The building that got torn down is being rebuilt as a Tim Horton's. Dad, you should come visit more often. We (will soon) have a Tim Horton's within walking distance.
It was suggested that I get a video of Olivia saying some of her new words. Unfortunately, videos have become harder since Olivia started wanting the camera. I managed, though. Below are a couple of videos, though they're more audio than video since I had to keep the camera out of her visual range in order to get her to perform. :)
Gretchen is in 0-3 month clothes. Some of the newborn stuff would still fit, I think, but it was getting too hard to snap sleepers at the bottom, especially over cloth diapers in the dark. A couple of the roomier sleepers engulf her, but for the most part she doesn't look like her clothes are too big. Onesies and pants are a good choice, because even if the onesie is a little big, the pants cover up the extra length. :)
And speaking of Gretchen, she's a pacifier baby. At least for now. Olivia used a pacifier occasionally for about 2 months and then didn't bother anymore. Gretchen, though, has been trying to suck her thumb since she was born and is perfectly content to take a pacifier, at least until she can get those pesky hands to stay in her mouth where they belong! Olivia helpfully tries to put the pacifier back in Gretchen's mouth (albeit upside down) when it falls out, although she's not above claiming it for her own mouth if Gretchen refuses to accept it too many times.
Since Olivia was born, Bryan and I have been eating dinner after she goes to bed. It's just easier to prepare a meal without her help. When she started eating solids, we started making sure we put some of each meal aside for her to eat for dinner the next night. I knew I'd eventually have to start having dinner ready at an earlier time, but I figured it'd be a few years. However. Bryan comes home from work starving, we don't have quick, easy snacks in our house, Olivia likes to sample whatever anyone around her is eating, and dinner is so much less exciting when one could have cheese and crackers or jelly sandwiches every single night. We tried moving Olivia's dinner up and turning the "snack" into dessert (back when we had pudding around), but that didn't work so well. And Bryan didn't like the idea of waiting to eat his snack until Olivia goes to bed. So this week I told him I'd have meals ready by 6, if he thought he could wait the hour without expiring. It's been going pretty well, especially if I can find a way to get Olivia involved (one night I had her break up all the spaghetti noodles into little pieces while we waited for water to boil -- keeps us from having to cut her spaghetti for her and keeps her busy for a long time).
Pictures and Videos:
26 May 2013
19 May 2013
May 12-19
When our friends the Kleins had their second baby, they mentioned that Eva looks like a giant. I've decided that while Olivia does look rather large compared to Gretchen, she doesn't seem really any bigger than usual. She does, however, look OLDER to me. Overnight she turned from a baby to a little kid.
Gretchen seems calmer than I remember Olivia being. This could be because Olivia never got a chance to prove how calm she was because we were able to pick her up anytime she started fussing. Or it could be because the Olivia that is at the forefront of my memory these days is a whirlwind of toddler activity, which is pretty much the definition of "not calm." OR, it could be because Gretchen has quickly learned that she should make as little noise as possible lest she incur the tender ministrations of the aforementioned whirlwind. Whatever the reason, Gretchen seems like a very agreeable and easily placated baby, for which I am grateful. :)
I've updated my bracelet to include Gretchen. :) April is a pretty boring month as birthstones go, but I added a crystal birthstone bead (because diamonds don't come at knock-off prices) and a letter G. Also, sparkly bracelets don't apparently take very good pictures. Especially when the camera is really a phone. Oh well.
There's a building near our house that recently got demolished. It was a nice enough building, so Bryan and I assume that someone bought the property and wanted to put something else there. Regardless, the machinery was out and the building is now gone. This construction site is along one of the paths I normally take when walking with the girls, so we've seen various types of machinery out every day. It turns out that Olivia is very excited to see the big trucks. We stood on the sidewalk and just watched them work for about 20 minutes one day. That was the day the excavators were out (I was calling them backhoes, but they didn't have the plow part), clearing the rubble and putting it in dump trucks. Another day we saw bulldozers and road rollers (I think they were tandem rollers) pushing dirt into the hole where the building had been and smoothing it down. As you can see, I've been researching my construction machinery. Who knew I'd need that knowledge with girls?!
