Whoever coined the term ankle biter may have had a baby like Theodore. He seems to have developed a fondness for sneaking up on unsuspecting feet and chomping down on the nearest part, which often happens to be the ankles. We warn anyone who's in danger, but Theodore is lucky he hasn't gotten accidentally reflex kicked in the face.
We took a trip to visit the Kleins back at the end of May. The whole family went down and we stayed overnight. On the way, Matthias had to go to the bathroom and, due to a lack of available facilities, discovered the joys of peeing on trees. Now on long car trips he periodically says, "I have to pee on a tree." Fantastic.
In mid June I took the kids to Pittsburgh to visit the Bossards while Bryan stayed home and led the fabulous bachelor life. We usually sleep in the attic, which gets quite hot in the summer. Luckily, Justine and Joseph had considered this and had an air conditioning unit arriving on Tuesday. Unluckily, we showed up on Monday. Everyone survived though, and by Wednesday evening it was pleasant enough even during the day.
All the cousins paired off during the visit and had a grand old time. Olivia, William, Gretchen, and Edward spent most of their inside time planning hide and seek. They all walked around with modern magna doodles making lists and drawing diagrams of the perfect hiding places in each room. The lists and diagrams were top secret and had to be protected from the other pair at all costs. Justine and I are pretty sure that over the course of the week they never actually got around to hiding. :)
All the kids spent a fair amount of time outside, taking turns riding the various wheeled things. Walter allowed the pedals to be taken off his bike so that Gretchen could practice balancing, which she did for several days. When we came home she was riding her own bike with pedals and without training wheels in ten minutes. This gave Kaitlyn renewed enthusiasm, and we took her pedals and training wheels off for her to learn as well. A week later we ended up putting them all back on.
Josef and Angelina came to visit over Father's Day weekend. They were moving Angelina's mother to Cleveland and then went to Columbus to check out apartments before coming to stay with us for a couple of days. It was fun to see them and we're looking forward to this fall when they live closer.
We've been to Steve and Murry's a couple of times now, and we've been taking the kids' bikes so that we can go on family walks/rides down the bike path. I do appreciate the walking and riding opportunities there. We should probably invest in a bike rack since the only other way to bring all the bikes is by taking an extra vehicle.
Murry wanted to have some time with each kid, so she came and got them one at a time for 24 hours. They did all sorts of things and there was a bonus post this past Wednesday with pictures. When Matthias was gone, I was reflecting on how much more peaceful it was when just one child was missing. Then Matthias came back and Gretchen left and suddenly it wasn't peaceful anymore. Which child is missing definitely matters. Due to ages and temperaments, the worst one to be missing right now is definitely Gretchen. Matthias is probably the best one, but only because Kaitlyn doesn't require me to constantly entertain her.
All the kids had some of their own money to spend a couple of months ago, and they carefully selected items from Amazon. Matthias bought matchbox cars, Kaitlyn bought polly pockets, Olivia bought a necklace (that still hasn't arrived), and Gretchen bought a birdhouse with a window on the back. We didn't read the description carefully enough, though, because the window is not a two way mirror like we though it was. It's just plexiglass. Much to Gretchen's delight, a bird moved in within a week. The bird was less delighted once it realized that giant heads kept popping up to look at it. We bought a camera that connects to an app so that we could watch the bird without scaring it.
Keshia's daughter, Rudy, turned five at the end of June. She had Kaitlyn over for a sleepover; they were so excited to see each other again. Kaitlyn was a little sad that it was only for one day, but she was happy to get to spend time at Rudy's by herself.
Theodore is pulling himself up on things. He spent a day panicking about being stuck once he got to standing and another day practicing plopping down on his bum. He still gets himself stuck at an awkward angle every now an again, but he's improved greatly. Now he's cruising slowly along the edge of furniture and is quite pleased with himself. He also discovered the card catalog drawers, so we've put our elegant baby proofing fence back up.
Well visit stats:
Theodore, 9.5 months -- 19 pounds, 4 ounces; 28 inches
Kaitlyn, 5 years and 2 months -- 43.4 pounds, 42.5 inches
Gretchen, 7 years and 1 month -- 49 pounds, 48.25 inches
Pictures:
Showing posts with label Stats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stats. Show all posts
12 July 2020
18 August 2019
July 21-August 18
Did you comment on the Baby Guesses post? If not, you're running out of time. There is a benefit to procrastinating, though: I had an ultrasound last week and have added a 3D picture of Lionel's face to the post in case it gives you any clues. :)
Matthias had his two year check-up. He's 30 pounds 5 ounces and 34.75 inches tall. According to the doubling method, this would put his adult height at 69.5 inches, which is 5'9.5" No basketball star here. He handled his one shot calmly, with only minor tears. He did not accept the removal of his clothes with such grace, however, and cried his way through the whole appointment until we gave his shirt and shorts back.
Matthias is a pro at riding his (pink) tricycle. He can go forwards and backwards, steers well enough to not run into things, and has recently been experimenting with no hands.
Olivia had a birthday! We have an eight year old in the house, which is entirely too old. I don't know what magic switch flips when they turn eight, but I now have to listen to near constant interjections and affected giggles.
Camp happened. We drove to Chicago on a Saturday afternoon to visit with Jacque, Will, and Julian. We ended up sleeping at the house of a church family and then met up with everyone again the next morning. After church, we decided to drive straight up towards Madison rather than waiting around. We made a stop to see my high school friend, Kathleen, on the way and visited a splash pad and an ice cream shop. Once we arrived at our hotel, we stopped moving, crashed in front of cartoons, and ordered pizza. The rest of the week involved more visiting and a lot of playing outside. The girls got to try baseball and kickball; Matthias spent most of his time "driving" the row of go carts along the side of the building. The setup with the pavilion, playground, and go carts was perfect for letting the kids roam around while we chatted or played games. We went back to the hotel each night to sleep and regret nothing. :)
Our drive home from camp was done in one shot on Thursday. As we had never bothered to look up exactly how far it was, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had overestimated the length. We arrived in time for a mildly late dinner. Our house was significantly messier than we had left it because Murry was in the middle of painting two different rooms and had things spread everywhere. Apparently Bryan gave her the wrong return date. She stayed up late painting, slept on the couch, and resumed painting the next day. The girls' room is done (except for the wooden castle she plans to affix to the wall). Matthias and Lionel's room is, as of this writing, only close to done. There are half plans to do the playroom still, mostly to cover the spackling that is necessary.
All four kids had eye doctor's appointments at the beginning of August. Kaitlyn and Matthias are fine for their age. Gretchen has astigmatism. Olivia has a slight eye turn and a pretty severe lazy eye. The older two both got to pick out glasses and are eagerly waiting for their new frames to arrive. Kaitlyn was distraught that her eyes didn't also need correction.
We were home for all of five days before heading to Sidney for our next vacation. Steve and Murry took the family to Great Wolf Lodge (an indoor water park) for a few days. There were slides and sprinklers and pools for big kids and toddlers... Also a Build-a-Bear on site and an in-hotel scavenger hunt that involved pointing a magic wand at all sorts of fun looking interactive statues. The kids had a blast. Poor Gretchen would have had more fun if she wasn't under the weather the whole time. She caught something (from Bryan, we think) on the way home from camp and, while she recovered enough to go on vacation, has been taking afternoon naps since then.
Last week we came home and said we were finally home for good due to school and Lionel, but we neglected to remember that we're back in Sidney this weekend one more time. After that, though, I think we're done for a bit.
VBS was this past week at St Stephen's. This is the third VBS the girls have attended this summer. They love it so much that we try to catch a couple of local ones. This year was the first official one we've had at our church, and I was in charge. I have a curriculum from the Greek archdiocese, and I think it went rather well. The kids seemed to enjoy it, even though it wasn't as flashy as some of the ones they've been to.
Pictures next week. Go comment on Lionel's Baby Guesses!
Matthias had his two year check-up. He's 30 pounds 5 ounces and 34.75 inches tall. According to the doubling method, this would put his adult height at 69.5 inches, which is 5'9.5" No basketball star here. He handled his one shot calmly, with only minor tears. He did not accept the removal of his clothes with such grace, however, and cried his way through the whole appointment until we gave his shirt and shorts back.
Matthias is a pro at riding his (pink) tricycle. He can go forwards and backwards, steers well enough to not run into things, and has recently been experimenting with no hands.
Olivia had a birthday! We have an eight year old in the house, which is entirely too old. I don't know what magic switch flips when they turn eight, but I now have to listen to near constant interjections and affected giggles.
Camp happened. We drove to Chicago on a Saturday afternoon to visit with Jacque, Will, and Julian. We ended up sleeping at the house of a church family and then met up with everyone again the next morning. After church, we decided to drive straight up towards Madison rather than waiting around. We made a stop to see my high school friend, Kathleen, on the way and visited a splash pad and an ice cream shop. Once we arrived at our hotel, we stopped moving, crashed in front of cartoons, and ordered pizza. The rest of the week involved more visiting and a lot of playing outside. The girls got to try baseball and kickball; Matthias spent most of his time "driving" the row of go carts along the side of the building. The setup with the pavilion, playground, and go carts was perfect for letting the kids roam around while we chatted or played games. We went back to the hotel each night to sleep and regret nothing. :)
Our drive home from camp was done in one shot on Thursday. As we had never bothered to look up exactly how far it was, we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had overestimated the length. We arrived in time for a mildly late dinner. Our house was significantly messier than we had left it because Murry was in the middle of painting two different rooms and had things spread everywhere. Apparently Bryan gave her the wrong return date. She stayed up late painting, slept on the couch, and resumed painting the next day. The girls' room is done (except for the wooden castle she plans to affix to the wall). Matthias and Lionel's room is, as of this writing, only close to done. There are half plans to do the playroom still, mostly to cover the spackling that is necessary.
All four kids had eye doctor's appointments at the beginning of August. Kaitlyn and Matthias are fine for their age. Gretchen has astigmatism. Olivia has a slight eye turn and a pretty severe lazy eye. The older two both got to pick out glasses and are eagerly waiting for their new frames to arrive. Kaitlyn was distraught that her eyes didn't also need correction.
We were home for all of five days before heading to Sidney for our next vacation. Steve and Murry took the family to Great Wolf Lodge (an indoor water park) for a few days. There were slides and sprinklers and pools for big kids and toddlers... Also a Build-a-Bear on site and an in-hotel scavenger hunt that involved pointing a magic wand at all sorts of fun looking interactive statues. The kids had a blast. Poor Gretchen would have had more fun if she wasn't under the weather the whole time. She caught something (from Bryan, we think) on the way home from camp and, while she recovered enough to go on vacation, has been taking afternoon naps since then.
Last week we came home and said we were finally home for good due to school and Lionel, but we neglected to remember that we're back in Sidney this weekend one more time. After that, though, I think we're done for a bit.
VBS was this past week at St Stephen's. This is the third VBS the girls have attended this summer. They love it so much that we try to catch a couple of local ones. This year was the first official one we've had at our church, and I was in charge. I have a curriculum from the Greek archdiocese, and I think it went rather well. The kids seemed to enjoy it, even though it wasn't as flashy as some of the ones they've been to.
Pictures next week. Go comment on Lionel's Baby Guesses!
14 April 2019
March 24-April 14
Kaitlyn had a birthday! She turned four on March 27. She seems relatively convinced that the cake is the magic vehicle by which birthdays are conveyed, so it is possible that everyone who partook of said cake is now four as well. We gave her a PJ Masks MeReader set as a gift, which was a big hit.
Kaitlyn says "to-later." I think it is similar in meaning to "tonight."
Kaitlyn has discovered books on CD at the library. They have a selection of Disney stories with CDs and she checks out a whole stack of them. Combined with her CD player that she got for Christmas, this makes for one quiet, happy Kaitlyn.
Gretchen has lost two teeth now. Her second one took quite some time to fall out, so she was wiggling it during every waking moment for a couple of weeks.
Matthias tries to jump (but his feet rarely leave the ground), enthusiastically gives high fives, and grudgingly gives fist bumps. His favorite method of returning fist bumps is to unroll the other person's fingers into a flat hand and then give a high five.
Matthias has a pillow now. He was jealous of Kaitlyn's PJ Masks pillow and used it during naps, so I finally just got him his own PJ Masks pillowcase and gave him a pillow in his crib. He spent the first week sleeping curled up in the opposite corner of the crib, but now he is generally on top of his pillow. Unrelated to pillows, but in the milestone vein, he weaned forever ago (back at the beginning of February, I think) and is still rear facing in his carseat.
I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but the girls got Create Your Own Story books a few months ago. Olivia, seeing pages set aside for a table of contents, immediately sat down and wrote a table of contents, complete with chapter titles and page numbers. Now whenever she decides to write her story she is trying to fit words into the exact number of pages that she gave herself for each chapter. :)
Matthias thinks Bryan's dad is named Boo Boo Butt. Gretchen and Kaitlyn call grandpa Boo Boo Butt to be silly, but Matthias has decided to use that as his name. Sometimes grandma gets to be Other Boo Boo Butt.
Matthias has a name for Olivia. It initially sounded remarkably like Oo-de-lally, but has recently settled into Ololly. Still no consistent names for Gretchen or Kaitlyn.
Matthias words: sorry, garbage, socks, ummm, belly, owie, other train (car), okay, uh-uh (which means yes), thank you, pizza, cookie (which can also mean doughnut and is the same sound as the one for cracker)
The three younger kids and I spent 45 minutes in the parking lot after Music Together watching a utility crew take out an old telephone pole and put in a new one. There was a truck involved, which pleased Matthias, and also chains, a pulley, and a giant drill. Gretchen wondered why they would knock dirt off the drill onto the ground if they'd only have to clean it up later, and was pleased to see that they had the foresight to put a large tarp down first. Kaitlyn's favorite part was the man in the bucket (of the crane) who removed the wires from the first pole and then just waited around for the second pole to be put up so that he could reattach them. Kaitlyn thought that it would be fun to play in a crane bucket. A few days after this learning experience, the excitement came even closer to home as a pole on the corner of our street was replaced in a similar manner and all three of them could watch from the front porch.
We took a brief trip to Michigan last weekend for the birthday party of the child of some college friends. They live in Taylor, so we took a trip up to Livonia for church on Sunday and got to see Jacob.
I was recently reminded of the somewhat questionable calculation that can be done to determine a toddler's adult height. Allegedly you can double a girl's height at 18 months and a boy's at 2 years and come up with a reasonable approximation of adult height. Here is where we test it, because it will be written down (and forgotten by the time it matters in 15 years).
