June 11-July 2

It's tough being the littlest one.  The big girls had VBS a few weeks ago, and Kaitlyn never ever got to stay.  Since the Wey boys were also attending, Elesha and I traded off giving rides.  Kaitlyn also never got to stay with Mrs. Wey.  And then, to make a sad situation even sadder, Aunt Jillian had work most days, and Kaitlyn didn't get to do that, either.  She spent her mornings with me, telling me how it was Kaitlyn's turn to go to school and Mrs. Wey's and work.

A Gretchen mispronunciation: accilently.

A Kaitlyn mispronunciation: ehferma (elephant)

An Olivia update: She started both long vowels and subtraction last week.

We recently went to the zoo with the Weys and toured Africa.  It was a hot day, but that made the African animals more cooperative and active than usual, which was a pleasant surprise.  The lion even jumped right up to the window, startling all the kids standing there, before flopping down in front of it for admiration.  The giraffes were (as always) a big hit.  They're so big and really have nowhere to hide in their enclosure.  Also there's a viewing deck where you can pay to feed them lettuce, so they tend to be pretty close.

Last weekend we went to Cleveland to visit Keshia, Tyler, and Rudy.  It lined up with Rudy's birthday, so Keshia threw a luau themed party and decorated box cars for the girls to all watch Moana in their own personal drive-in.  They all had fun playing and painting and dancing in their grass skirts.  I will probably have a pictures only post soon once I get a chance to go through all the pictures that Keshia sent me.  I told Murry about how I did so many prostrations right before Kaitlyn was born, and she told Keshia and me that we better get working on our Easter crunches so that both our babies would come while she was there to watch all the other kids.  We declined.  :/

After Cleveland, the girls and I headed to Pittsburgh to see the Bossards.  Their new house is only two hours from the Palsgroves, so the drive was relatively painless.  The girls were three across in the back-seat-moved-to-the-middle and we Bryan and Jillian packed the back of the van full of Bossard belongings from the basement.  The kitchen table didn't actually fit in the van, so Bryan took that and the rest of the basement Bossard belongings to Pittsburgh in his truck on Saturday before meeting the rest of us in Cleveland.  This means that the Bossards are out of my basement!  Anyway, we spent Sunday night and all of Monday just visiting and hanging out.  The cousins played together and Justine and I unpacked a few things that I'd brought and decided where furniture was going to go.  We took the kids up to the empty attic and ran them through an exciting series of games and races, managing to get several good cousin pictures in the meantime.  Again, those will go up when I get a chance.

On Tuesday the movers came to drop off boxes.  I spent the morning keeping children in the playroom while Justine and Joseph directed traffic.  After lunch we put on a movie and I began the task of unpacking (mostly dumping boxes of toys into the playroom) while Justine double checked everything with the movers.  Then the real work began.  Over the rest of Tuesday and the beginning of Wednesday, we managed to unpack the kitchen, dining room, playroom, the boys' bedroom, the bathroom, and part of the living room.  Not everything was put away in a permanent home, but it was all out of boxes.  We were impressed by the packing skills of the kitchen guy especially.  We were unimpressed by all of the labeling skills -- sharp knives were found split between a box labeled plasticware and another labeled canned goods.  On Wednesday afternoon I needed to leave, so I stole some cardboard from Justine, rigged a shelf for the portable DVD player, and loaded the girls into the car.  The movie was supposed to be saved for a little later in the trip, but Kaitlyn took an early nap on the couch and was awake enough that we started the movie as soon as we hit I-76.  The last two hours of our trip were cranky, at least until all three girls fell asleep within half an hour of home.

Things we learned:
-When you get Justine's early rising boys together with my comparatively late to bed girls, everyone goes to sleep late and gets up early.  However, if Kaitlyn and Walter are sequestered away from the rest of them (and each other), everyone tends to get a bit more sleep.
-A pile of grass clippings and a ride-on bulldozer will keep all six children happy for about an hour.
-If you don't care about organization, having each child fill one of those fabric cubes to the top with toys will get the playroom relatively clean in a short amount of time.
-It takes seven cups of oatmeal each morning to feed everyone breakfast.