For Mothers' Day this year, Bryan added himself to our family. A couple of years ago he got me a willow tree figurine of a mother holding a child. For Fathers' Day that year I looked for a dad to add to our mantle, but couldn't find a male without a child attached. Now that we have Gretchen, though, we need another child anyway. :) Bryan and Olivia picked out the Father and Daughter figure to add to our little family group. The bad news? I need to think of another gift for Fathers' Day...
Pictures and Video:
Gretchen seems calmer than I remember Olivia being. This could be because Olivia never got a chance to prove how calm she was because we were able to pick her up anytime she started fussing. Or it could be because the Olivia that is at the forefront of my memory these days is a whirlwind of toddler activity, which is pretty much the definition of "not calm." OR, it could be because Gretchen has quickly learned that she should make as little noise as possible lest she incur the tender ministrations of the aforementioned whirlwind. Whatever the reason, Gretchen seems like a very agreeable and easily placated baby, for which I am grateful. :)
I've updated my bracelet to include Gretchen. :) April is a pretty boring month as birthstones go, but I added a crystal birthstone bead (because diamonds don't come at knock-off prices) and a letter G. Also, sparkly bracelets don't apparently take very good pictures. Especially when the camera is really a phone. Oh well.
There's a building near our house that recently got demolished. It was a nice enough building, so Bryan and I assume that someone bought the property and wanted to put something else there. Regardless, the machinery was out and the building is now gone. This construction site is along one of the paths I normally take when walking with the girls, so we've seen various types of machinery out every day. It turns out that Olivia is very excited to see the big trucks. We stood on the sidewalk and just watched them work for about 20 minutes one day. That was the day the excavators were out (I was calling them backhoes, but they didn't have the plow part), clearing the rubble and putting it in dump trucks. Another day we saw bulldozers and road rollers (I think they were tandem rollers) pushing dirt into the hole where the building had been and smoothing it down. As you can see, I've been researching my construction machinery. Who knew I'd need that knowledge with girls?!
Pictures and Video:
12 May 2013
May 5-12
Gretchen Bernice
Baptized Saturday, May 4, 2013 (Easter Vigil service)
Sponsors: Keshia Barhorst and Josef Fenton
Patron Saint: St. Berenice of Syria (October 4)
http://oca.org/saints/all-lives/2013/10/04
http://www.catholiconline.com/saints/saint.php?saint_id=2957
Bryan's workplace is running a survey. It's short and easy. If you get a chance, go to this link and when it asks (in one of the last questions) who referred you, put Bryan Barhorst in the box. Everyone who fills it out and lists him as the referrer gives him another entry in a drawing for $50. If you fill out the survey, let me know in a comment and I'll give you 5 points. Everyone wins! https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NXNHDDC
Olivia's vocabulary has exploded recently. Just this past week or two she's picked up book, eat, not, more, feet, fork, duck, chalk, bread, sit, food, and koala. She has a word for "empty," but it doesn't sound like empty. Maybe she's saying "nothing"? Also, Bryan says she told him, "stay there, be right back" the other day. Most of her new words are relatively indistinct still, so we rely on context clues, but they're definitely consistently there. Her toddler dialect doesn't pronounce the letters f and s (weird, since she can say both those sounds), so it took me a while to figure out why she kept grabbing Gretchen's toes and saying, "deet." We also have "cork" (fork), "dood" (food), and "dit" (sit).
Gretchen had her "somewhere between one and two weeks old" checkup on Monday. The doctor said we were aiming to have her back at her birth weight of 8 lbs by that day. The little fatty was 8 lbs, 8 oz. No worries about weight gain here. It also means that I don't need to be stressed about the fact that she occasionally spits up what appears to be an entire meal (or perhaps everything she's eaten for the past two days). Obviously she's retaining enough. :)
And speaking of spitting up meals... I was so hopeful that Gretchen was learning to regulate her intake at the end of my last post. In the two days after I wrote that post, she spit up large amounts three separate times, managing to get (1) Bryan, me, Josef's bed (2) Jacob, my Grandma and (3) her carseat. She's since been better, but I hesitate to be too openly optimistic, lest I set her off again.