Olivia at 18 months: 32.25 inches. Doubled is 64.5, which means an adult height of 5'4.5"
Gretchen at 18 months: 33.5 inches. Doubled is 67, which means an adult height of 5'7"
Kaitlyn at 18 months: 33.5 inches. Doubled is 67, which means an adult height of 5'7"
These results leave some room for error since only Olivia was actually 18 months old at her 18 month appointment. Gretchen was 18.5 months and Kaitlyn was 19.5 months. I'm pretty sure 18 months is still a horizontal measurement at the doctor's office, which can be tremendously unreliable. Remember the time that Gretchen grew zero inches between 9 months and 12 months? Also worth noting is that on our homemade height tracker Olivia and Gretchen run very close to the same height by age and Kaitlyn is consistently about an inch shorter.
Pictures:
Kaitlyn says "to-later." I think it is similar in meaning to "tonight."
Kaitlyn has discovered books on CD at the library. They have a selection of Disney stories with CDs and she checks out a whole stack of them. Combined with her CD player that she got for Christmas, this makes for one quiet, happy Kaitlyn.
Gretchen has lost two teeth now. Her second one took quite some time to fall out, so she was wiggling it during every waking moment for a couple of weeks.
Matthias tries to jump (but his feet rarely leave the ground), enthusiastically gives high fives, and grudgingly gives fist bumps. His favorite method of returning fist bumps is to unroll the other person's fingers into a flat hand and then give a high five.
Matthias has a pillow now. He was jealous of Kaitlyn's PJ Masks pillow and used it during naps, so I finally just got him his own PJ Masks pillowcase and gave him a pillow in his crib. He spent the first week sleeping curled up in the opposite corner of the crib, but now he is generally on top of his pillow. Unrelated to pillows, but in the milestone vein, he weaned forever ago (back at the beginning of February, I think) and is still rear facing in his carseat.
I may have mentioned this in a previous post, but the girls got Create Your Own Story books a few months ago. Olivia, seeing pages set aside for a table of contents, immediately sat down and wrote a table of contents, complete with chapter titles and page numbers. Now whenever she decides to write her story she is trying to fit words into the exact number of pages that she gave herself for each chapter. :)
Matthias thinks Bryan's dad is named Boo Boo Butt. Gretchen and Kaitlyn call grandpa Boo Boo Butt to be silly, but Matthias has decided to use that as his name. Sometimes grandma gets to be Other Boo Boo Butt.
Matthias has a name for Olivia. It initially sounded remarkably like Oo-de-lally, but has recently settled into Ololly. Still no consistent names for Gretchen or Kaitlyn.
Matthias words: sorry, garbage, socks, ummm, belly, owie, other train (car), okay, uh-uh (which means yes), thank you, pizza, cookie (which can also mean doughnut and is the same sound as the one for cracker)
The three younger kids and I spent 45 minutes in the parking lot after Music Together watching a utility crew take out an old telephone pole and put in a new one. There was a truck involved, which pleased Matthias, and also chains, a pulley, and a giant drill. Gretchen wondered why they would knock dirt off the drill onto the ground if they'd only have to clean it up later, and was pleased to see that they had the foresight to put a large tarp down first. Kaitlyn's favorite part was the man in the bucket (of the crane) who removed the wires from the first pole and then just waited around for the second pole to be put up so that he could reattach them. Kaitlyn thought that it would be fun to play in a crane bucket. A few days after this learning experience, the excitement came even closer to home as a pole on the corner of our street was replaced in a similar manner and all three of them could watch from the front porch.
We took a brief trip to Michigan last weekend for the birthday party of the child of some college friends. They live in Taylor, so we took a trip up to Livonia for church on Sunday and got to see Jacob.
I was recently reminded of the somewhat questionable calculation that can be done to determine a toddler's adult height. Allegedly you can double a girl's height at 18 months and a boy's at 2 years and come up with a reasonable approximation of adult height. Here is where we test it, because it will be written down (and forgotten by the time it matters in 15 years).
Olivia at 18 months: 32.25 inches. Doubled is 64.5, which means an adult height of 5'4.5"
Gretchen at 18 months: 33.5 inches. Doubled is 67, which means an adult height of 5'7"
Kaitlyn at 18 months: 33.5 inches. Doubled is 67, which means an adult height of 5'7"
These results leave some room for error since only Olivia was actually 18 months old at her 18 month appointment. Gretchen was 18.5 months and Kaitlyn was 19.5 months. I'm pretty sure 18 months is still a horizontal measurement at the doctor's office, which can be tremendously unreliable. Remember the time that Gretchen grew zero inches between 9 months and 12 months? Also worth noting is that on our homemade height tracker Olivia and Gretchen run very close to the same height by age and Kaitlyn is consistently about an inch shorter.
Pictures:
12 November 2017
October 15-November 12
A month of information and activities in no particular order:
Orchestra happened. Possibly twice. I had a week of rehearsals in October and then Bryan's mom watched the girls and Sarah watched Matthias during a Friday morning concert. I hurried down to Sidney to grab the girls before dance class, but they ended up missing class anyway because Olivia was sick (we found out at her yearly checkup that she had strep throat but it just wasn't bothering her). I had another concert that Saturday evening. Our theme was space and we played two contemporary pieces in addition to Holst's The Planets. One of the new pieces was written by our conductor and it was... an adventure. He described it as "chaos written down," which was quite accurate. Then at the beginning of November I had a week of rehearsal and another concert. I was quite relieved to see that the music featured in this concert was by a bunch of old dead composers. Hooray for Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart.
Orchestra happened. Possibly twice. I had a week of rehearsals in October and then Bryan's mom watched the girls and Sarah watched Matthias during a Friday morning concert. I hurried down to Sidney to grab the girls before dance class, but they ended up missing class anyway because Olivia was sick (we found out at her yearly checkup that she had strep throat but it just wasn't bothering her). I had another concert that Saturday evening. Our theme was space and we played two contemporary pieces in addition to Holst's The Planets. One of the new pieces was written by our conductor and it was... an adventure. He described it as "chaos written down," which was quite accurate. Then at the beginning of November I had a week of rehearsal and another concert. I was quite relieved to see that the music featured in this concert was by a bunch of old dead composers. Hooray for Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart.
Some Disney princesses came to the zoo in mid-October, so we all went as a family to see them. The girls wore dress-up dresses, but the day was quite toasty so Kaitlyn and Olivia ended up taking them off. Gretchen resisted all attempts to persuade her to lose the long sleeves. The zoo also had trick-or-treating stations, so we visited those. Very few animals were out. :( We stood in long lines for pictures with Cinderella and Moana, got candy in our buckets, and visited the fish in the aquarium.
Pinkeye went through our house. It started with Kaitlyn and then spread to Gretchen and Olivia. Bryan and I never got it, and Matthias only had it for about a day. Since his fingers aren't in his eyes much, he only needed one dose of drops to help his eyes clear up. When I took the girls in to get a prescription, Olivia still wasn't showing any symptoms, so they said I could call when her pinkeye appeared and they'd order a prescription for me. I was back at the pharmacy within 24 hours for her drops.
Olivia and Matthias had regular check-ups, and then Gretchen and Kaitlyn got checked when they had pinkeye, so I have stats for everyone! Unfortunately, they don't seem to get heights for pinkeye visits, so I only have weights for the two middle kids. Olivia: 45 pounds, 47 inches tall. Gretchen: 39 pounds. Kaitlyn: 31 pounds. Matthias: 15.1 pounds, 25.25 inches long.
Olivia has a loose tooth. One day about a month ago she complained that her tooth was hurting when she ate. Since then she has been telling everyone that she has a tooth that is "about to fall out." To practiced teeth losers, however, it's still pretty firmly attached, so we shall see when it actually happens.
Matthias can roll from back to front. He was trying very hard to make it over on Wednesday, October 25, while the girls and I cheered for him, but never succeeded in getting his elbow out from underneath him. Then on Thursday (10-26) he figured it out, and now his favorite thing to do is roll over and then yell about how someone had the audacity to put him on his stomach. He did roll one week earlier than Kaitlyn, who rolled about 3-10 days earlier than Gretchen. He can also roll front to back, though that's a more recently developed skill that he utilizes less frequently.
Matthias is in 6-9 month clothes. He has also started to appreciate his flying saucer. He does not yet reach for toys, but he likes chewing on bibs and burp cloths and he catches his own hands frequently. He is quite upset that someone keeps sticking thumbs in his mouth (spoiler: they're Matthias's thumbs) and he also panics at night when hands come bursting out of his swaddle sack to attack his face (another spoiler: they're Matthias's hands).
Olivia has started working on spelling. She now has five regular subjects that we work on: Math, Phonics, Handwriting, Reading, and Spelling. Some progress faster than others.
We had a discussion in the car recently about the timelessness of God. Olivia wanted to know if we are in heaven before we are born as babies. I don't know about all the theology of that, but if God works outside of time and we are in heaven after we die I don't see why we couldn't also be there before we're born. In a "time means nothing to God" kind of way. We also talked about how in heaven we will be able to see and hear Jesus, but on earth he is invisible even though he's always with everyone. Kids have a much easier time accepting all of this than adults because their brains don't have trouble with reconciling the concept of God being omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and outside of time with human limitations like time and location. They just accept that some "people" (God) can do that.
We took a vacation to Castaway Bay with Bryan's family. The girls had a great time splashing in the water. Olivia and Gretchen took a tour of some bigger water attractions, but returned to the toddler pool to play. Kaitlyn happily got as wet as she was allowed. There was an arcade there, as well, which was exciting, and a kid's club where they decorated cookies and watched a movie.
Halloween happened. We dressed up. Olivia wanted to be a unicorn and Gretchen was a dragon. Normally I like to make things for them, but I just don't care about Halloween that much. The supplies for costumes would have cost almost as much as fully assembled store costumes, so we just bought costumes. They were cute. Kaitlyn wore our standard two-year-old girl costume, which is a witch. She had a grand time being a "good little witch," a concept from her current favorite Sofia the First episode. Unlike Olivia and Gretchen before her, Kaitlyn found the broom both exciting and necessary. Matthias was a lion -- the first male to wear our male lion costume. :)
I've been visiting the chiropractor quite regularly in an attempt to fix my lower back. He has me walk on a treadmill using a spinal remodeling brace, which I think is great because I get a walk in AND I can read at the same time. I have some stretches I've been doing, too. I think the biggest benefit so far is that I'm more aware of my posture. I think my standing posture is improving (although it is hurt by the fact that I still carry Matthias around and I lean my hips forward and my shoulders back to do that), but my sitting posture needs a lot of work still.
I discovered that the new(ish) next door neighbors have a teenaged daughter, so I asked her to come over some afternoons to watch the kids. Sierrah now visits 1-2 times a week and keeps everyone happy for an hour while I sew and/or practice viola.
Grandpa Aufdemberge died early on Tuesday, November 7. It was both sudden and not sudden, and the weekend before was filled with phone calls and prayers and a lot of waiting for news. I tried to explain to the girls what happened, but their concept of death is a bit fuzzy (see the God discussions above). Since I don't see Grandpa that often, it hasn't really hit me yet, but I imagine the funeral will be a rather wet, emotional affair. Matthias and I will be flying out in a week.
Pictures:
27 August 2017
August 13-27
I got tired of putting off my last post, so when I finished it on Monday I backdated it to Sunday. If you're someone who only checks on Sundays, go look for it. :)
Mom, Dad, and James were here for several days during all the craziness. I didn't really note that in my last post. We mostly just enjoyed spending time together.
Mom and I painted a tree on the wall. I've had an idea for a thankful tree since last November, but never screwed up enough courage to actually put paint on my wall. With mom around for moral support, I decided the tree was going to happen! We picked a general design, decided not to sketch it out first, and she called encouragement from the other room as I took a deep breath and made the first brush strokes of a trunk. Once the trunk was done, she came in to help with branches. We think it turned out quite well. :) The idea is that everyone writes things they are thankful for on construction paper cutouts and uses sticky tac to affix them to the tree. I have dies in the shape of leaves, flowers, butterflies, and snowflakes, so we can change the tree with the seasons.
Matthias had his one month appointment on August 15. He is 11 pounds, 13 ounces, and 23 inches long. The pediatrician also noticed a tight muscle in the left side of his neck, probably caused by being wedged in one position during the last month or so of the pregnancy due to his size. It's not overly severe, but it does cause him to favor looking left (something I had noticed). We've been told to stretch and massage it in an effort to help loosen that muscle so that his head doesn't flatten.
Kaitlyn says "pick my up" instead of "pick me up." That in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy, but as a result she also uses "pick my down" to be put down. :)
Kaitlyn words: Pack-CAT = backpack
A story that got left out of lastweek's month's post:
Justine and I were downstairs in the basement looking at tubs of clothes and toys. The big kids were playing, the babies were napping, and there were adults scattered throughout the house. When we came upstairs, Jacque met us at the door holding Matthias. Kaitlyn pushed her way outside and Jacque said, "Do you want to tell Mommy what you did?" Kaitlyn looked at me proudly. "I give Matthias a Aunt Jacque!" Apparently Kaitlyn had gone into Matthias's room and came out carrying him by the back of his clothes. Arms in front of her, she staggered out with the neck and bottom of his sleeper clenched in her fists. Jacque leapt to the rescue and saved him from being dropped on his face. As I resignedly removed the bassinet attachment from his pack and play, Jacque wondered if Matthias's neck would be okay. Mom and I reassured her that since he was face down his neck would be fine. Mom tried to figure out how Katilyn managed to get him face down since he sleeps on his back. I was able to help shed some light on the mystery: Kaitlyn can't actually reach into the center of the pack and play bassinet. She climbs partway up the side of the mesh, braces herself with her armpits, and then she can reach far enough to roll Matthias toward the side. Once she had rolled him, I assume she climbed down, reached inside, and used her tremendous wrist strength (?!) to lift him over the side. Needless to say, the bassinet has been relegated to the basement. Now the worst Kaitlyn can do is climb into the pack and play, land on top of Matthias, chuck him over the side, and then climb out, landing on him again. That's an improvement, right?
We watched the eclipse on Monday. The girls did not know it was coming until five minutes before I put the live feed on the television. We had a different live stream on the computer, just in case. :) I gave a brief explanation and then we watched. Lima was expecting 85% totality, which in reality just looks like an overcast day but with defined shadows. Just before the peak of the eclipse, it became an actual overcast day with rain, so we got to experience darkness anyway. :-P We did manage to make it outside with a pinhole projector before the clouds rolled in, but I don't think the girls really understood what was happening. I thought it was cool. For the next eclipse I need to have them use a pinhole projector on the uneclipsed sun first so that they know what normal looks like.