We spent Wednesday evening at home and then went down to Sidney on Thursday afternoon so that Bryan and I could squeeze in our La Comedia date before Bean is born.  We were originally scheduled to see this show on July 9, but I called and got our date switched to opening night in hopes that we would make it.  :)  The show (Beauty and the Beast, which, incidentally, is the first thing that Bryan and I ever saw at La Comedia nine years ago) was good, but the trip was made more memorable by the drive home.  We were with the Weys in their van and every warning light on the dashboard came on, one after another.  Then all the dials dropped to zero even though we were still traveling along at about 65 miles per hour.  Jon lost the ability to accelerate and moved over to the shoulder in anticipation of having to stop.  The headlights dimmed so much as to be useless, so he turned them off and was rewarded with a renewed ability to accelerate.  We probably would have made it to that next exit, except that another car had broken down on the shoulder and we couldn't pass them safely.  Half a mile from the exit, we gave up and stopped to call a tow truck.  The tow truck driver suspected a bad alternator.  Bryan's dad came to pick us up, the Weys took our van home, and we stayed in Sidney until their van was done in the shop the next day.  While we were driving we were joking about how after the show would be the perfect time for me to go into labor because Murry already had the kids.  As the van slowly lost power, we thought maybe I'd go into labor five minutes after we stalled on the side of the road.  However, we ended up right next to a hospital, so clearly that was too convenient and no baby came.  The night was pleasant, though, so the timing for a breakdown wasn't too bad, all things considered.

Yesterday (assuming nothing happens after I schedule this post) Bryan and I went to a wedding in Toledo.  The girls stayed with friends and then Jillian picked them up for dinner and bedtime.  Related note, Jillian got her license while I was in Pittsburgh.  She took the whole driver's test in Bryan's giant truck.

Today we're back in Sidney for a pool party, and then I think we're planning on being mostly home until Bean arrives.  Maybe I'll work on my Easter crunches this week.  :)

Pictures, all out of order:

January 29-February 19

A strictly visual post this week.

Pictures and Videos:

January 18-25

Gretchen's words: goose (as in "silly goose"), birds, papi (which used to mean Grandma), Gramma, Yiayia (for the priest's wife at our church), kiss, hug, push, pray down ("pray and get down").

Gretchen talks like a first grade reader.  "Daddy.  See Daddy.  See Daddy's water."  She should write books.  :)  Her sentences are beginning to move past this stage, and the effect is diminishing as she strings words together with less obvious pauses between words.  I've been neglecting to mention this habit, though, and don't want to forget before she stops doing it.

We took Gretchen's pacifier away last week.  More accurately, I cut the tip off her pacifier and she decided she didn't need it anymore.  It was much easier than trying to explain to her that her pacifier was missing.  After a couple of rough nights (only one of which was rough in the middle of the night) and a few more rough naptimes, Gretchen has accepted her pacifier-less state.  She does seem to take longer to fall asleep, but I think that's mostly because we can hear her babbling now.

Bryan's 12th day of Christmas present ended up being a little late.  Fortunately for his wife, Old Calendar Christmas exists, so he just got a 10th day of Old Calendar Christmas gift instead.  I wanted to make him a double-layered hooded robe for his commute (and for working in our still unheated basement), but I had to get the pattern from Justine when we were all in Michigan, and then I got sick, and then I was catching up with other things after being sick...  But it finally got done, and he says that it is wonderfully warm.  :)

Our house is on the market!  Yes, we moved four months ago...  We lived close enough to go fix things up, though, but not close enough to get it done in a timely manner.  And after we got things repainted, we weren't back in Springfield to sign papers for the realtor for another month.  All the papers have been signed now and the keys have been given to the proper people, so it's just a matter of waiting for someone to come buy it.

When we visited the Kleins on Thursday, Steph helped me give Gretchen her first haircut.  And when I say "Steph helped me," I mean that Steph cut Gretchen's hair and I kept Gretchen looking the correct direction most of the time.  :)  All we did was trim off the mullety look that most toddler girls apparently get as their heads and hair grow at different rates.  She took her first haircut much better than Olivia took hers (unfortunately, I can't find the post about Olivia sobbing through her first haircut, or I'd link to it for you).  Found it.

Olivia is still here, too, but apparently she didn't do anything new or exciting this week.  :-P

Pictures:

November 9-16

Gretchen is trying her hand at sentences.  This week we got "What doing, Mommy?", "Where Daddy go?", and "No, Olivia, no sit Mommy."  She's been stringing words together for a while, but this week is the first time I heard clear sentences.

More old Gretchen words: chair, sit, coat, milk, sock, pants, shirt, car.

