letting baby be baby

A crucial thought that I try to maintain is that children are CHILDREN. There is a goal in parenting that you will have an end result of a grown up mature adult, who has a sense of right and wrong, polite and rude, appropriate and not, and can navigate through those scenarios. But that is the end result. The means to getting there are a little tricky. Kids are loud, they are annoying, they are honest about their feelings, everything they do that isn't 'creature need' fulfilling (eating, sleeping, eliminating, cuddling), is PLAY. Even a lot of their basic needs involve play.
At home, we make a lot of loud noises. Singing, banging, yelling, talking. I try to keep our house organized in a baby friendly way. I feel like if I spend 3/4 of the day telling Olive not to touch something, then maybe its best to just move that something to an Oliveless place. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen because I don't want to be pulling Olive off the record shelf all.day.long. I purposely look to avoid situations in the battles of wills, because when I do say no, I think its just as important to follow through, and who wants to be battling all day long?
At the same time when my automatic NO comes on, I have to ask myself, 'why can't she do that?'. Will she get hurt? Is it only because its annoying? Am I worried what other people might think?
That last one is the big one. When we are out and about, I find myself hyper aware of Olive being a kid. I mean why can't she just sit still, eat her snack neatly, play with the toys I brought.....? 'Those poor people on their laptops trying to study!' I think to myself. I kind of imagine how wonderful it would be living somewhere that children, and the behaviour that goes along with them, is accepted. I am not sure where this is, but I meet people on the street, obviously raised somewhere else, who come and kiss the baby, ask if they can take pictures of the baby, smile at the baby, people who are happy to see a beautiful healthy child, and I think 'wow, how foreign.'

What can I do about these feelings? Mostly I start off by realigning everybody's place in my head, and what I expect of them. Olive = child. Me = adult. People staring = other adults.
I expect Olive to play, and make noise, and explore, for her to be a child. I also expect her to obey me when I do say No. I expect her to test my boundaries as well. And I realistically expect that those tests wont always happen in the privacy (read embarrassment safe zone) of our home.
From myself I expect P A T I E N C E. A lot of it. I expect myself to follow through, and I expect that I will help Olive safely navigate through her playing, exploring, meeting new friends. I mostly expect myself to be able to recognize when we are being bothersome, and judge whether that is warranted (like the library), or not (like the grocery store, who cares if she's loud in the grocery store!?). Most importantly I expect myself to set an example of the polite, mature adult I hope she'll grow into. Which means I pick all the food off the floor of the restaurant, put the chairs back, and leave a good tip for our family foot print.
From other people I just expect understanding of what children are REALLY like.