We saw a dragon at Lowe's. I was on a quest to get a piece of plexiglass cut to fit in our little IKEA bin table. With the plexiglass and a string of stick on LED lights, it can be a light table as well as a regular table! But I digress. Lowe's has realized that Halloween is a mere two months (and one week) away, so they have their giant blow-up decorations prominently displayed. I confess, however, that I would not have noticed the dragon, or perhaps any of the decorations, had all three girls not started pointing and jabbering about a dragon. (Side note: In my defense, the dragon itself was suspended from the ceiling, but still... I wonder how much else I walk by without noticing each day.) I looked up and, lo and behold, a 9-foot black dragon with moving wings, glowing eyes, and pretend fire coming out of his mouth was looming over us. Such excitement has not been seen at Lowe's since the day Olivia discovered the chandelier section. We took care of the plexiglass and then headed back to the entrance to admire decorations for a minute or twenty. They also had a pirate ship, a monster with spinning eyes, some fancy lights, pumpkins, skeletons, and two spooky trees. I eventually called a halt to the decoration admiration and we bid a sad farewell to the dragon.
Kaitlyn knows some of her colors. Blue, red, white, and orange are solid. Green, yellow, and purple less so. She has also conquered screw on tops, as is evidenced in one of the below pictures. This is not new, I just haven't ever remembered to mention it.
Matthias is doing things! Well, only kind of. He occasionally makes a sound that is not one of distress, which is quite exciting. Of more note, at least as far as his mother is concerned, he's sleeping fantastically. He's been getting at least eight hours each night for two weeks now and as of this writing had four nights in a row where he went to bed between 8 and 9 and didn't get up until 7:30. This boy knows how to win friends and influence mothers.
Pictures:
Mom, Dad, and James were here for several days during all the craziness. I didn't really note that in my last post. We mostly just enjoyed spending time together.
Mom and I painted a tree on the wall. I've had an idea for a thankful tree since last November, but never screwed up enough courage to actually put paint on my wall. With mom around for moral support, I decided the tree was going to happen! We picked a general design, decided not to sketch it out first, and she called encouragement from the other room as I took a deep breath and made the first brush strokes of a trunk. Once the trunk was done, she came in to help with branches. We think it turned out quite well. :) The idea is that everyone writes things they are thankful for on construction paper cutouts and uses sticky tac to affix them to the tree. I have dies in the shape of leaves, flowers, butterflies, and snowflakes, so we can change the tree with the seasons.
Matthias had his one month appointment on August 15. He is 11 pounds, 13 ounces, and 23 inches long. The pediatrician also noticed a tight muscle in the left side of his neck, probably caused by being wedged in one position during the last month or so of the pregnancy due to his size. It's not overly severe, but it does cause him to favor looking left (something I had noticed). We've been told to stretch and massage it in an effort to help loosen that muscle so that his head doesn't flatten.
Kaitlyn says "pick my up" instead of "pick me up." That in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy, but as a result she also uses "pick my down" to be put down. :)
Kaitlyn words: Pack-CAT = backpack
A story that got left out of last
Justine and I were downstairs in the basement looking at tubs of clothes and toys. The big kids were playing, the babies were napping, and there were adults scattered throughout the house. When we came upstairs, Jacque met us at the door holding Matthias. Kaitlyn pushed her way outside and Jacque said, "Do you want to tell Mommy what you did?" Kaitlyn looked at me proudly. "I give Matthias a Aunt Jacque!" Apparently Kaitlyn had gone into Matthias's room and came out carrying him by the back of his clothes. Arms in front of her, she staggered out with the neck and bottom of his sleeper clenched in her fists. Jacque leapt to the rescue and saved him from being dropped on his face. As I resignedly removed the bassinet attachment from his pack and play, Jacque wondered if Matthias's neck would be okay. Mom and I reassured her that since he was face down his neck would be fine. Mom tried to figure out how Katilyn managed to get him face down since he sleeps on his back. I was able to help shed some light on the mystery: Kaitlyn can't actually reach into the center of the pack and play bassinet. She climbs partway up the side of the mesh, braces herself with her armpits, and then she can reach far enough to roll Matthias toward the side. Once she had rolled him, I assume she climbed down, reached inside, and used her tremendous wrist strength (?!) to lift him over the side. Needless to say, the bassinet has been relegated to the basement. Now the worst Kaitlyn can do is climb into the pack and play, land on top of Matthias, chuck him over the side, and then climb out, landing on him again. That's an improvement, right?
We watched the eclipse on Monday. The girls did not know it was coming until five minutes before I put the live feed on the television. We had a different live stream on the computer, just in case. :) I gave a brief explanation and then we watched. Lima was expecting 85% totality, which in reality just looks like an overcast day but with defined shadows. Just before the peak of the eclipse, it became an actual overcast day with rain, so we got to experience darkness anyway. :-P We did manage to make it outside with a pinhole projector before the clouds rolled in, but I don't think the girls really understood what was happening. I thought it was cool. For the next eclipse I need to have them use a pinhole projector on the uneclipsed sun first so that they know what normal looks like.
We saw a dragon at Lowe's. I was on a quest to get a piece of plexiglass cut to fit in our little IKEA bin table. With the plexiglass and a string of stick on LED lights, it can be a light table as well as a regular table! But I digress. Lowe's has realized that Halloween is a mere two months (and one week) away, so they have their giant blow-up decorations prominently displayed. I confess, however, that I would not have noticed the dragon, or perhaps any of the decorations, had all three girls not started pointing and jabbering about a dragon. (Side note: In my defense, the dragon itself was suspended from the ceiling, but still... I wonder how much else I walk by without noticing each day.) I looked up and, lo and behold, a 9-foot black dragon with moving wings, glowing eyes, and pretend fire coming out of his mouth was looming over us. Such excitement has not been seen at Lowe's since the day Olivia discovered the chandelier section. We took care of the plexiglass and then headed back to the entrance to admire decorations for a minute or twenty. They also had a pirate ship, a monster with spinning eyes, some fancy lights, pumpkins, skeletons, and two spooky trees. I eventually called a halt to the decoration admiration and we bid a sad farewell to the dragon.
Kaitlyn knows some of her colors. Blue, red, white, and orange are solid. Green, yellow, and purple less so. She has also conquered screw on tops, as is evidenced in one of the below pictures. This is not new, I just haven't ever remembered to mention it.
Matthias is doing things! Well, only kind of. He occasionally makes a sound that is not one of distress, which is quite exciting. Of more note, at least as far as his mother is concerned, he's sleeping fantastically. He's been getting at least eight hours each night for two weeks now and as of this writing had four nights in a row where he went to bed between 8 and 9 and didn't get up until 7:30. This boy knows how to win friends and influence mothers.
Pictures:
13 August 2017
July 16-August 13
A lot has happened since my last post. Here is the overview, in no particular order.
The Matthias post is up. It's dated July 11, so you might have to scroll a bit to find it unless you use the link.
Gretchen does not accept "hmm" as a response. If she says "Mommy," she requires art the very least a "What?" in response, and prefers a complete "What do you need, Gretchen?"
Matthias had an appointment on July 20. He's back up past his birth weight, coming in at 9 pounds and 7.5 ounces. He also got a little longer, measuring 21.5 inches. Everything else looked good, and the doctor was very excited that the girls have a brother.
Kaitlyn is suddenly terrified of the chickens that live nearby. She used to love watching them, but then one day she came running around the corner of the garage, a look of terror on her face, shouting about how the chickens were going to get her. Ever since then she has been worried about the chickens chasing her, even when there are no chickens visible.
A common phrase out of Kaitlyn's mouth these days is "I can't do it, I too little." She also likes to yell, "No! Don't ever, ever tell me!" I guess those are better than her phrase of choice a few weeks ago, which was "No, Mommy, I won't do it."
We went to camp during the last week of July. Since it was placed conveniently close to us, we drove in each day rather than staying in the cabins. The plan was to put the kids down to sleep in the Bossard cabin and then transfer them at night. After the first night when the girls and their cousins kept each other awake way too late, Bryan decided it would be a better plan to employ his mother as a babysitter. Each day when the girls got crabby (usually around naptime), Bryan would pack them up and drive them to his parents' house, coming back in time for dinner. We were then able to enjoy games and conversations with all the relatives unencumbered by whiny children. Instead of heading north to our own house to sleep, we went south. It worked so well that Bryan wants to know how often we can host camp and put it near our house without arousing suspicions.
Matthias and Dorothea were baptized on Saturday, July 29. Dad did the baptizing at St. Stephen during a baptismal liturgy. Everything went well. My favorite part was during the actual dunking of the babies: Matthias was first and was calm while we unwrapped him from his blanket and took off his diaper. When the water splashed on his head, he started crying. Dorothea must have been paying attention, because she started crying as soon as her blanket was removed. It's like she knew that she would be suffering the same fate as her cousin. :) We had about 80 people come over to our house afterwards. There was sufficient food (a minor concern, since Bryan didn't believe us when we told him how much to buy the day before; we sent him back for more). People visited through the afternoon, and most were gone by dinnertime. My family stayed around for a few more days, trickling away over the next week.
The day after the baptisms was the parish feast day and picnic. It also happened to be Fr. Mark's last day, so everything was a bit crazier than usual. We brought camp and baptism leftovers to contribute to the potluck, and several of my siblings purchased things in the auction. Olivia also bought something, snagging a pretend pizza kit (with much prodding by Bryan, who made her do all her own bidding).
We have a dining room now. Carroll made us a new table, having it ready for our influx of people just before camp. We asked for it to comfortably seat 4 on the long sides and 2 on the short ones. It is wonderfully spacious and has plenty of room for serving dishes in the middle of the table. Bryan and I went out an bought a light to put in our new dining room. Luckily, all the wiring was already done. He hung it up in the middle of the room on Monday, mom and I rearranged the furniture that evening, and then the night before the baptism he used the chain to secure the light to a hook over the center of the dining room table. It looks quite nice, and I enjoy having a more open space in front of the back door. This past week I was able to fill in the cracks and knots with wood filler (to keep crumbs out), and we plan to add a few layers of semi-gloss (on top of the already existing satin finish) now that the wood filler is done. The next dining room related project is to get chairs and benches since we sent our old ones to join the old table at the Bossard house.
Olivia had a birthday on August 3. She's six now, and seems very old. As is the custom in my family, she received a watch for her sixth birthday. Pink with princesses, the watch is an exciting accessory above and beyond its ability to tell time. She is also interested in the time telling capabilities. She is also the proud owner of several new books, some of which she can halfway read herself.
Our dishwasher decided to stop cleaning dishes right before camp. After things calmed down a bit, we thought about buying a new one, but decided to see if we could fix it first. I used some lime away, baking soda, good detergent (rather than store brand), and several empty washes to bandage up our dishwasher enough that it cleans adequately if it is not loaded too full. We're hoping it will limp along for a few more months before it finally quits on us.
Our van has been leaking power steering fluid and (we suspected) coolant. I was able to take it in to the shop last Thursday and all of its leaks have been stopped. It is much more pleasant to drive now, and we're glad to not have to worry about the engine smoking anymore.
Poor Kaitlyn is more mosquito bite than little girl. Part of her problem is that she likes to be in the baby swing outside. She climbs in and closes the tray and then can't get out. A few times I've found her napping in there, a veritable mosquito buffet.
Pictures:
The Matthias post is up. It's dated July 11, so you might have to scroll a bit to find it unless you use the link.
Gretchen does not accept "hmm" as a response. If she says "Mommy," she requires art the very least a "What?" in response, and prefers a complete "What do you need, Gretchen?"
Matthias had an appointment on July 20. He's back up past his birth weight, coming in at 9 pounds and 7.5 ounces. He also got a little longer, measuring 21.5 inches. Everything else looked good, and the doctor was very excited that the girls have a brother.
Kaitlyn is suddenly terrified of the chickens that live nearby. She used to love watching them, but then one day she came running around the corner of the garage, a look of terror on her face, shouting about how the chickens were going to get her. Ever since then she has been worried about the chickens chasing her, even when there are no chickens visible.
A common phrase out of Kaitlyn's mouth these days is "I can't do it, I too little." She also likes to yell, "No! Don't ever, ever tell me!" I guess those are better than her phrase of choice a few weeks ago, which was "No, Mommy, I won't do it."
We went to camp during the last week of July. Since it was placed conveniently close to us, we drove in each day rather than staying in the cabins. The plan was to put the kids down to sleep in the Bossard cabin and then transfer them at night. After the first night when the girls and their cousins kept each other awake way too late, Bryan decided it would be a better plan to employ his mother as a babysitter. Each day when the girls got crabby (usually around naptime), Bryan would pack them up and drive them to his parents' house, coming back in time for dinner. We were then able to enjoy games and conversations with all the relatives unencumbered by whiny children. Instead of heading north to our own house to sleep, we went south. It worked so well that Bryan wants to know how often we can host camp and put it near our house without arousing suspicions.
Matthias and Dorothea were baptized on Saturday, July 29. Dad did the baptizing at St. Stephen during a baptismal liturgy. Everything went well. My favorite part was during the actual dunking of the babies: Matthias was first and was calm while we unwrapped him from his blanket and took off his diaper. When the water splashed on his head, he started crying. Dorothea must have been paying attention, because she started crying as soon as her blanket was removed. It's like she knew that she would be suffering the same fate as her cousin. :) We had about 80 people come over to our house afterwards. There was sufficient food (a minor concern, since Bryan didn't believe us when we told him how much to buy the day before; we sent him back for more). People visited through the afternoon, and most were gone by dinnertime. My family stayed around for a few more days, trickling away over the next week.
The day after the baptisms was the parish feast day and picnic. It also happened to be Fr. Mark's last day, so everything was a bit crazier than usual. We brought camp and baptism leftovers to contribute to the potluck, and several of my siblings purchased things in the auction. Olivia also bought something, snagging a pretend pizza kit (with much prodding by Bryan, who made her do all her own bidding).
