After October, all we heard about for months was Olive. His teachers also noticed the budding romance and said that they were always holding hands and sitting next to each other. Riley would get nervous walking down the hallway to his classroom when I dropped him off each morning. I had no idea you could get butterflies in your stomach at 3. It was adorable.

In November, I did what every good mom would do: I emailed Olive's mom and coordinated their first date. We met up with Olive, her parents and her little brother (who coincidentally is very close in age to Chase) at the park. It was so cute how excited Riley was in the week leading up to this date. We could've gotten him to do just about anything by threatening to cancel his playdate (I made a mental note to remember this down the road).

In their Christmas program, Riley and Olive had to be next to each other on stage. I was able to get a pretty good picture of them - both reindeer - and Santa framed it for him and left it in his stocking for him to open on Christmas morning. One of my few successes as a mom. He grinned from ear to ear when he came to show Casey and me what Santa had left.

Riley and Olive broke up sometime in January. He started to talk about her less. Casey and I would ask him about her sometimes and he didn't have much to say. Finally Casey ended up asking him if he and Olive had broken up. He shrugged and then said something like, "I'm just hanging out with the boys in my class."

I'm not exactly sure what happened to their romance, but as it turned out, Casey and I really liked Olive's parents and were sort of crushed when it was over. Luckily, they are now friends again and we had Olive and her family over for dinner, drinks and play time today. It was a lot of fun. I do hope that someday, when we do meet Riley's future in-laws, we like them as much as we liked the first candidates.