Olivia got her first haircut while we were visiting my parents. My mom trimmed the back of Olivia's hair while Olivia put her head on my shoulder and sobbed. I'm relatively certain the sobbing had less to do with the loss of hair and more to do with the fact that we made her sit mostly naked on a stool while said hair was removed. She also got her bangs trimmed, although that was harder because my mom didn't want to accidentally poke out Olivia's eye. The resultant look works better with the shorter-than-normal-because-she-pulled-them-out sides and is pretty cute, if I do say so myself. :)
Pictures:
Baptized Saturday, May 4, 2013 (Easter Vigil service)
Sponsors: Keshia Barhorst and Josef Fenton
Patron Saint: St. Berenice of Syria (October 4)
http://oca.org/saints/all-lives/2013/10/04
http://www.catholiconline.com/saints/saint.php?saint_id=2957
Bryan's workplace is running a survey. It's short and easy. If you get a chance, go to this link and when it asks (in one of the last questions) who referred you, put Bryan Barhorst in the box. Everyone who fills it out and lists him as the referrer gives him another entry in a drawing for $50. If you fill out the survey, let me know in a comment and I'll give you 5 points. Everyone wins! https://www.surveymonkey.com/
Olivia's vocabulary has exploded recently. Just this past week or two she's picked up book, eat, not, more, feet, fork, duck, chalk, bread, sit, food, and koala. She has a word for "empty," but it doesn't sound like empty. Maybe she's saying "nothing"? Also, Bryan says she told him, "stay there, be right back" the other day. Most of her new words are relatively indistinct still, so we rely on context clues, but they're definitely consistently there. Her toddler dialect doesn't pronounce the letters f and s (weird, since she can say both those sounds), so it took me a while to figure out why she kept grabbing Gretchen's toes and saying, "deet." We also have "cork" (fork), "dood" (food), and "dit" (sit).
Gretchen had her "somewhere between one and two weeks old" checkup on Monday. The doctor said we were aiming to have her back at her birth weight of 8 lbs by that day. The little fatty was 8 lbs, 8 oz. No worries about weight gain here. It also means that I don't need to be stressed about the fact that she occasionally spits up what appears to be an entire meal (or perhaps everything she's eaten for the past two days). Obviously she's retaining enough. :)
And speaking of spitting up meals... I was so hopeful that Gretchen was learning to regulate her intake at the end of my last post. In the two days after I wrote that post, she spit up large amounts three separate times, managing to get (1) Bryan, me, Josef's bed (2) Jacob, my Grandma and (3) her carseat. She's since been better, but I hesitate to be too openly optimistic, lest I set her off again.
Olivia got her first haircut while we were visiting my parents. My mom trimmed the back of Olivia's hair while Olivia put her head on my shoulder and sobbed. I'm relatively certain the sobbing had less to do with the loss of hair and more to do with the fact that we made her sit mostly naked on a stool while said hair was removed. She also got her bangs trimmed, although that was harder because my mom didn't want to accidentally poke out Olivia's eye. The resultant look works better with the shorter-than-normal-because-she-pulled-them-out sides and is pretty cute, if I do say so myself. :)
Pictures:
05 May 2013
April 26-May 5
Happy Easter to my Orthodox readers! Happy almost Ascension to everyone else!
Be sure to check out the post about Gretchen's birth if that kind of stuff interests you.