We have a dining room now. Carroll made us a new table, having it ready for our influx of people just before camp. We asked for it to comfortably seat 4 on the long sides and 2 on the short ones. It is wonderfully spacious and has plenty of room for serving dishes in the middle of the table. Bryan and I went out an bought a light to put in our new dining room. Luckily, all the wiring was already done. He hung it up in the middle of the room on Monday, mom and I rearranged the furniture that evening, and then the night before the baptism he used the chain to secure the light to a hook over the center of the dining room table. It looks quite nice, and I enjoy having a more open space in front of the back door. This past week I was able to fill in the cracks and knots with wood filler (to keep crumbs out), and we plan to add a few layers of semi-gloss (on top of the already existing satin finish) now that the wood filler is done. The next dining room related project is to get chairs and benches since we sent our old ones to join the old table at the Bossard house.
Olivia had a birthday on August 3. She's six now, and seems very old. As is the custom in my family, she received a watch for her sixth birthday. Pink with princesses, the watch is an exciting accessory above and beyond its ability to tell time. She is also interested in the time telling capabilities. She is also the proud owner of several new books, some of which she can halfway read herself.
Our dishwasher decided to stop cleaning dishes right before camp. After things calmed down a bit, we thought about buying a new one, but decided to see if we could fix it first. I used some lime away, baking soda, good detergent (rather than store brand), and several empty washes to bandage up our dishwasher enough that it cleans adequately if it is not loaded too full. We're hoping it will limp along for a few more months before it finally quits on us.
Our van has been leaking power steering fluid and (we suspected) coolant. I was able to take it in to the shop last Thursday and all of its leaks have been stopped. It is much more pleasant to drive now, and we're glad to not have to worry about the engine smoking anymore.
Poor Kaitlyn is more mosquito bite than little girl. Part of her problem is that she likes to be in the baby swing outside. She climbs in and closes the tray and then can't get out. A few times I've found her napping in there, a veritable mosquito buffet.
Pictures:
04 June 2017
May 14-June 4
A checkup was had. Gretchen is 38 pounds and 40.75 inches. Kaitlyn is 29.2 pounds and 34.5 inches. Both are looking a little bit tall for about half the dresses they picked out during our basement shopping expedition, so I had to go downstairs and swap some out.
Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels. She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels). Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference! In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.
Gretchen wants to learn to read. She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play. Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition. She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters. :-P
Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy. She's actually not too bad. Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!" It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she." I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller. Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!" Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it. Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina. Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah." She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn." Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."
Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids. Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently). Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available. Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.
The garden is fully planted. We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do. I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon. Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out. He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.
Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future. Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update. :)
Pictures and Videos:
Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels. She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels). Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference! In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.
Gretchen wants to learn to read. She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play. Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition. She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters. :-P
Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy. She's actually not too bad. Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!" It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she." I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller. Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!" Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it. Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina. Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah." She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn." Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."
Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids. Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently). Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available. Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.
The garden is fully planted. We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do. I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon. Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out. He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.
Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future. Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update. :)
Pictures and Videos:
22 May 2016
May 8-22
It seems I have a lot of Gretchen updates this week. They will make up for the fact that I generally have little to report about our poor, neglected middle child. To begin, she had a checkup recently so I know that she weighs 34 pounds and is 38 inches tall. She was willing to follow all the doctor's directions and was relieved to learn that she would not be receiving a shot.
You know the part in The Little Mermaid where Ariel has to sing for Ursula as she trades her voice for legs? Somehow that scene made such a big impression that the "wah wah wah" song is now background music for every change that Gretchen's dolls make. Anna turns into Elsa, Sofia becomes a mermaid, Rapunzel changes her clothes... Gretchen holds the character up in the air and sings "wah wah wah, wah wah wah, wah wah wah, wah wah wah..." Judging from the amount of time she spends singing, we've decided that some changes are more difficult than others. Gretchen's sense of pitch isn't particularly well developed yet, so the resulting incantation is quite exciting. She does let her pitch rise somewhat incrementally, but when she hits the top of her range she just continuessinging yelling a monotone "wah wah wah."
Gretchen cannot stand still. She is constantly fidgeting, even walking in large circles around the living room while she and Olivia discuss who is going to play which part in their games. She does moderately better at sitting still, but even then is prone to constant readjustments.
Gretchen has a method for choosing things: When asked to make a choice, she says, "um, whichever one I touch." Then she wobbles back and forth between her decisions saying, "I touch... I touch..." before finally picking something.
"Powers" are a physically visible thing in our house. This is a result of two barbies that we have who came with accessories meant to represent their superpowers. Elsa has an ice clump that shoots from her hand and a superhero has a splash of purple magic. Now when Olivia and Gretchen play, they say things like "I take my powers off. I give my powers to you."
Kaitlyn has a few things she says, but the most common ones recently are "no", "stop it", and "don't do that". The last one is admittedly a stretch, but that's what her babbling sounds like and the meaning is clear. This must be what it's like to grow up with two older sisters. Sorry, Jacque. :)
The biggest house news this week is our new driveway. We had a company come out and cover our loose stones with asphalt. Our driveway is now wonderfully paved and smooth so that the girls can ride bikes and cars won't get stuck in the winter.
My snapkins got mentioned in an online article recently, which was pretty exciting.
This weekend we are in Michigan to attend Jillian's graduation and visit with family.
Pictures and Videos
You know the part in The Little Mermaid where Ariel has to sing for Ursula as she trades her voice for legs? Somehow that scene made such a big impression that the "wah wah wah" song is now background music for every change that Gretchen's dolls make. Anna turns into Elsa, Sofia becomes a mermaid, Rapunzel changes her clothes... Gretchen holds the character up in the air and sings "wah wah wah, wah wah wah, wah wah wah, wah wah wah..." Judging from the amount of time she spends singing, we've decided that some changes are more difficult than others. Gretchen's sense of pitch isn't particularly well developed yet, so the resulting incantation is quite exciting. She does let her pitch rise somewhat incrementally, but when she hits the top of her range she just continues
Gretchen cannot stand still. She is constantly fidgeting, even walking in large circles around the living room while she and Olivia discuss who is going to play which part in their games. She does moderately better at sitting still, but even then is prone to constant readjustments.
Gretchen has a method for choosing things: When asked to make a choice, she says, "um, whichever one I touch." Then she wobbles back and forth between her decisions saying, "I touch... I touch..." before finally picking something.
"Powers" are a physically visible thing in our house. This is a result of two barbies that we have who came with accessories meant to represent their superpowers. Elsa has an ice clump that shoots from her hand and a superhero has a splash of purple magic. Now when Olivia and Gretchen play, they say things like "I take my powers off. I give my powers to you."
Kaitlyn has a few things she says, but the most common ones recently are "no", "stop it", and "don't do that". The last one is admittedly a stretch, but that's what her babbling sounds like and the meaning is clear. This must be what it's like to grow up with two older sisters. Sorry, Jacque. :)
The biggest house news this week is our new driveway. We had a company come out and cover our loose stones with asphalt. Our driveway is now wonderfully paved and smooth so that the girls can ride bikes and cars won't get stuck in the winter.
My snapkins got mentioned in an online article recently, which was pretty exciting.
This weekend we are in Michigan to attend Jillian's graduation and visit with family.
Pictures and Videos
10 April 2016
April 3-10
Kaitlyn's one-year check up was Tuesday. She's 21 pounds, 10 ounces, and 29.75 inches tall. The doctor speculated that perhaps Kaitlyn had been wiggling during the length measurement since her weight has been holding steady at 75% but her height has been swinging from 60%-80%. Otherwise all is normal. :) Kaitlyn is the exact same size as Olivia at the same age (if we give her a quarter inch of wiggle room). Gretchen was a tad thinner.
Olivia and Gretchen both walked late (14 months), but once they started taking steps they were walking and didn't really go back to crawling. Kaitlyn takes a few steps here and there every day, but has decided that crawling is faster and safer most of the time.
Kaitlyn has a fake "everyone else is laughing so I should, too" laugh. I believe the video was in last week's post.
For everyone hoping for the baby news they know is coming at any moment... there isn't any. :-D
When Kaitlyn gives hugs, she pats the huggee's back (or, more accurately, shoulder). It's pretty cute, and when she started doing it I remembered that Gretchen used to do the same thing. It was cute then, too.
All three girls lean in for forehead kisses. If I say, "give me a kiss," they'll run their foreheads into my mouth. Olivia still does that even now. Gretchen is the least likely to do it, opting instead for a real kiss, but I know she used to do it. Kaitlyn will sometimes lean in so forcefully that she's in danger of chipping teeth (mine, not hers).
Kaitlyn is ... wait for it ... sleeping in her crib! In her room! With her sisters! This development comes after three months of sleeping in a pack and play in the oratory that is connected to our room. She also spent about a week sleeping in the pack and play in the old workroom, during which time she also finally conquered sleeping all the way through the night! There's a very happy mama over here. No regressing now, Kaitlyn.
Gretchen "reads" several books. We have 24 books that come with an electronic reader that reads them aloud. It's pretty much the 2016 equivalent of books on tape. Olivia and Gretchen love all the books and read them to themselves before bed almost every night. Both of them quote large portions of the books throughout the day, but Gretchen took it a step further by "reading" the Cinderella book that she got from the library. Note that the book from the library is about 50 times longer than the one with the reader.
Most people needing to go to the bathroom will simply excuse themselves, walk to the bathroom, and take care of their business. Not Gretchen. When Gretchen needs to go to the bathroom, she immediately runs to tell me (despite the fact that she was playing less than five feet from her bathroom, the one with a step and potty seat already set up). Then she runs in increasingly frantic circles around the house -- to the bathroom, to me, to the living room for no apparent reason, to me, to the bathroom, through the playroom, back to the living room, to me, to the bathroom, into the playroom again -- until I either physically put her on the potty or she pees on the floor. "Well Johannah," I hear you saying, "just take her to the bathroom when she first tells you and the problem would be solved." That would be a fantastic idea, except that she tells me when I'm nursing Kaitlyn, or trying not to burn dinner, or changing a diaper. This in addition to the fact that she doesn't actually NEED my help. Most of the time she doesn't even want me to help her, she just wants someone to watch while she does it herself. Also, I'm trying to encourage her to take care of things herself. Because she CAN. She's doing better lately, for which I am grateful.
The end of last week was spent at a homeschooling conference. We haven't decided one way or the other about homeschooling vs regular schooling, so Bryan and I are both trying to be open minded. I'm heavily in favor of homeschooling, he's more interested in a traditional school experience. Regardless, this conference has many different kinds of talks and we went with friends (and without children), so it was fun. We learned a lot about various things and Bryan said he'd even go back again, especially if I let him walk across the street to get a beer when he needs a break to think about things. :)
Pictures:
Olivia and Gretchen both walked late (14 months), but once they started taking steps they were walking and didn't really go back to crawling. Kaitlyn takes a few steps here and there every day, but has decided that crawling is faster and safer most of the time.
Kaitlyn has a fake "everyone else is laughing so I should, too" laugh. I believe the video was in last week's post.
For everyone hoping for the baby news they know is coming at any moment... there isn't any. :-D
When Kaitlyn gives hugs, she pats the huggee's back (or, more accurately, shoulder). It's pretty cute, and when she started doing it I remembered that Gretchen used to do the same thing. It was cute then, too.
All three girls lean in for forehead kisses. If I say, "give me a kiss," they'll run their foreheads into my mouth. Olivia still does that even now. Gretchen is the least likely to do it, opting instead for a real kiss, but I know she used to do it. Kaitlyn will sometimes lean in so forcefully that she's in danger of chipping teeth (mine, not hers).
Kaitlyn is ... wait for it ... sleeping in her crib! In her room! With her sisters! This development comes after three months of sleeping in a pack and play in the oratory that is connected to our room. She also spent about a week sleeping in the pack and play in the old workroom, during which time she also finally conquered sleeping all the way through the night! There's a very happy mama over here. No regressing now, Kaitlyn.
Gretchen "reads" several books. We have 24 books that come with an electronic reader that reads them aloud. It's pretty much the 2016 equivalent of books on tape. Olivia and Gretchen love all the books and read them to themselves before bed almost every night. Both of them quote large portions of the books throughout the day, but Gretchen took it a step further by "reading" the Cinderella book that she got from the library. Note that the book from the library is about 50 times longer than the one with the reader.
Most people needing to go to the bathroom will simply excuse themselves, walk to the bathroom, and take care of their business. Not Gretchen. When Gretchen needs to go to the bathroom, she immediately runs to tell me (despite the fact that she was playing less than five feet from her bathroom, the one with a step and potty seat already set up). Then she runs in increasingly frantic circles around the house -- to the bathroom, to me, to the living room for no apparent reason, to me, to the bathroom, through the playroom, back to the living room, to me, to the bathroom, into the playroom again -- until I either physically put her on the potty or she pees on the floor. "Well Johannah," I hear you saying, "just take her to the bathroom when she first tells you and the problem would be solved." That would be a fantastic idea, except that she tells me when I'm nursing Kaitlyn, or trying not to burn dinner, or changing a diaper. This in addition to the fact that she doesn't actually NEED my help. Most of the time she doesn't even want me to help her, she just wants someone to watch while she does it herself. Also, I'm trying to encourage her to take care of things herself. Because she CAN. She's doing better lately, for which I am grateful.
The end of last week was spent at a homeschooling conference. We haven't decided one way or the other about homeschooling vs regular schooling, so Bryan and I are both trying to be open minded. I'm heavily in favor of homeschooling, he's more interested in a traditional school experience. Regardless, this conference has many different kinds of talks and we went with friends (and without children), so it was fun. We learned a lot about various things and Bryan said he'd even go back again, especially if I let him walk across the street to get a beer when he needs a break to think about things. :)
Pictures:
22 November 2015
November 15-22
This post is already late and I'm writing it on my phone, which is an obnoxiously slow process, so it's going to be brief.
Kaitlyn has a couple of new teeth. One top tooth poked through early last week and the other followed quickly. She's up to four now.
Gretchen loves to copy everything Olivia says and does. I find myself regularly testing to see if our house actually has a previously unnoticed echo, but always come to the conclusion that the only echo we have sounds suspiciously like Olivia's every word proceeding forth from Gretchen's mouth.
Olivia had a check up on Tuesday. She weighs 40.4 pounds and is 42 inches tall. Stubbornly shy as always, she refused to show the doctor any tricks (walking on her tip toes, hopping on one foot, etc), even when asked. She WAS the cutest little picture of bravery as she went with barely concealed trepidation into the hallway (alone with the nurse) to be weighed and measured.
After two days of driving, we are now spending the week in Florida with my grandparents and my dad's whole family. Next week's post may also be late due to traveling back north to face the cold once more.