Olivia "reads" books by talking through the pictures.  This is wonderful, as she is now more content than ever to sit quietly with a book.  She also enjoys reading to Gretchen.  However.  If the words in the book do not match what she sees in the pictures, Olivia will (occasionally, but with increasing regularity) call out the actual reader, claiming that words/pages were skipped.

Tuesday was Hippo's ultrasound.  Everything looks great, and Bryan and I got a wave during the scan.  :)  The office that I'm with now started doing a 3D rendering during ultrasounds, so a few of the pictures we got are really cool.  Those are all below.  Of course, if you move during the rendering then you get wavy pictures, so Hippo's moving hand in the third 3D picture makes his head look wobbly.  Side note: "his" is used generically here; we did not find out the gender, even by accident.  Bryan says he's 52% sure Hippo is a girl, though.

I showed Olivia and Gretchen the ultrasound pictures, and Olivia looked at me and said, "that's a head!"  I told her it was a baby, and she wanted to know whose baby.  "Our baby!"  "Gretchen's baby?"  "No, our new baby that's in Mommy's tummy right now."  She looked skeptical.  When Bryan went over things with her again later, she lifted up my shirt and said, "there's no baby there!"  Bryan told her it was inside, and pointed to a section of my stomach.  I pointed to a different spot and mentioned that the baby was over there.  At that, Olivia looked at Bryan and said seriously, "No, Daddy, it's over here, actually."

The girls also had appointments this week, so we got to find out how big they are.  Olivia is a full meter tall and weighs 33.2 pounds.  Gretchen is 33.5 inches and weighs 25 pounds, 4 ounces.  Six inches of height difference looks incredibly large at this size.  :)  As for milestones, both girls are doing well.  We did learn that Olivia can't draw a person yet because she is bothered by the imperfect circle for the head and refuses to move on.  She is, however, crushing it in the language department, where she's apparently supposed to have mastered sentences of 3-4 words.  For those of you who haven't heard Olivia recently, she speaks more in paragraphs than in sentences.  :)  I was also told that Gretchen's ability to put on her own socks and shoes is a little ahead of schedule, but her dislike shots is about par for the course.

During the appointment, the doctor asked Olivia if she was going to have a baby brother or sister, and she said sister.  Then the doctor asked if she had baby dolls at home, and she said, "yes, but not in my tummy!"

This was concert week for me, so I had rehearsals every night.  My family came down for the concert on Saturday, which was a nice, albeit brief, visit.  Josef and Alison stayed through until today.

Pictures and Video:

April 14-21

My Blogger dashboard thinks that 119260 people +1'd my March Madness post.  I think that my Blogger dashboard is mistaken.  Unless my 30 or so authorized readers just REALLY love March Madness.  :)

The lost remote control has been found!  It's been missing for months.  I looked in all the usual hiding spots, moved all the furniture in the living room (I felt very clean and accomplished after that day), and finally gave it up as lost for good.  Then...  Tuesday night Bryan and I sat down on the couch to watch a movie.  As I squirmed around trying to get comfortable, there was a thunk.  Followed by three more thunks.  Bryan started laughing, because he thought I'd knocked over my glass of water.  I had not.  When we looked behind the couch, though, there was the remote!  Also Olivia's cell phone (my old phone), a bouncy ball, and a doll bottle.  Olivia shoves things in the crack in the back of our couch.  Since we have the kind of couch with recliner pieces attached, most stuff falls right through to the rug pad underneath.  Periodically I fish around behind the cushions (which are not removable) to see if there's anything else in there.  She must have gotten these four things really wedged in well, though, because they've been missing for a long time.  And it's not like we never use this couch.  They fell out of my spot.  I have no idea how they managed to stay hidden for so long.  Anyway.  The toys were returned to her bin for her to discover in the morning, and the remote now has a velcro strip on the back to keep it attached to the top of our TV when we're not using it.

Olivia can say "bubble", "apple", and "bowl" now.  All three sound very much like "blue."  She's not very distinct with her words yet.  Maybe if she picked a few that were composed of different sounds...  :)  Also, I've recently heard her say "happy" when reading a book about Elmo being happy.