Points were awarded for Baby Guesses. Nobody got enough right to earn any bonus points, but William got the randomly generated bonus:
Jillian - 2
William - 7
Alison - 2
Justine - 2
Norie - 2
Olivia - 2
Eva - 2
Kara - 2
Jacque - 4
Bryan - 4
Scott - 3
Julie - 2
Steph - 2
Olivia hardly ever spit up. She drooled like a champion, but wasn't very spitty. Gretchen, on the other hand... She spits up like it's her job. In fact, she should ask for a raise. In fairness, she's getting better at regulating her intake appropriately as she gets older. The end of the week was much less wet than the beginning.
I mentioned that Olivia learned the word "no." This week she perfected it. She used to be so agreeable, saying "okay" for everything. Now there are days when I don't hear more than two "okay"s the whole day. :( Her "no" is super cute, but it gets old after about 12 times and then is just obnoxious for the next 97...
This post is post number 100! Some of them don't have much in them because they're posts I added after I technically started the blog. Nevertheless, yay for post 100! To celebrate, I'm giving 10 points to the reader who made the 100th comment (which was way back in September): Congratulations, Jillian!
These past two weeks, Olivia has been showing interest in dressing herself. By which I mean she demands that I let her choose her own clothes. I can sometimes convince her to pick from the choices that I select, but sometimes not. The result is rather interesting. I particularly like the polka dot turtle neck with the tight teal argyle stretch pants. Mom tells me that I used to wear horizontal stripes with vertical stripes and claim it was okay because they were both stripes. Or I'd wear stripes with polka dots and point out that both had pink in them. As far as I can tell, Olivia does not put that much thought into her choices. I may be selling her short; perhaps she IS putting that much thought into it and simply cannot verbalize it.
On Tuesday, my grandparents came down to Springfield and on Wednesday they took the girls and me up to Michigan for Holy Week. We spent the week visiting with family, which was wonderful. Bryan joined us on Friday night. Gretchen was baptized at the Easter Vigil service on Saturday night (pictures next week), Sunday was more family, and then we were on our way home.
Pictures:
Be sure to check out the post about Gretchen's birth if that kind of stuff interests you.
Points were awarded for Baby Guesses. Nobody got enough right to earn any bonus points, but William got the randomly generated bonus:
Jillian - 2
William - 7
Alison - 2
Justine - 2
Norie - 2
Olivia - 2
Eva - 2
Kara - 2
Jacque - 4
Bryan - 4
Scott - 3
Julie - 2
Steph - 2
Olivia hardly ever spit up. She drooled like a champion, but wasn't very spitty. Gretchen, on the other hand... She spits up like it's her job. In fact, she should ask for a raise. In fairness, she's getting better at regulating her intake appropriately as she gets older. The end of the week was much less wet than the beginning.
I mentioned that Olivia learned the word "no." This week she perfected it. She used to be so agreeable, saying "okay" for everything. Now there are days when I don't hear more than two "okay"s the whole day. :( Her "no" is super cute, but it gets old after about 12 times and then is just obnoxious for the next 97...
This post is post number 100! Some of them don't have much in them because they're posts I added after I technically started the blog. Nevertheless, yay for post 100! To celebrate, I'm giving 10 points to the reader who made the 100th comment (which was way back in September): Congratulations, Jillian!
These past two weeks, Olivia has been showing interest in dressing herself. By which I mean she demands that I let her choose her own clothes. I can sometimes convince her to pick from the choices that I select, but sometimes not. The result is rather interesting. I particularly like the polka dot turtle neck with the tight teal argyle stretch pants. Mom tells me that I used to wear horizontal stripes with vertical stripes and claim it was okay because they were both stripes. Or I'd wear stripes with polka dots and point out that both had pink in them. As far as I can tell, Olivia does not put that much thought into her choices. I may be selling her short; perhaps she IS putting that much thought into it and simply cannot verbalize it.
On Tuesday, my grandparents came down to Springfield and on Wednesday they took the girls and me up to Michigan for Holy Week. We spent the week visiting with family, which was wonderful. Bryan joined us on Friday night. Gretchen was baptized at the Easter Vigil service on Saturday night (pictures next week), Sunday was more family, and then we were on our way home.
Pictures:
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