One Video:
Kaitlyn has a couple of new teeth. One top tooth poked through early last week and the other followed quickly. She's up to four now.
Gretchen loves to copy everything Olivia says and does. I find myself regularly testing to see if our house actually has a previously unnoticed echo, but always come to the conclusion that the only echo we have sounds suspiciously like Olivia's every word proceeding forth from Gretchen's mouth.
Olivia had a check up on Tuesday. She weighs 40.4 pounds and is 42 inches tall. Stubbornly shy as always, she refused to show the doctor any tricks (walking on her tip toes, hopping on one foot, etc), even when asked. She WAS the cutest little picture of bravery as she went with barely concealed trepidation into the hallway (alone with the nurse) to be weighed and measured.
After two days of driving, we are now spending the week in Florida with my grandparents and my dad's whole family. Next week's post may also be late due to traveling back north to face the cold once more.
One Video:
25 October 2015
October 11-25
Due to general busyness, I missed last week's post. Here's what happened in the last two weeks:
October 11 - Olivia and Gretchen went to see a Frozen Sing Along with Grandma. They got dressed up in Frozen dresses, shoes, and crowns, and they got to take a picture with Elsa.
October 12 - Mom brought a load of stuff down to store in the basement. She also brought Jacob and Grandma and Grandpa A. Mom had to go straight back to Michigan, but the other three stayed for dinner before abducting Jacque and taking off. It was nice to visit with them, and Olivia and Gretchen took full advantage of the extra willing readers.
October 13 - Kaitlyn had her six month check-up. She's 17 pounds, 6 ounces and 26.75 inches long. She was incredibly obliging, choosing to demonstrate most developmental traits right as the nurse was asking about each one. She got all the required shots except the flu vaccine, which isn't in currently. Olivia also got a shot (her dosage was available). We sprung this on her last minute since I didn't know it would be an issue, and she did remarkably well. She was very brave up until the point where they actually poked her. Now Olivia and Gretchen walk around the house talking about how they don't want to get poked.
October 14 - We checked out the local Classical Conversations, just to see what was going on there. I don't think I need to be a part of the group since most of the aspects that I liked I could easily recreate at home (also, it's a moot point because we're not currently planning to homeschool). I did learn more about my children, though: We dropped Gretchen off at the nursery to play, which she did happily for about 20 minutes before coming back to be with me. Olivia spent those 20 minutes telling me how she just wanted to go be with her sister. Once Gretchen rejoined us, both of them paid attention relatively well. Gretchen was more excited to do things and Olivia tagged along. By the end of the morning (it's a three hour program), they had mostly figured out how to walk in line and Olivia was asking if she could just go ahead with the other kids without me. Even after being given permission, though, she still made sure not to turn any corners until I caught up.
October 15 - I had women's group in the afternoon, so Bryan left work an hour early to watch the girls while I spent time with adults listening to podcasts and rolling buckeyes.
October 16 - Story time at the library and then off to the Weys! The older girls visited their friends while Kaitlyn and I drove to Toledo to pick up Jacque from Grandma. It was overcast the whole drive up, poured for the actual transfer of person and goods, and then cleared up for the drive home. Once home, we worked on cleaning the house and packing for a trip to Sidney. Everything got slightly less frenetic when our dinner guests had to cancel due to unreasonably bad traffic (an accident shut down 75). After dinner, we drove to Sidney to spend the night there.
October 17 - Bryan and I got up bright and early the next morning (does it still count as bright and early if the sun isn't up yet?) to drive to a conference in Indiana. We brought Kaitlyn with us, met up with some people from church, and listened to a series of talks on prayer before driving back. The older girls stayed with Grandma and Grandpa to watch movies and play with toys. Jacque had an audition (followed by a spur of the moment bonus audition) and then helped construct bunk bed hammocks for the Barbie house that Murry is building.
October 18 - In the morning we loaded up the van and drove everyone back to Lima for church. Bryan decided he wanted to have people over for dinner, so we invited the entire church over for steaks and potatoes. Jacque and I had to go to three different stores to find the steaks we wanted (did you know Aldi doesn't sell those boxed frozen steaks anymore?). Most of our dinner guests went home at about bedtime, but a few stayed to play games after the kids were in bed.
October 19 - Six women from church (including Jacque) got together to bake cookies for our upcoming cookie walk. The babysitting plan was for Josh (one of the husbands) to watch all the kids at his house for the day, but Olivia wasn't feeling well when she woke up, so the party moved to our house instead so that she could stay in bed. Jacque and I still got to go bake cookies, and we helped roll, cut, and bake 53 dozen gingerbread men, 24 dozen sugar cookies, and 15 dozen rum balls.
October 20 - The girls and I abandoned Jacque to her own devices and went to visit the Kleins. Gretchen apparently caught whatever Olivia had on Monday, because she slept the whole time. It's not unusual for her to fall asleep on the drive, but she also napped on the floor for about three hours, finally waking up in time to get about half an hour of playing in before we drove home.
October 21 - Wednesday was the first normal morning we'd had for a while, and the opportunity to get things done around the house was much appreciated. Jacque watched the kids after bedtime so that Bryan and I could go to schole ("good conversation with good friends, often over good food and drink").
October 22 - Jacque's a busy woman for being semi-employed from her sister's workroom, so we drove her to Fort Wayne to catch a bus to Chicago. We were going to head to the zoo afterwards, but it was rainy and we would have had to pay anyway (because of some special Halloween program), so I decided to take the girls somewhere else instead. We ended up at a painting place where you buy the piece and then stay and paint it. The girls seemed to enjoy it. Once they were done, we went to Culver's for a late lunch before heading home.
October 23 - By Friday I was feeling overwhelmed by everything that hadn't gotten done around the house. I also had a few orders that I needed to finish for my etsy shop. We were half planning on taking the girls to Sidney for the weekend anyway, so Bryan decided to take the afternoon off to get them out of my hair while I got work done. He left with Olivia and Gretchen right after lunch, Kaitlyn went down for a nap, and I cleaned up and finished sewing. Bryan came back sans children in time for dinner.
October 24 - It's amazing how much easier one child is when that one is your third rather than your first. Bryan and Kaitlyn and I hung out around the house and accomplished little things. After lunch we went and played a game with the Weys and then went out to dinner (using one of my coupons since I'm trying to chip away at that 30 Before 30 list). Some friends came over for nerd games in the evening and I played my first ever real dungeons and dragons.
October 25 - Today we're headed to Sidney to stay for a few days while Bryan works in Springfield. Then it's back home (with all our children) for a return to normal. :)
Pictures:
October 11 - Olivia and Gretchen went to see a Frozen Sing Along with Grandma. They got dressed up in Frozen dresses, shoes, and crowns, and they got to take a picture with Elsa.
October 12 - Mom brought a load of stuff down to store in the basement. She also brought Jacob and Grandma and Grandpa A. Mom had to go straight back to Michigan, but the other three stayed for dinner before abducting Jacque and taking off. It was nice to visit with them, and Olivia and Gretchen took full advantage of the extra willing readers.
October 13 - Kaitlyn had her six month check-up. She's 17 pounds, 6 ounces and 26.75 inches long. She was incredibly obliging, choosing to demonstrate most developmental traits right as the nurse was asking about each one. She got all the required shots except the flu vaccine, which isn't in currently. Olivia also got a shot (her dosage was available). We sprung this on her last minute since I didn't know it would be an issue, and she did remarkably well. She was very brave up until the point where they actually poked her. Now Olivia and Gretchen walk around the house talking about how they don't want to get poked.
October 14 - We checked out the local Classical Conversations, just to see what was going on there. I don't think I need to be a part of the group since most of the aspects that I liked I could easily recreate at home (also, it's a moot point because we're not currently planning to homeschool). I did learn more about my children, though: We dropped Gretchen off at the nursery to play, which she did happily for about 20 minutes before coming back to be with me. Olivia spent those 20 minutes telling me how she just wanted to go be with her sister. Once Gretchen rejoined us, both of them paid attention relatively well. Gretchen was more excited to do things and Olivia tagged along. By the end of the morning (it's a three hour program), they had mostly figured out how to walk in line and Olivia was asking if she could just go ahead with the other kids without me. Even after being given permission, though, she still made sure not to turn any corners until I caught up.
October 15 - I had women's group in the afternoon, so Bryan left work an hour early to watch the girls while I spent time with adults listening to podcasts and rolling buckeyes.
October 16 - Story time at the library and then off to the Weys! The older girls visited their friends while Kaitlyn and I drove to Toledo to pick up Jacque from Grandma. It was overcast the whole drive up, poured for the actual transfer of person and goods, and then cleared up for the drive home. Once home, we worked on cleaning the house and packing for a trip to Sidney. Everything got slightly less frenetic when our dinner guests had to cancel due to unreasonably bad traffic (an accident shut down 75). After dinner, we drove to Sidney to spend the night there.
October 17 - Bryan and I got up bright and early the next morning (does it still count as bright and early if the sun isn't up yet?) to drive to a conference in Indiana. We brought Kaitlyn with us, met up with some people from church, and listened to a series of talks on prayer before driving back. The older girls stayed with Grandma and Grandpa to watch movies and play with toys. Jacque had an audition (followed by a spur of the moment bonus audition) and then helped construct bunk bed hammocks for the Barbie house that Murry is building.
October 18 - In the morning we loaded up the van and drove everyone back to Lima for church. Bryan decided he wanted to have people over for dinner, so we invited the entire church over for steaks and potatoes. Jacque and I had to go to three different stores to find the steaks we wanted (did you know Aldi doesn't sell those boxed frozen steaks anymore?). Most of our dinner guests went home at about bedtime, but a few stayed to play games after the kids were in bed.
October 19 - Six women from church (including Jacque) got together to bake cookies for our upcoming cookie walk. The babysitting plan was for Josh (one of the husbands) to watch all the kids at his house for the day, but Olivia wasn't feeling well when she woke up, so the party moved to our house instead so that she could stay in bed. Jacque and I still got to go bake cookies, and we helped roll, cut, and bake 53 dozen gingerbread men, 24 dozen sugar cookies, and 15 dozen rum balls.
October 20 - The girls and I abandoned Jacque to her own devices and went to visit the Kleins. Gretchen apparently caught whatever Olivia had on Monday, because she slept the whole time. It's not unusual for her to fall asleep on the drive, but she also napped on the floor for about three hours, finally waking up in time to get about half an hour of playing in before we drove home.
October 21 - Wednesday was the first normal morning we'd had for a while, and the opportunity to get things done around the house was much appreciated. Jacque watched the kids after bedtime so that Bryan and I could go to schole ("good conversation with good friends, often over good food and drink").
October 22 - Jacque's a busy woman for being semi-employed from her sister's workroom, so we drove her to Fort Wayne to catch a bus to Chicago. We were going to head to the zoo afterwards, but it was rainy and we would have had to pay anyway (because of some special Halloween program), so I decided to take the girls somewhere else instead. We ended up at a painting place where you buy the piece and then stay and paint it. The girls seemed to enjoy it. Once they were done, we went to Culver's for a late lunch before heading home.
October 23 - By Friday I was feeling overwhelmed by everything that hadn't gotten done around the house. I also had a few orders that I needed to finish for my etsy shop. We were half planning on taking the girls to Sidney for the weekend anyway, so Bryan decided to take the afternoon off to get them out of my hair while I got work done. He left with Olivia and Gretchen right after lunch, Kaitlyn went down for a nap, and I cleaned up and finished sewing. Bryan came back sans children in time for dinner.
October 24 - It's amazing how much easier one child is when that one is your third rather than your first. Bryan and Kaitlyn and I hung out around the house and accomplished little things. After lunch we went and played a game with the Weys and then went out to dinner (using one of my coupons since I'm trying to chip away at that 30 Before 30 list). Some friends came over for nerd games in the evening and I played my first ever real dungeons and dragons.
October 25 - Today we're headed to Sidney to stay for a few days while Bryan works in Springfield. Then it's back home (with all our children) for a return to normal. :)
Pictures:
02 August 2015
July 26-August 2
We've given up our garbage service. (My dad is shaking his head right now.) We haven't stopped creating trash, but we definitely don't generate enough refuse to warrant paying for a weekly trash service, especially one that doesn't also do recycling. So we talked to our friends, the Weys, and asked if we could periodically use their extra trash and recycling bins (they have two of each because their house used to be a duplex) in exchange for an occasional bottle of wine.
Kaitlyn doesn't cry so much as shout. I'm not sure if this is a permanent thing or just a phase now that she's discovered her vocal cords. She does cry occasionally, but generally she just yells in short little bursts. I think I prefer the shouting, if only because it makes me laugh to hear her little voice hollering.
And speaking of Kaitlyn, she's started reaching for toys. Sometimes she tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to grab them, sometimes she just punches them to knock them over. She shows definite interest in brightly colored objects, though, so we've hauled out the box of rattles and littered them around the house in strategic locations. She's also begun to interact more with the various parts of her flying saucer, which stirs up great excitement among her sisters.
Also in Kaitlyn news, she had a check up on Tuesday. I'd feel worse about so many Kaitlyn updates, except for then I remember that this was essentially the Olivia blog for almost two years and Gretchen got her fair share of time when she was doing new stuff every week, too. Anyway. Kaitlyn is 14 pounds, 12 ounces, and 25.75 inches long Olivia was longer and heavier, Gretchen was a tiny bit longer and a tiny bit lighter. Everything looks fine, and Kaitlyn is so far ahead in the rolling game that they didn't even ask about it yet.
We have an identity problem around here. Many (all?) of our babies and dolls and Barbies have names now, but they're names of people we know. There are Kaitlyns and Rudys and Johannahs and, most confusing of all, Mommys. I never know who's talking to me and who's just having an imaginary conversation with various inanimate playthings. Add to that the fact that sometimes Olivia and Gretchen are Mommys, too, and I've just about stopped answering altogether.
I hesitate to say that Gretchen is potty trained, but she has definitely reached a point worthy of note. We began potty training in earnest last Friday and she had one accident first thing Saturday morning and then... nothing. As long as I keep her bottom bare, she does just fine. I don't worry about her being on the carpet or the couch or my lap because she hasn't failed to make it to the potty yet. I don't trust her (or the availability of bathrooms) when we're out, so she wears a diaper when we leave the house and also for naps and bed. Those are always wet when we take them off, as if she appreciates the simplicity of not having to pay attention to her bodily functions. In a similar vein, she doesn't do tremendously well in undies (she's about 50/50), mostly because she doesn't focus, I think. However, she's does fantastically if her bottom is naked. The method I used to train her is called potty training boot camp, and they say that you should keep them bottomless for three months after the first weekend, so I guess this is normal. I'm hoping to get her in undies sooner than that, but we'll have to see how it goes. At least one of the perks of dresses is that you don't have to look at the bare derriere your two year old is sporting.