Last week I made a sling with which to carry Reggie.  I was going to get one online, but they didn't have good reviews and I figured I could make one for less money.  Justine was nice enough to lend me the one someone made for her and after getting some swimsuit fabric and borrowing a walking foot from Steph, I was good to go.  Once I had all the proper supplies, it was really pretty quick and easy.  I used the leftover fabric to make a sling for Olivia to use with her dolls.  Partly because I didn't feel like messing with measuring her, and partly because she'll grow (and dolls don't get bigger, wiggle, or get hurt if you drop them), I made her sling with some snaps on it so that it's adjustable for when she gets bigger.  :-D  I'm so proud.  We don't use our slings yet, as there's no baby for me to carry and Olivia doesn't know what to do with hers, but when we do start using them, I'll post pictures.

Still no Reggie as of the writing of this post (Friday afternoon), but it should be soon!  The doctor is getting impatient, especially since the ultrasound-based due date was this past Monday.  I'm doing pretty well since the due date I've had in my head the whole time is April 21.

Pictures:

April 7-14

Olivia has at least one eye-tooth coming in (I know, it's short for incisor, but eye-tooth is so much more fun and the internet accepts it, I checked).  It's hard to tell if the other three are also coming in since she doesn't hold still long enough for me to check.  In a related side note, she can identify her teeth by name.  Also her fingers, weirdly enough.  Other body parts, not so much, although she can locate most of them if asked.

Bryan has decided that there are certain things that are vital to a complete and fulfilling childhood, so one day last week we set out to find a cozy coupe (the official name of the little red and yellow car) and some sidewalk chalk.  We also had a brief discussion about how some people *cough his wife cough* manage to have a complete and fulfilling childhood without some of these items.  He understands, but thinks they're nice to have around.  :)  Anyway.  The cozy coupe has some assembly required, so Bryan set out to put it together while Olivia, Murry, and I played with chalk.  Once the cozy coupe was almost done, Olivia happened to glance back and recognize that this thing behind her was A CHILD SIZED CAR!!!  Oh, the excitement.  She eagerly "helped" Bryan finish and then climbed inside.  She then proceeded to drive backwards, because that's the only correct way to drive one of those cars.  Otherwise you scrape your heels.

A moment of brilliance during chalk time: Olivia can identify E, O, and T.  I haven't tried giving her too many choices mixed in, but when presented with only those three letters, she knows which is which consistently.  Also, she was playing with my phone one day and happened to press the 0 button.  When the 0 appeared on the display, she excitedly looked at me, pointed to the 0, and said, "O!"  She's so smart.  Also also, when we sing the Phonics Song, she can make the sounds for B, C, D, G, and H and sometimes A, E, F, S, and T.  When we sing the Letter Sounds Song, she can do G, N, and U.

Wearing a winter coat and carrying a one-year-old tends to disguise a pregnancy a bit (although I didn't think it was disguised THAT much as my pea coat has been getting rather snug lately -- I can still button it, but only if I haven't eaten recently!).  With warmer weather, though, the coat came off.  Add to that the fact that I've been letting Olivia walk in stores and parking lots more (she needs the practice!), and suddenly my pregnancy becomes much more obvious.  I've had probably two strangers comment on my expectant state in the whole 8 1/2 months so far, and then on Tuesday I had no less than 7 separate people say something to me.  I only went to three stores.  :)

I realized after my appointment this week that Reggie will be here soon.  Somehow that slipped my mind.  :-P  I've discovered that while I feel calmer and less anxious about this baby, I'm way less prepared than I was for Olivia.  Except not really, because we already have a lot of the basics.  Of course, the clothes and diapers are still in the attic rather than down in the nursery where they belong.  By 38 weeks with Olivia, I was ready to have the baby.  I was bored and uncomfortable, the nursery was ready, the hospital bag was packed, Bryan and I talked about how soon we'd be a family of 3...  With Reggie, not so much.  I blame the one-year-old running around, taking up everyone's attention.  I'm not bored, I'm not uncomfortable (that's good, though), my hospital bag is... half packed, kinda.  Bryan and I don't so much talk about how there will be two children soon as have sudden realizations that, hey, in a couple of months there will be two of them.  Except it's a couple of weeks now, and we haven't adjusted our mindsets.  :)

And speaking of Reggie, he can't come until Wednesday.  Or at least Tuesday afternoon.  Wednesday or later would be better, though.  I have things to do!  My calendar looks so full; there's no room for a baby on there!  Luckily, most of it won't suffer from being put off indefinitely, and we are excited to finally meet Reggie.  Just not until Wednesday.  Seriously.  (I told this to Bryan, and he asked if I'd informed Reggie.  He though the least I could do was send an email memo or something.)

