June 24-July 1

The Springfield Symphony Orchestra has an opening for a princess violist.  This is good news because it means I have something to practice for again, and I might actually get in.  This is bad news because it means I have to get my act together and practice.

The Olivia update:
Within the past two weeks, Olivia has been...
~Crouching and/or bending to pick things up from a standing position (instead of sitting down, picking up the object, and then standing back up).
~Grinding her 4 teeth together.  It makes a terrible noise and is very obnoxious.
~Sleeping through the night from 7-7 (or 6:30-6:30, depending on the night).  Yay!
~Using a clothes basket as a walker (pictures below).
~Standing by herself for seconds at a time.  She has no idea she does this, though.
~Trying to return things to their former state.  For example, she pulls her barrette out and then tries to put it back in.  Or she takes all the cards out of Bryan's wallet and then tries to shove them back inside.  She's not coordinated enough to actually fix anything yet, but she's trying.
~Opening and closing phones.  She's mastered my flip phone AND Bryan's slide phone.
~Climbing on things.  Little things, like violin and viola cases, laptop computers, and obligingly low parental laps.
~Combining sounds.  No longer content to repeat one sound constantly (dadadada), she now combines many sounds to construct sesquipedalian utterances of the unintelligible variety.
~Sleeping on her stomach.  Since she became proficient at rolling over, she's been sleeping like a little devoutly exhausted Muslim.
~Getting a tan.  Due to all the walks we take, her arms are getting quite brown, with the exception of around the wrists and elbows where her fat rolls create an interesting tan line.
~Saying "aught!"  As in "the gold medal class of aught 5," which is as close as I can come to spelling the sound she makes.  She learned it from Bryan, who says it whenever he walks into a room and sees her (or she crawls in and sees him).  Now we're to the point where she'll crawl into a different room and when I follow her she'll say "aught!" as soon as I come into her line of vision.  She also says it when she follows me (or Bryan) into a room.

Thursday night Bryan went to someone else's Man Night.  For those of you who don't know, Bryan began holding Man Night at our apartment when I had orchestra.  This now continues even when I don't have orchestra during the summer, but it's not always at our house since I'm around to stay with Olivia.  Bryan being gone meant that I needed a project.  Conveniently (I suppose), my wallet decided to fall apart earlier in the week, so my project was to make myself a new wallet.  It turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.  Pictures are below.

Saturday we went to the zoo with our friends.  It was Olivia's first trip to the zoo.  I remembered my camera and took pictures, but don't have time to upload them for this post.  I'll put them up in a later post.  Remembering my camera was more important than it might seem, because we noticed when we left that our car was close enough to 200,000 miles to roll over while we were on our way home from the zoo!  And we had the camera with us!  There was much excitement, and I took a video for those of you that want to appreciate the occurrence as much as I did.  :)

Next week's post might be late, as we leave today for a week in Florida with my Dad's family.  Should be fun.  And hot.  We're looking forward to seeing all of them, though, and should have interesting stories when we come back.

Pictures and Video:
Crawl, Crawl, as Fast as you Can!

Pushing around the laundry baskets:

Trying to get some of Daddy's food.  How dare he eat without sharing?!

Oh, phew.  She might have starved.

The wallet I made.  I'm especially proud of the viewfinder pocket for my license.

The car hits 200,000 miles!