Pictures and Videos:
Kaitlyn doesn't cry so much as shout. I'm not sure if this is a permanent thing or just a phase now that she's discovered her vocal cords. She does cry occasionally, but generally she just yells in short little bursts. I think I prefer the shouting, if only because it makes me laugh to hear her little voice hollering.
And speaking of Kaitlyn, she's started reaching for toys. Sometimes she tries (mostly unsuccessfully) to grab them, sometimes she just punches them to knock them over. She shows definite interest in brightly colored objects, though, so we've hauled out the box of rattles and littered them around the house in strategic locations. She's also begun to interact more with the various parts of her flying saucer, which stirs up great excitement among her sisters.
Also in Kaitlyn news, she had a check up on Tuesday. I'd feel worse about so many Kaitlyn updates, except for then I remember that this was essentially the Olivia blog for almost two years and Gretchen got her fair share of time when she was doing new stuff every week, too. Anyway. Kaitlyn is 14 pounds, 12 ounces, and 25.75 inches long Olivia was longer and heavier, Gretchen was a tiny bit longer and a tiny bit lighter. Everything looks fine, and Kaitlyn is so far ahead in the rolling game that they didn't even ask about it yet.
We have an identity problem around here. Many (all?) of our babies and dolls and Barbies have names now, but they're names of people we know. There are Kaitlyns and Rudys and Johannahs and, most confusing of all, Mommys. I never know who's talking to me and who's just having an imaginary conversation with various inanimate playthings. Add to that the fact that sometimes Olivia and Gretchen are Mommys, too, and I've just about stopped answering altogether.
I hesitate to say that Gretchen is potty trained, but she has definitely reached a point worthy of note. We began potty training in earnest last Friday and she had one accident first thing Saturday morning and then... nothing. As long as I keep her bottom bare, she does just fine. I don't worry about her being on the carpet or the couch or my lap because she hasn't failed to make it to the potty yet. I don't trust her (or the availability of bathrooms) when we're out, so she wears a diaper when we leave the house and also for naps and bed. Those are always wet when we take them off, as if she appreciates the simplicity of not having to pay attention to her bodily functions. In a similar vein, she doesn't do tremendously well in undies (she's about 50/50), mostly because she doesn't focus, I think. However, she's does fantastically if her bottom is naked. The method I used to train her is called potty training boot camp, and they say that you should keep them bottomless for three months after the first weekend, so I guess this is normal. I'm hoping to get her in undies sooner than that, but we'll have to see how it goes. At least one of the perks of dresses is that you don't have to look at the bare derriere your two year old is sporting.
Pictures and Videos:
31 May 2015
May 24-31
We traveled to Wisconsin last weekend for Kara and Jacob's wedding. After finding out that it was only a seven to eight hour drive, we decided to leave after lunch on Thursday, hoping to catch naptime. The trip went remarkably smoothly, although it predictably took us a little longer than Google's estimate. Luckily, Wisconsin is an hour behind us, so we didn't have to worry about getting up any earlier than usual the next morning. :) Our lodging was a Marriott in Madison where we got the employee rate because the manager was a member at the church we contacted looking for a place to stay. Olivia and Gretchen shared a bed and it went better than anticipated, perhaps because they were too tired to goof around by the time they made it to bed each night.
Friday was spent at Tom and Donna's house helping Justine bake desserts. Joseph kindly watched the older girls since Bryan was working in the basement. Just as I was debating putting people down for a nap, reinforcements showed up in the form of the Allen Park crew! The girls rallied and made it through until the car ride back to the hotel that night. Bridal shower, rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner all went smoothly and I am now on a quest to recreate the truffle mac and cheese that I ate for dinner. :)
Saturday was the wedding. Bryan watched the older girls and I drafted Alison to be Kaitlyn's nanny for the day while I did wedding things. Bryan and Joseph managed to get all four kids dressed and to church on time without the help of their wives; the Barhorst babies were even given baths first (we're all very impressed). Gretchen was exhausted from her travels and fell asleep about ten minutes into the ceremony. This was her second nap of the day since she also fell asleep on the morning drive. She took a third nap on the way to the reception. Olivia thought Kara might be a princess and was very excited when she got to put on her Cinderella dress (that we had grabbed at the last minute for no particular reason) to take pictures with the princess. We said our good-byes and headed back to the hotel...
Sunday was Mass and Liturgy and then more good-byes as we left my immediate family to head to lunch with an old friend. Kathleen was my roommate at summer camp for three years and happens to live in Madison, so we got together at Ella's Deli on Sunday. Olivia was impressed by the carousel as we drove in and distracted by all of the moving objects covering the walls and ceiling while we ate. Kathleen and I have more in common than we used to, if that's possible, and we happily chatted for about two hours. It's too bad that we live eight hours apart, but we did decide to try harder to keep in touch via email. :) After lunch, the Barhorst family loaded back into the van and began the long trek home. We left at three (WI time) and lost half an hour to Chicago, an hour to dinner, half an hour to Kaitlyn's ill-timed hunger, and an hour to the time change, arriving home at 1:00 Ohio time. Everyone was tired, though, so we slept in a little on Monday (though I did do a 5k fun run with some church friends -- 30.28) and spent the day recovering.
The rest of the week was fairly typical. A few highlights:
Gretchen knows her full name: Kitchen Beast Barfhorse
Kaitlyn is in a big girlbed crib. We took the little white crib to Wisconsin with us so that the Bossards could take it home to Boston. She's been doing great in her new room and the older girls are good about not bothering her.
Wednesday was Kaitlyn's two month check-up. She's 11 pounds, 9 ounces, and 23.5 inches long. Apparently her weight was 42nd percentile when she was born, 55th at her last appointment, and is now 66th percentile. She's gaining weight faster than other babies her age, I guess. She's also pretty tall (95th, I think they said), but Olivia's pediatrician told us that genetics kick in at about 9 months (which is when we saw a dramatic decrease in Olivia's height percentile!). In other words, don't get excited about a future WNBA champion over here. :-P
Olivia has "daughters." Usually they're Barbies, sometimes they're babies, and they always require a lot of care. "Uh-oh, my daughters are crying! I have to go take care of them."
Oh! I almost forgot about something that was NOT typical! On Thursday, the girls and I drove up to Toledo to meet Oma, Aunt Jacque, Aunt Justine, William, and Edward at the art museum. We wanted to see everyone one last time before they dispersed to thefour corners of the earth east coast and Toledo is nicely central-ish. The Toledo Art Museum is remarkably kid-friendly as art museums go, and their current theme is Playtime, so the kids had fun. We wandered around and then had a picnic outside before going home. It was definitely worth doing again.
Also on Thursday (I guess this week wasn't typical at all now that I'm writing it all down...), I went to a Mom's Night Out dinner with a newly created group at the local Catholic Church. I do not have six new bosom friends, but I now recognize five probable introverts and one definite extrovert when we go to church. Guess which one started the group. :-P I'll give you a hint: the other five (and yours truly) went because their husbands told them it would be good for them.
If you're wanting to take The Gretchen Quiz, this is your last chance! Answers go up on Wednesday.
Pictures:
Friday was spent at Tom and Donna's house helping Justine bake desserts. Joseph kindly watched the older girls since Bryan was working in the basement. Just as I was debating putting people down for a nap, reinforcements showed up in the form of the Allen Park crew! The girls rallied and made it through until the car ride back to the hotel that night. Bridal shower, rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner all went smoothly and I am now on a quest to recreate the truffle mac and cheese that I ate for dinner. :)
Saturday was the wedding. Bryan watched the older girls and I drafted Alison to be Kaitlyn's nanny for the day while I did wedding things. Bryan and Joseph managed to get all four kids dressed and to church on time without the help of their wives; the Barhorst babies were even given baths first (we're all very impressed). Gretchen was exhausted from her travels and fell asleep about ten minutes into the ceremony. This was her second nap of the day since she also fell asleep on the morning drive. She took a third nap on the way to the reception. Olivia thought Kara might be a princess and was very excited when she got to put on her Cinderella dress (that we had grabbed at the last minute for no particular reason) to take pictures with the princess. We said our good-byes and headed back to the hotel...
Sunday was Mass and Liturgy and then more good-byes as we left my immediate family to head to lunch with an old friend. Kathleen was my roommate at summer camp for three years and happens to live in Madison, so we got together at Ella's Deli on Sunday. Olivia was impressed by the carousel as we drove in and distracted by all of the moving objects covering the walls and ceiling while we ate. Kathleen and I have more in common than we used to, if that's possible, and we happily chatted for about two hours. It's too bad that we live eight hours apart, but we did decide to try harder to keep in touch via email. :) After lunch, the Barhorst family loaded back into the van and began the long trek home. We left at three (WI time) and lost half an hour to Chicago, an hour to dinner, half an hour to Kaitlyn's ill-timed hunger, and an hour to the time change, arriving home at 1:00 Ohio time. Everyone was tired, though, so we slept in a little on Monday (though I did do a 5k fun run with some church friends -- 30.28) and spent the day recovering.
The rest of the week was fairly typical. A few highlights:
Gretchen knows her full name: Kitchen Beast Barfhorse
Kaitlyn is in a big girl
Wednesday was Kaitlyn's two month check-up. She's 11 pounds, 9 ounces, and 23.5 inches long. Apparently her weight was 42nd percentile when she was born, 55th at her last appointment, and is now 66th percentile. She's gaining weight faster than other babies her age, I guess. She's also pretty tall (95th, I think they said), but Olivia's pediatrician told us that genetics kick in at about 9 months (which is when we saw a dramatic decrease in Olivia's height percentile!). In other words, don't get excited about a future WNBA champion over here. :-P
Olivia has "daughters." Usually they're Barbies, sometimes they're babies, and they always require a lot of care. "Uh-oh, my daughters are crying! I have to go take care of them."
Oh! I almost forgot about something that was NOT typical! On Thursday, the girls and I drove up to Toledo to meet Oma, Aunt Jacque, Aunt Justine, William, and Edward at the art museum. We wanted to see everyone one last time before they dispersed to the
Also on Thursday (I guess this week wasn't typical at all now that I'm writing it all down...), I went to a Mom's Night Out dinner with a newly created group at the local Catholic Church. I do not have six new bosom friends, but I now recognize five probable introverts and one definite extrovert when we go to church. Guess which one started the group. :-P I'll give you a hint: the other five (and yours truly) went because their husbands told them it would be good for them.
If you're wanting to take The Gretchen Quiz, this is your last chance! Answers go up on Wednesday.
Pictures:
03 May 2015
April 26-May 3
Gretchen had a birthday last Friday that I completely neglected to mention. She's now two years old and as opinionated as ever. She copies Olivia some of the time, comes up with "great ideas" that Olivia copies the rest of the time, and wants to do everything herself. "Gretchen do it" and "I do it self" are common phrases around here (and not ones that I remember hearing from Olivia).
Kaitlyn's baptism was on Sunday and I will have a bonus post with pictures as soon as I get pictures (Jacob?). We had it at the Orthodox church here in Lima and my whole family -- including Grandma and Grandpa A -- was in attendance. Bryan's parents made it as well and then we invited the whole church over to our house for lunch afterwards. Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and the kids stayed until Sunday afternoon before heading back to Michigan. Justine and Joseph and their boys stayed overnight until Monday morning, and Jacque hung out with me all day Monday before flying home that evening. :)
Two little boys from church got caught stripping down in the backyard after lunch. When questioned as to their motives, they said they were playing baptism. Why were they taking off their clothes? "Kaitlyn didn't wear any clothes when she was baptized." ... At least we know they were paying attention. Their mothers tell me that they've also been performing baptisms on their dolls (now named Kaitlyn Elaine) all week. :)
After about three quarters of the people were gone on Sunday, a small stray dog showed up near our house. He was immediately named Fake Kevin because he looked just like Keshia's dog, Kevin. Bryan put him inside the gate and told me we had to keep him overnight so that I could take him to the pound in the morning. I was displeased, especially when the dog ended up in the garage overnight. Also when I had to put him in my car the next morning. Fake Kevin was well-behaved, though, and we made it to the dog warden without incident. He's up for adoption now, if anyone is interested in a five pound dog.
Funny aside: The Dog Warden (or a representative thereof) showed up on my front porch on Friday. I panicked a little, thinking they brought the dog back to me even though that's not how things are done. As it turned out, the previous owners of our house had a history of dog tag delinquency and he was just checking up on them. What great timing, though.
Tuesday we had check-ups and everyone is fine. Gretchen is 27.5 pounds and 3 feet tall. I question the height measurement a bit, though, since they still do them lying down at age 2. Also, Eli is the same age and was only measured at 34 inches at his appointment, but we had them back to back and there's hardly any difference between them. Kaitlyn is 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 21.75 inches long. It amazes me that she's a month old and there are babies that are born bigger than she is right now. Olivia's measurements have to wait until her 4 year old check-up in August.
Raspberries and rhubarb are in the ground! Mom brought me six raspberry transplants (actually, there are more than six plants, but they came in six pots...) to go with the one I bought from Lowe's and I planted them in the awkward chunk of space to one side of our driveway. We have a section of land between our driveway and our neighbor's property that ranges from one foot wide to about six feet wide depending on how our driveway is curving at each point. This space is now home to raspberries and will eventually be the most delicious land we own. :) I also planted two rhubarb plants among the perennial shrubs along the side of our house. As the rhubarb gets bigger, we'll take out the shrubs we don't like. Actually, I'm hoping to replace said shrubs with ones that produce fruit. We're thinking blueberries. :)
My garden is also on its way to being a reality. Jacque helped me pick up 20 cinder blocks from Lowe's and then Lowe's employees took pity on my three-children-and-two-carts self and got me another 20 blocks later in the week (they even loaded them into the car for me). I now have two 4x8 garden beds in the front yard. They don't have soil yet because I'm planning to buy that by the cubic yard and need to wait for my friend with a pickup truck to be available. In the meantime, I'm planning what to plant and dreaming of the day when Bryan agrees to some fruit and nut trees as well. :) He did score a victory on the chickens and goats issue because the township has told me I can't have livestock on less than an acre...