More pictures:

March 17-24

Screw on tops are no longer safe from Olivia.  If she can get her hand around the top, she can get it off.  Mostly this pertains to small things: toothpaste, rash cream, etc.  Sippy cups and jars from the fridge are still too large.  I have noticed that she's worse with screwing lids back on.  She has trouble turning them that direction, apparently.  We add this to her growing list of opening accomplishments: velcro, zippers, and weak snaps...

Every now and again, I let Olivia try to feed herself with utensils.  She's not too bad with a fork, as long as the food in front of her is easily stab-able.  Spoons, on the other hand...  Well, she's getting better.  Her main problem with spoons is that when you tilt them, food falls off.  Oatmeal sticks to the spoon enough that I let her try feeding herself every morning, and she manages to get some food into her mouth before she gives up and hands the spoon back to me.  This does make our breakfasts longer, as she's stubborn enough to want to try for several minutes before she accepts help.

Olivia's biggest conquest in the food area has actually been with drinks.  She can use a big person cup.  I'm not sure when it happened, since we never give her anything except a sippy cup.  She takes occasional drinks out of our cups (especially at restaurants, where mastering the use of a straw was an incredibly tricky maneuver), but usually sticks to her own cups.  The other day, though, she wanted one of the animal cups from the cupboard, so I told Bryan to give her water and see how she did.  As it turns out, she did pretty well.  One dribble escaped when she got too ambitious too fast, but she wasn't even noticeably wet.  By breakfast the next morning, she was holding the cup with one hand like she'd been doing it for years.  I'm still not brave enough to let her have anything other than water in her un-lidded cup, and I encourage the use of the sippy during the day when she's up and walking around, but she is fully capable of not drenching herself should she ever want/need to use a big person cup.

At my last appointment, the doctor thought I was "measuring small."  Basically, my stomach wasn't large enough according to the tape measure.  He seemed unconcerned, explaining that I'm not a very big person, so that was probably the whole reason the numbers weren't matching up.  Regardless, he had me schedule an ultrasound for the same day as my next appointment.  Said ultrasound happened this past week, and everything is fine.  The tech looked at me and said, "There's just nothing to you, is there?  Let me guess, they think you're measuring small."  All the measurements are fine, though, and she said Reggie's measuring in the 50th percentile.  The estimated weight is currently 6 lbs, 5 oz.  I did get a few more pictures out of the deal, so those are below.  I was surprised by how much harder it was to identify anything during this ultrasound than during the 20-week ultrasound, but then I realized that Reggie is more squished and can't move around as much at all.  :)  I did ask which limb might be poking me in my right side (as it had been particularly persistent in the waiting room), and she took a quick look and told me it was both feet.  And a hand.  Well fine.  :)

On Wednesday, look for a bonus post explaining how Olivia made picks for her March Madness bracket.

Pictures:

March 3-10

If you haven't seen it yet, head on over to the Bonus Post about baby predictions.  You could get so many points!

Olivia has a face she makes when she listens to me make lists.  As I list off items, she'll open her mouth in excited surprise, happy for whatever it is we're going to do later in the day.  There's a video below.  Since it was staged, my list is less than inspiring, but you get the gist.

I got my Infantino stuff in the mail last week, and Olivia and I got together with some friends to try it out on Monday.  They sent me more than I was expecting, which was exciting.  Unfortunately, most of the extra stuff they sent probably won't see much use at my house because it's meant for very small batches and isn't as durable as one might prefer.  The squeeze station, which is the item I was hoping to win, is great once you get the hang of it.  Olivia is kind of over pouches right now since she can eat real food just fine, but she did like the fruit blend we made.  I anticipate using it much more this summer when fruits and vegetables are in season and again when Reggie is old enough to start on solids.

We had a card club to celebrate Happy March on March 2.  Joe and Alison came down to help us make up three full tables and then stayed for the weekend.  This was probably our most successful card club yet, which pretty much means we had an appropriate number of people and we weren't faced with any delays of game due to the babies present.  :)

Olivia's monkey sound has deteriorated.  She used to say "ooh ee ooh ee" and then progressed to "ooh ee aah," but now she slurs it all together and says "ooeeah."  It sounds a bit like "oh, yeah."  In animal noise progress, though, I found out on Wednesday that she can do a rooster.  Not sure where she picked that one up.

