Olga was a large baby weighing 10 pounds and measuring 55 centimeters. It had been a difficult birth, but Nicholas and Alix couldn’t have been happier about the little girl. This was their audition for the most successful role they would ever play -- the role of parents. Every moment of their lives now was centered around the marvel of a baby’s fist, a baby’s cry, a baby’s smile. They spent more time with her than most royal parents, jealous of maids and nurses. Their joy was limitless.
Another entry in Nicholas’s diary reads, "In the morning I admired our delightful little daughter: she does not look at all new-born, because she is such a big baby with a full head of hair. …She keeps growing sweeter, today she smiled at us the whole time, what a delight!"
Only a few months after the birth, the royal couple was due to visit France. They refused to leave their child behind, despite the palace’s battery of personnel hired especially for her care. Instead, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna was taken on her first diplomatic trip. As she rode through Paris in the carriage with her parents, crowds lining the street shouted "Vive la Grande Duchesse!" and "Vive la bebe!" She was a tiny celebrity.
As she grew, she quickly won the hearts of everyone around her not only with her position, but with her delightful little self. Her tutor, Pierre Gilliard, recalls her at their first encounter as “a girl of ten, very fair, and with sparkling, mischievous eyes and a slightly retroussé nose. She examined me with a look which seemed from the first moment to be searching for the weak point in my armor, but there was something so pure and frank about the child that one liked her straight off.”
From these remarks it is not difficult to understand that she became his favorite pupil, and with good reason. She had great charm, and could be the merriest of the merry. Her intellect was well-developed and remarkably quick, complemented by good reasoning powers and initiative. She was hot-tempered but did not bear grudges. Her manner was independent, and she seemed to have a gift for swift and entertaining repartee. She had inherited her father’s temperament in kindness, earnestness and dignity, though several of her acquaintances remarked that she lacked his renowned self-restraint.
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