Bonus post on Wednesday with photos of the cousin line-up!
Pictures:
Kaitlyn's baptism was on Sunday and I will have a bonus post with pictures as soon as I get pictures (Jacob?). We had it at the Orthodox church here in Lima and my whole family -- including Grandma and Grandpa A -- was in attendance. Bryan's parents made it as well and then we invited the whole church over to our house for lunch afterwards. Mom, Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, and the kids stayed until Sunday afternoon before heading back to Michigan. Justine and Joseph and their boys stayed overnight until Monday morning, and Jacque hung out with me all day Monday before flying home that evening. :)
Two little boys from church got caught stripping down in the backyard after lunch. When questioned as to their motives, they said they were playing baptism. Why were they taking off their clothes? "Kaitlyn didn't wear any clothes when she was baptized." ... At least we know they were paying attention. Their mothers tell me that they've also been performing baptisms on their dolls (now named Kaitlyn Elaine) all week. :)
After about three quarters of the people were gone on Sunday, a small stray dog showed up near our house. He was immediately named Fake Kevin because he looked just like Keshia's dog, Kevin. Bryan put him inside the gate and told me we had to keep him overnight so that I could take him to the pound in the morning. I was displeased, especially when the dog ended up in the garage overnight. Also when I had to put him in my car the next morning. Fake Kevin was well-behaved, though, and we made it to the dog warden without incident. He's up for adoption now, if anyone is interested in a five pound dog.
Funny aside: The Dog Warden (or a representative thereof) showed up on my front porch on Friday. I panicked a little, thinking they brought the dog back to me even though that's not how things are done. As it turned out, the previous owners of our house had a history of dog tag delinquency and he was just checking up on them. What great timing, though.
Tuesday we had check-ups and everyone is fine. Gretchen is 27.5 pounds and 3 feet tall. I question the height measurement a bit, though, since they still do them lying down at age 2. Also, Eli is the same age and was only measured at 34 inches at his appointment, but we had them back to back and there's hardly any difference between them. Kaitlyn is 9 pounds, 9 ounces and 21.75 inches long. It amazes me that she's a month old and there are babies that are born bigger than she is right now. Olivia's measurements have to wait until her 4 year old check-up in August.
Raspberries and rhubarb are in the ground! Mom brought me six raspberry transplants (actually, there are more than six plants, but they came in six pots...) to go with the one I bought from Lowe's and I planted them in the awkward chunk of space to one side of our driveway. We have a section of land between our driveway and our neighbor's property that ranges from one foot wide to about six feet wide depending on how our driveway is curving at each point. This space is now home to raspberries and will eventually be the most delicious land we own. :) I also planted two rhubarb plants among the perennial shrubs along the side of our house. As the rhubarb gets bigger, we'll take out the shrubs we don't like. Actually, I'm hoping to replace said shrubs with ones that produce fruit. We're thinking blueberries. :)
My garden is also on its way to being a reality. Jacque helped me pick up 20 cinder blocks from Lowe's and then Lowe's employees took pity on my three-children-and-two-carts self and got me another 20 blocks later in the week (they even loaded them into the car for me). I now have two 4x8 garden beds in the front yard. They don't have soil yet because I'm planning to buy that by the cubic yard and need to wait for my friend with a pickup truck to be available. In the meantime, I'm planning what to plant and dreaming of the day when Bryan agrees to some fruit and nut trees as well. :) He did score a victory on the chickens and goats issue because the township has told me I can't have livestock on less than an acre...
Bonus post on Wednesday with photos of the cousin line-up!
Pictures:
16 November 2014
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:
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:
04 May 2014
April 27-May 4
Two weeks ago, I promised more information about the weekend with Oma and Opa. Then last week was ridiculously busy and my belated post had no reference to any time spent in Michigan. So. Here's a quick version of what happened in Michigan:
-The girls and I went to the Good Friday service and Olivia broke the solemn silence at the very end by saying, "Are we done now?" quite clearly. 5 bonus points to anyone in the church who didn't have to stifle a laugh. Dad finished taking off his vestments and then came to find Olivia and inform her that yes, we were done now.
-I helped Mom cook all sorts of delicious things for after Easter. We also dyed eggs. Still no luck on getting nice red ones. Apparently onion skins are supposed to be good for getting red? Mom, we should try this next year (there are two links).
-The vigil started at 9, so the girls went in pajamas. We brought Olivia's pillow and blanket, so she immediately set up a bed on the chairs and fell asleep. Gretchen, not so much. She played in the back, looking progressively more drunk as the service progressed. Getting braver while simultaneously getting less coordinated leads to a lot of bumped heads. Bryan finally wrestled Gretchen to sleep around 11, I think. Luckily, both girls transferred to their beds after the service without too much trouble. Church did look a little bit like a crime scene, though, with all the small bodies strewn about.
-Bryan wanted to bring sandwiches for after the service, because every Christmas and Easter we just fill up on a lot of sweet stuff in the middle of the night. This was a fantastically well-received idea, and we should make a point to get a couple of party subs from Subway every year.
-After the Easter morning service, we went out to see Uncle Ted and Aunt Ruth. The food was good, the company was fun, and the egg hunt was warm and suitably easy for the girls and hard for the big kids. The chocolate chips did melt in the eggs, though.
-Gretchen did a practice cake-smash at Ted and Ruth's. After we gave her a bite of cake, she happily picked it up and managed to stay pretty clean. Then she put it down and whined a bit about the frosting all over her hand. ...Until she noticed that there was FROSTING ALL OVER HER HAND!!! She licked the frosting off, getting it all over her nose and cheek in the process. Jacob took pictures, which I will steal and put up someday. Probably.
-Rachel and Gretchen share the same birthday, so we made Rachel smash a piece of cake, too. She obliged the crowds by lifting her plate and plastering the cake against her face. A bit of a waste of a piece of cake, but the pictures should be great and the reaction was priceless.
-We left Ted and Ruth's and stopped at Bryan's parents' house for an hour or so on our way home. As we left, Olivia told my mom that she was going to "go to Grandma's house and lie down on the couch and watch Scooby Doo." She wasn't wrong. We did also convince her to sit outside in the beautiful weather for a little bit.
On Sunday (the most recent one, now), Gretchen got to do another cake smash. She was a little warier this time, needing to be coaxed into picking up the cake. She did pick it up enough to get her hand messy, but then noticed that there were enough potentially sympathetic faces around for whining to have a chance. Sure enough, as soon as she started whining pitifully, several people stepped forward to assist by feeding her the rest of the piece.
Jacque came to visit us overnight before I took her to the airport the next day. Funny story: Keshia and Tyler, Steve, and Jacque were all flying from Dayton to Chicago on Monday afternoon. In fact, Steve and Jacque were originally on the same flight. Anyway. Bryan and I brought out the game Jacque had given us for Christmas, and the three of us enjoyed several rounds of Scribbo, which is essentially Bingo meets Scrabble. Bryan and I have played Scribbo almost every day since Jacque left. On Monday afternoon, I dropped Jacque off at the airport with her bags and some apple butter (since she loved the jar I sent so much) and then turned around to head home. Halfway home, I talked to her on the phone: the security agents confiscated her (sealed!) apple butter and tossed it in the trash. Sad day. :( Mom thinks maybe somebody rescued it later to have a tasty treat to take home. Jacque, I will make more apple butter this summer and you can take home as much as you can carry.
Gretchen had an appointment Monday morning. She is 20 lbs, 12 oz, and 30 inches long. It would appear that she is actually 30 inches this time (as opposed to at her last appointment, when they said she was 30 but she was really only about 28). This was the one-year appointment, so she had to get 4 shots and a blood draw. In an unfortunate development for Gretchen, she seems to have inherited my difficult veins, so they had to poke around for quite some time during the blood draw before the needle would go in. One is a terrible age. Luckily, she'll never be one again (she will be five someday, though, and that will be similarly awful).
Gretchen made our wall! We went for her one-year-old pictures on Wednesday and I had the difficult decision of narrowing down which one to order. I chose one, but was hoping I could show Bryan (and my faithful readers, of course!) some of the other ones when we got home. Two days later, having still not received the link that they usually send, I called to find out what had happened. It turns out that they changed their policy, and in order to get a link to their product ordering page you now have to buy a package that contains a CD. Fine. The one I picked is great anyway. :)
Pictures and Videos:
-The girls and I went to the Good Friday service and Olivia broke the solemn silence at the very end by saying, "Are we done now?" quite clearly. 5 bonus points to anyone in the church who didn't have to stifle a laugh. Dad finished taking off his vestments and then came to find Olivia and inform her that yes, we were done now.
-I helped Mom cook all sorts of delicious things for after Easter. We also dyed eggs. Still no luck on getting nice red ones. Apparently onion skins are supposed to be good for getting red? Mom, we should try this next year (there are two links).
-The vigil started at 9, so the girls went in pajamas. We brought Olivia's pillow and blanket, so she immediately set up a bed on the chairs and fell asleep. Gretchen, not so much. She played in the back, looking progressively more drunk as the service progressed. Getting braver while simultaneously getting less coordinated leads to a lot of bumped heads. Bryan finally wrestled Gretchen to sleep around 11, I think. Luckily, both girls transferred to their beds after the service without too much trouble. Church did look a little bit like a crime scene, though, with all the small bodies strewn about.
-Bryan wanted to bring sandwiches for after the service, because every Christmas and Easter we just fill up on a lot of sweet stuff in the middle of the night. This was a fantastically well-received idea, and we should make a point to get a couple of party subs from Subway every year.
-After the Easter morning service, we went out to see Uncle Ted and Aunt Ruth. The food was good, the company was fun, and the egg hunt was warm and suitably easy for the girls and hard for the big kids. The chocolate chips did melt in the eggs, though.
-Gretchen did a practice cake-smash at Ted and Ruth's. After we gave her a bite of cake, she happily picked it up and managed to stay pretty clean. Then she put it down and whined a bit about the frosting all over her hand. ...Until she noticed that there was FROSTING ALL OVER HER HAND!!! She licked the frosting off, getting it all over her nose and cheek in the process. Jacob took pictures, which I will steal and put up someday. Probably.
-Rachel and Gretchen share the same birthday, so we made Rachel smash a piece of cake, too. She obliged the crowds by lifting her plate and plastering the cake against her face. A bit of a waste of a piece of cake, but the pictures should be great and the reaction was priceless.
-We left Ted and Ruth's and stopped at Bryan's parents' house for an hour or so on our way home. As we left, Olivia told my mom that she was going to "go to Grandma's house and lie down on the couch and watch Scooby Doo." She wasn't wrong. We did also convince her to sit outside in the beautiful weather for a little bit.
On Sunday (the most recent one, now), Gretchen got to do another cake smash. She was a little warier this time, needing to be coaxed into picking up the cake. She did pick it up enough to get her hand messy, but then noticed that there were enough potentially sympathetic faces around for whining to have a chance. Sure enough, as soon as she started whining pitifully, several people stepped forward to assist by feeding her the rest of the piece.
Jacque came to visit us overnight before I took her to the airport the next day. Funny story: Keshia and Tyler, Steve, and Jacque were all flying from Dayton to Chicago on Monday afternoon. In fact, Steve and Jacque were originally on the same flight. Anyway. Bryan and I brought out the game Jacque had given us for Christmas, and the three of us enjoyed several rounds of Scribbo, which is essentially Bingo meets Scrabble. Bryan and I have played Scribbo almost every day since Jacque left. On Monday afternoon, I dropped Jacque off at the airport with her bags and some apple butter (since she loved the jar I sent so much) and then turned around to head home. Halfway home, I talked to her on the phone: the security agents confiscated her (sealed!) apple butter and tossed it in the trash. Sad day. :( Mom thinks maybe somebody rescued it later to have a tasty treat to take home. Jacque, I will make more apple butter this summer and you can take home as much as you can carry.
Gretchen had an appointment Monday morning. She is 20 lbs, 12 oz, and 30 inches long. It would appear that she is actually 30 inches this time (as opposed to at her last appointment, when they said she was 30 but she was really only about 28). This was the one-year appointment, so she had to get 4 shots and a blood draw. In an unfortunate development for Gretchen, she seems to have inherited my difficult veins, so they had to poke around for quite some time during the blood draw before the needle would go in. One is a terrible age. Luckily, she'll never be one again (she will be five someday, though, and that will be similarly awful).
Gretchen made our wall! We went for her one-year-old pictures on Wednesday and I had the difficult decision of narrowing down which one to order. I chose one, but was hoping I could show Bryan (and my faithful readers, of course!) some of the other ones when we got home. Two days later, having still not received the link that they usually send, I called to find out what had happened. It turns out that they changed their policy, and in order to get a link to their product ordering page you now have to buy a package that contains a CD. Fine. The one I picked is great anyway. :)
Pictures and Videos:
16 February 2014
February 9-16
Olivia has been accident-free all week. She's also been diaper-free, even at night. This is a BIG DEAL. I do have to remind her periodically to go to the bathroom, because she tends to get too involved in things to worry about paltry details such as her exploding bladder. Also, I just don't trust her. So I have a phone alarm that goes off every hour and a half (as much to remind me as her) and she sits on the potty whenever we switch activities and so far we've been dry.
Gretchen is standing. She seems to prefer standing, actually, although she does NOT like it when whatever she's using for balance moves. She has also learned to sit back down (hooray, hooray!), although she still looks a little worried about it. Her 9-month check-up was Monday, and she's 19 lbs, 2 oz. They told me she's 30 inches long, but I don't believe them. Babies are measured very imprecisely: the nurse lays Gretchen down, puts a pen mark on the paper at the top of her head, and pulls her leg straight before placing another pen mark. Then I pick Gretchen up and the nurse measures the space between the marks. Gretchen was being difficult and wouldn't let the nurse stretch her leg out, so I'm pretty sure she scooted an inch or two during the process. I measured her at home and only came up with 28 inches. It will be interesting to see how big she is at her 12-month check-up. Click here for Olivia's stats, for comparison.
(Aside: I read the post that contains Olivia's stats and was quite pleased with it. I apologize if some of my more recent posts have been lacking. I've been putting off writing them until the last minute and then dashing them off in a hurry rather than recording my witticisms as they occur to me. I shall strive to do better.)