Also on Wednesday, I discovered that Olivia can correctly identify a star, a circle, and a square.  Also the letter E.  She's so-so with triangle, heart, I, M, O, and T.  I think she picked up the letters from her "Tickle Time" book, where the words "Tickle Time" are spelled out in big, colorful letters that she always asks me to identify (usually backwards, so it ends up being emit elkcit).  She's also become very interested in exactly what color crayon she is putting away, so colors could be next on her list of accomplishments.

Pictures and Video:

January 27-February 3

Olivia knows eight animal sounds now.  In the order she learned them, they are as follows: lion, monkey, dog, sheep, cat, horse, duck, cow.  We didn't catch sheep right away, since she has a gentle lion and an aggressive sheep, making them sound very similar.  My siblings were quite dedicated in teaching her horse and duck while we were visiting last weekend.  My favorite noise that she makes is monkey; Bryan's favorite is cow (and it became even more of a favorite when I commented that it sounds a bit like a steamboat).  There are videos below which document her talents.

There's also a video below where she shows all the body parts she knows.  Right now we're working on leg, as she recently discovered that she has two of them.

Olivia no longer pulls hair out of the top of her head!  Unfortunately, she now pulls it out over her ears, so the mullet look has actually gotten worse.  :(  I asked the pediatrician about it the last time we were in, and he said to distract her whenever she's pulling on her hair.  That would be great, except she only pulls it out in her crib at night.  Right now we're hoping she'll grow out of this phase completely once the hair above her ears gets too short to pull.

Every now and again, Olivia decides that she is going to use her own utensils.  This means she takes longer to eat, since she won't let us help her but still isn't very good with a fork.  At our house we have toddler sized forks to use and she'll spend the entire meal trying to stab food, getting food about one in every ten tries.  Whether said food stays on the fork long enough to make it to her mouth is an entirely different matter.  Eventually she gets frustrated and/or hungry enough that she'll let us feed her, so she doesn't starve.  At my mom and dad's this last weekend, James couldn't find any Olivia sized forks, so he provided her with only a spoon.  Of course, this caused problems: her spoon skills are worse than her fork skills, she wouldn't accept a big fork, and this was one of the times she was determined to feed herself.  So there she sat, valiantly trying to stab her egg noodles with a spoon.  :)

I have decided that kids should be like software upgrades.  Reggie should be just like Olivia, only with fewer glitches.  It sounds good to me.  All the good, and less of the bad (not that Olivia has ANY bad, of course... :-P).  Bryan thought this was a great idea, pointing out that by kid eight we should have a professional athlete who cures cancer.  Then we were struck by a sobering thought: on kid 9, there will be a total interface overhaul.  We'll know the upgrade is supposed to be better, but we won't know why and we won't be able to figure out how to work it.

Pictures and Videos:

December 2-9

Last weekend we visited my parents.  Olivia is more pleasant every time we visit, which could mean she's remembering my family and has resigned herself to the fact that she's related to these people and will thus see them approximately once a month.  Or it could mean that she's getting better at ignoring the chaos of constantly having at least five people sitting around her watching her every move and imitating her every sound.  Just the usual paparazzi, no big deal.

Remember the doll we gave Olivia for her birthday?  The one she used to make me hold while she played?  This doll is now one of her favorite belongings.  In the past week and a half, Olivia has decided she must have her baby (one of her semi-distinct words) whenever she remembers that said baby exists.  It came with us to drop Bryan off at work, it's been to Wal-Mart at least once, she occasionally holds it during meals, and she took it to bed one night.  She looked quite adorable as she insisted on holding her doll even as she lay in her crib at bedtime.  Of course, she sleeps on her stomach, which makes it harder to hold a baby, so when we went to check on her later that night we discovered (after a significant amount of searching for the apparently missing baby) that she fixed this problem by sleeping on top of her doll.  I can't imagine that having the hard plastic head digging into her chest was particularly comfortable, but she seemed fine with it.  One can only hope that she will think of a better method of sleeping with a baby before she accidentally smothers an actual child.

Olivia has two more distinct (to everyone, not just me!) words: "uh-oh" and "okay".  I think it's especially cute when I hand her something and ask her to hold it for me and hear her little voice respond, "okay!"