I got to cross something off my 30 Before 30 list on Saturday: I asked Bryan what kind of cereal he wanted for breakfast and he said, "surprise me." I hid a Quaker Oat Square (three, actually) in his Cheerios. This was not what I was planning to do to surprise him, but it worked anyway. :)
Pictures:
Gretchen is standing. She seems to prefer standing, actually, although she does NOT like it when whatever she's using for balance moves. She has also learned to sit back down (hooray, hooray!), although she still looks a little worried about it. Her 9-month check-up was Monday, and she's 19 lbs, 2 oz. They told me she's 30 inches long, but I don't believe them. Babies are measured very imprecisely: the nurse lays Gretchen down, puts a pen mark on the paper at the top of her head, and pulls her leg straight before placing another pen mark. Then I pick Gretchen up and the nurse measures the space between the marks. Gretchen was being difficult and wouldn't let the nurse stretch her leg out, so I'm pretty sure she scooted an inch or two during the process. I measured her at home and only came up with 28 inches. It will be interesting to see how big she is at her 12-month check-up. Click here for Olivia's stats, for comparison.
(Aside: I read the post that contains Olivia's stats and was quite pleased with it. I apologize if some of my more recent posts have been lacking. I've been putting off writing them until the last minute and then dashing them off in a hurry rather than recording my witticisms as they occur to me. I shall strive to do better.)
I got to cross something off my 30 Before 30 list on Saturday: I asked Bryan what kind of cereal he wanted for breakfast and he said, "surprise me." I hid a Quaker Oat Square (three, actually) in his Cheerios. This was not what I was planning to do to surprise him, but it worked anyway. :)
Pictures:
15 December 2013
December 8-15
If you're receiving this by email for the first time, see the beginning of this post.
I remember having little cupcake crayons when we were kids. Mom would take all the broken pieces, toss them in a muffin tin, and melt them down into new crayons for us to use. Olivia has a lot of broken crayons, so I decided to do this. I wasn't able to mix the colors with the same reckless abandon that my mother did, but I did pair a couple up to fill the tins a bit more. This ended up being a good thing, because I didn't know how long (or how hot) to bake the crayons, and managed to melt them down until the colors were completely mixed. So instead of the swirly colored crayons we had, Olivia ended up with some new solid colors. At least I was cautious, so she didn't end up with six shades of brown. She was intrigued by them and seems to like using them better than her regular crayons.
Gretchen has been practicing her consonants. She's especially good at mamamamama. Her other favorite right now is ba (usually just one at a time). She held up a ball the other day and said, "ba," sounding especially smart. We'll just ignore all the other things she labels as "ba." :)
A follow-up appointment for a second flu shot and a check on her ear infection gave us the opportunity to weigh Gretchen again. At 7 months, she was 16 lbs, 10 oz, which is still over a pound lighter than Olivia was at six months. This surprised Bryan, because Gretchen eats meals like she might never get fed again. She puts away more food at one meal than Olivia does in a week. Apparently she also burns it off faster.
Olivia sounds more like a big person every day. I'll call her from the other room, and she'll answer with, "yes, mommy?" She also says, "bless you, baby Gretchen" when Gretchen sneezes, says thank you without being prompted (not all the time, but sometimes), and asks Bryan to "brush the girl's hair" when he puts her to bed.
It's cookie walk time again, so I have more Spritz notes:
-I use medium eggs and the chocolate recipe calls for 2 large eggs. This year my batter seemed especially dry, so I put in an extra medium egg. This was a good decision.
-Soften the butter in the microwave before adding the sugar.
-Roll the dough into a log. It's not that hard, and the time saved is tremendous.
-The chocolate batter is easier to work with if it is slightly chilled. Do not chill the vanilla batter. The recipe didn't lie to you. (Side note: If you're one of those people who buys the Pillsbury cookie dough just to eat the dough with no intention of every baking it into cookies (that's everybody), you should make vanilla spritz and put the dough in the fridge. I tasted mine, and I'm pretty sure that's how Pillsbury makes their cookies.)
-Don't be afraid to use more than one click per cookie. One and a half is often the magic number.
Also some notes about Austrian chocolate balls:
-Double batches are very workable. Larger than that would be unwieldy.
-The recipe says to dip each ball in the frosting, but I get impatient and stir them all into the frosting instead. (Bonus to this method: the whole cookie gets a chocolate coating, instead of just the top.) Six batches at a time is a bit much for this technique, though. Actually, how does using some sort of frosting tip sound? That might be easiest.
-Large eggs make the batter a little too moist and the cookies flatten in the oven. Add a little extra flour and you're good to go.
Pictures and Video:
I remember having little cupcake crayons when we were kids. Mom would take all the broken pieces, toss them in a muffin tin, and melt them down into new crayons for us to use. Olivia has a lot of broken crayons, so I decided to do this. I wasn't able to mix the colors with the same reckless abandon that my mother did, but I did pair a couple up to fill the tins a bit more. This ended up being a good thing, because I didn't know how long (or how hot) to bake the crayons, and managed to melt them down until the colors were completely mixed. So instead of the swirly colored crayons we had, Olivia ended up with some new solid colors. At least I was cautious, so she didn't end up with six shades of brown. She was intrigued by them and seems to like using them better than her regular crayons.
Gretchen has been practicing her consonants. She's especially good at mamamamama. Her other favorite right now is ba (usually just one at a time). She held up a ball the other day and said, "ba," sounding especially smart. We'll just ignore all the other things she labels as "ba." :)
A follow-up appointment for a second flu shot and a check on her ear infection gave us the opportunity to weigh Gretchen again. At 7 months, she was 16 lbs, 10 oz, which is still over a pound lighter than Olivia was at six months. This surprised Bryan, because Gretchen eats meals like she might never get fed again. She puts away more food at one meal than Olivia does in a week. Apparently she also burns it off faster.
Olivia sounds more like a big person every day. I'll call her from the other room, and she'll answer with, "yes, mommy?" She also says, "bless you, baby Gretchen" when Gretchen sneezes, says thank you without being prompted (not all the time, but sometimes), and asks Bryan to "brush the girl's hair" when he puts her to bed.
It's cookie walk time again, so I have more Spritz notes:
-I use medium eggs and the chocolate recipe calls for 2 large eggs. This year my batter seemed especially dry, so I put in an extra medium egg. This was a good decision.
-Soften the butter in the microwave before adding the sugar.
-Roll the dough into a log. It's not that hard, and the time saved is tremendous.
-The chocolate batter is easier to work with if it is slightly chilled. Do not chill the vanilla batter. The recipe didn't lie to you. (Side note: If you're one of those people who buys the Pillsbury cookie dough just to eat the dough with no intention of every baking it into cookies (that's everybody), you should make vanilla spritz and put the dough in the fridge. I tasted mine, and I'm pretty sure that's how Pillsbury makes their cookies.)
-Don't be afraid to use more than one click per cookie. One and a half is often the magic number.
Also some notes about Austrian chocolate balls:
-Double batches are very workable. Larger than that would be unwieldy.
-The recipe says to dip each ball in the frosting, but I get impatient and stir them all into the frosting instead. (Bonus to this method: the whole cookie gets a chocolate coating, instead of just the top.) Six batches at a time is a bit much for this technique, though. Actually, how does using some sort of frosting tip sound? That might be easiest.
-Large eggs make the batter a little too moist and the cookies flatten in the oven. Add a little extra flour and you're good to go.
Pictures and Video:
03 November 2013
October 27-November 3
All my faithful readers should thank the internet for being helpful. Blogger had a glitch when I sat down to write this post. For some reason, I could not access my own blog. Justine could access her blog, Justine could access my blog, and I could access the (never used) blog attached to another email address. But I could not get to the page that let me regale my Olivia and Gretchen's fans with the latest Barhorst exploits. Fortunately, after about 7 Google searches, I found a group of people having the same problem (well, a similar problem, but without the fabulousness of Olivia and Gretchen), and someone figured out a way to get all of us into our respective blogs. So here I sit, composing yet another weekly episode in The Lives and Times of Olivia and Gretchen. :)
We had Halloween here last Saturday, so we got the girls all dressed up and I took Olivia to about 6 houses while Gretchen helped Bryan hand out candy. Gretchen was a lion (the costume should look familiar), and Olivia picked out a witch costume at the store. Pictures below.
Sicknessswept crawled through our house beginning the end of last week, and I emerged victorious as the only one who didn't get it. Of course, that left me taking care of a cranky baby, an "I don't know how to be sick, so I'm going to pretend I'm not" toddler, and a sleeping Bryan. We all survived, though, and have (mostly) ditched the germs.
Gretchen's 6-month appointment was Wednesday, and she's definitely smaller than Olivia was. 15 pounds, 7 ounces, and 27 inches long. No mention of starting her on any kind of food, which is funny because Gretchen loves food. The nurse seemed mildly disappointed that Gretchen doesn't sit very well yet, but she doesn't get a lot of practice. I want to know why they always ask the wrong questions at appointments. For Olivia they asked about rolling over (which she couldn't do), but not about sitting (which she could). For Gretchen they haven't asked about rolling over at all, but sitting is suddenly a big deal. If you had hardwood floors and an overly affectionate toddler, would you let YOUR 6-month-old spend a lot of time sitting?
And speaking of overly affectionate toddlers, that's the reason Gretchen doesn't spend much time in the Johnny-jump-up. Sure, we say it's because she doesn't like to jump as much as Olivia, or because it's inconvenient to move the table to the middle of the room all the time now that Olivia plays in the middle of the room... But the main reason I don't get it out is because I'm afraid that Olivia will use Gretchen as a tether ball.
Pictures:
We had Halloween here last Saturday, so we got the girls all dressed up and I took Olivia to about 6 houses while Gretchen helped Bryan hand out candy. Gretchen was a lion (the costume should look familiar), and Olivia picked out a witch costume at the store. Pictures below.
Sickness
Gretchen's 6-month appointment was Wednesday, and she's definitely smaller than Olivia was. 15 pounds, 7 ounces, and 27 inches long. No mention of starting her on any kind of food, which is funny because Gretchen loves food. The nurse seemed mildly disappointed that Gretchen doesn't sit very well yet, but she doesn't get a lot of practice. I want to know why they always ask the wrong questions at appointments. For Olivia they asked about rolling over (which she couldn't do), but not about sitting (which she could). For Gretchen they haven't asked about rolling over at all, but sitting is suddenly a big deal. If you had hardwood floors and an overly affectionate toddler, would you let YOUR 6-month-old spend a lot of time sitting?
And speaking of overly affectionate toddlers, that's the reason Gretchen doesn't spend much time in the Johnny-jump-up. Sure, we say it's because she doesn't like to jump as much as Olivia, or because it's inconvenient to move the table to the middle of the room all the time now that Olivia plays in the middle of the room... But the main reason I don't get it out is because I'm afraid that Olivia will use Gretchen as a tether ball.
Pictures:
01 September 2013
August 25-September 1
We've partially fixed the bath problem. I have a little baby bathtub seat that we used once with Olivia and then put away because it was easier to just plop her little self right in the water. I rediscovered this seat when rearranging rooms and decided to give it a try with Gretchen. Baths are now tolerable, at least for long enough that I can get her clean before she gets upset.
Time for the Peanut Story. Once upon a time I learned that it's not very hard to make your own peanut butter. It is, however, cost prohibitive, especially if you buy Aldi peanut butter like I do. Having discovered this, I let the matter drop. Then we went to Traverse City, and mom brought Kroger peanut butter. As it turns out, Kroger peanut butter is not as sweet as Aldi peanut butter, so when we returned home my Aldi peanut butter was much too sweet for my taste. Back to my research I went. Perhaps I could buy peanuts in bulk and get a better price? After much searching, I found NutStop.com and their raw redskin peanuts for $0.89 a pound. Excellent. To get the wholesale price, you have to buy at least 25 pounds of peanuts. I started looking for people that might also want to make their own peanut butter. The shipping ends up costing almost as much as the peanuts, so the deal wasn't as great as I wanted it to be. Then I wondered, does shipping cost less if you buy more peanuts? It does. Up to a point. After checking several price points, I learned that shipping is optimized at 73 pounds of peanuts. Since it is apparently more ridiculous to me to not get optimized shipping than to have 73 pounds of peanuts show up on my front porch, I decided to order 73 pounds. Now there are a lot of peanuts sitting in my basement (but they only cost $1.28 a pound after shipping!). And that is the peanut story.
Gretchen can roll over all the way now, arms and everything. She actually perfected this last weekend, but I didn't update my already written post to reflect her spectacular talents. She still doesn't roll front to back, but I'm sure she'll get there. Back to front is the hard one anyway.
Monday was check-up day, so both girls got weighed and measured. Gretchen is 14 pounds, 6 ounces and 26 inches long. Olivia was longer and fatter at the same age. And speaking of Olivia, she is now 27 pounds and 34.5 inches tall. Both girls are proportional (I'm not sure why the doctor tells me that every time...) and healthy.
Pictures and Video:
Time for the Peanut Story. Once upon a time I learned that it's not very hard to make your own peanut butter. It is, however, cost prohibitive, especially if you buy Aldi peanut butter like I do. Having discovered this, I let the matter drop. Then we went to Traverse City, and mom brought Kroger peanut butter. As it turns out, Kroger peanut butter is not as sweet as Aldi peanut butter, so when we returned home my Aldi peanut butter was much too sweet for my taste. Back to my research I went. Perhaps I could buy peanuts in bulk and get a better price? After much searching, I found NutStop.com and their raw redskin peanuts for $0.89 a pound. Excellent. To get the wholesale price, you have to buy at least 25 pounds of peanuts. I started looking for people that might also want to make their own peanut butter. The shipping ends up costing almost as much as the peanuts, so the deal wasn't as great as I wanted it to be. Then I wondered, does shipping cost less if you buy more peanuts? It does. Up to a point. After checking several price points, I learned that shipping is optimized at 73 pounds of peanuts. Since it is apparently more ridiculous to me to not get optimized shipping than to have 73 pounds of peanuts show up on my front porch, I decided to order 73 pounds. Now there are a lot of peanuts sitting in my basement (but they only cost $1.28 a pound after shipping!). And that is the peanut story.
Gretchen can roll over all the way now, arms and everything. She actually perfected this last weekend, but I didn't update my already written post to reflect her spectacular talents. She still doesn't roll front to back, but I'm sure she'll get there. Back to front is the hard one anyway.
Monday was check-up day, so both girls got weighed and measured. Gretchen is 14 pounds, 6 ounces and 26 inches long. Olivia was longer and fatter at the same age. And speaking of Olivia, she is now 27 pounds and 34.5 inches tall. Both girls are proportional (I'm not sure why the doctor tells me that every time...) and healthy.
Pictures and Video:
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