Along similar lines, the pediatrician asked us at Olivia's 15-month appointment if Olivia was removing clothes by herself yet.  (The pediatrician also wanted to know if Olivia had about 6 understandable words yet; that's why this paragraph is along similar lines.)  At the time, Olivia was only removing socks by herself.  Now, however, she has moved on to shirts.  She doesn't do it often, but every now and again I'll walk into her room after her nap and she'll be missing her shirt.  Uh-oh.

Continuing the list of newly discovered talents, Olivia has developed a penguin walk.  For what reason, we know not, but she does a little side to side strut quite deliberately.  I make fun of her for it and then imitate it long enough for her to start again.

A couple of weeks ago, Bryan looked at me and said, "I love you.  And I love Olivia.  And I love Reginald."
...
...
...
"Who's Reginald?" I asked.  His response: "That's what I decided to call him."

So, although we will NOT be naming this baby Reginald, no matter the gender, it is currently being referred to as Reginald and/or Reggie.

And speaking of Reggie, the 20 week ultrasound was on Tuesday.  Everything looks good, the gender was not accidentally revealed to us, and there are a few more pictures below.  Bryan took the ultrasound print of Reggie flexing his/her muscles to work and I have a profile on my planner.

Due to baby-sitter issues, Justine and William came to visit in time to watch Olivia during Reggie's ultrasound.  Yes, it's a long drive just to baby-sit.  They stayed for a few days, though, and we had fun hanging out.  Olivia handled William just fine, although she was very concerned about Justine's suitability as a mother.  What kind of mother just puts her baby on the floor under an arch and leaves him there?!  Every time Justine put William down, Olivia would start pointing and saying, "uh-oh!", as if to remind Justine that, "Hey, lady, you dropped your baby!"

I added a few new pictures to the July 29-August 5 post.

More pictures:

September 30-October 7

Last Friday I had the 10 week ultrasound for baby number 2.  It's amazing how much ultrasound technology has improved in just a few years.  The office got new equipment between the 10 week and 20 week ultrasounds for Olivia, and the change in quality is amazing when you compare this most recent one with Olivia's first.  Olivia was a little jelly bean with a blinking heartbeat.  This was a discernible baby with kicking feet and waving arms.  Go here to see Olivia's 10 week ultrasound (for comparison).

Last Saturday we were home on the weekend for the first time in a month.  We went to check out a few local garage sales and lucked out big time at the first one, which was a collection of all the baby stuff that one couple had gathered from all their children and grandchildren.  We got a nice (long-sleeved) winter dress, a couple of long sleeved shirts, and a coat for Olivia.  The coat might be too big this year since it's a 4T, but it will fit next year!

Saturday afternoon we went to yet another wedding.  3 points if you know the total number of weddings we've attended since our own.  Here's a hint: This was only the second wedding in which neither Bryan nor I was a participant.

Olivia walks all the time now!  Her arms are still up in the air most of the time, raised in a perpetual surrender to an unseen enemy.  She has little use for crawling, though, and happily stomps around the house all day.  She does seem a bit sad at times with her inability to go faster.

Friday I discovered 2 molars in Olivia's mouth.  One had just barely broken through and could have come in that day.  The other has obviously been there for a while.  I'd feel worse about not noticing if checking for molars didn't come with the risk of losing fingers.

My two orchestras (Monday and Thursday nights) are playing one of the same pieces this concert period.  Luckily, I like the piece, so I generally don't mind rehearsing it twice a week.  It's a little interesting trying to remember which conductor wants what, though.  It took me a while to figure out that I was playing the same piece twice, because one is Dvorak's Symphony No. 4 in G Major and the other is Dvorak's Symphony No. 8 in G Major.  Different names means different music, right?  Wrong.  It turns out that Dvorak stole an entire symphony from himself.  Actually, as it turns out, there is another Symphony No. 4 (in d minor), but Dvorak suppressed his earliest symphonies because he didn't think they stylistically matched his later works.  Because of this, the later symphonies were traditionally known by lower numbers, and it just so happens that Symphony No. 8's traditional number was 4 until we learned that there were earlier works and had to reorder the whole mess.  You learn something every day.

More Pictures:

July 24-31

Well, Baby Barhorst was due yesterday, but is still showing no interest in arriving.  As we anticipate the arrival of our little bundle of joy, here are the pregnancy pictures and ultrasounds that some of my out of state friends requested: