June 30-July 7

Recently, Olivia was put on an antibiotic to help clear up her persistent rash.  I thought the doctor told me that he ordered grape-flavored medicine, but he must have just told me to make sure I asked for flavoring.  I sent Bryan to pick up the prescription without including this bit of information, so when the pharmacist asked if he wanted the medicine flavored, Bryan declined.  Apparently the pharmacist was quite persistent in his attempts, pointing out that this medicine has a particularly bad taste, but Bryan stood firm.  He figured we could always mix it into yogurt if we had problems.  Given this and the fact that the bottle/box/instructions mention the bad taste more than once, we were a little worried that Olivia would reject her medicine and we'd have to figure out how to get her to take it.  She usually likes antibiotics (seriously, we've used the promise of medicine to get her to finish her dinner before), so we decided to try it straight before mixing it in something.  She downed it like a champ and then asked for more.  Olivia 1, Clindamycin 0.  Can we get her to try a bite of carrot soup, though?  Of course not.

Gretchen's neck muscles are strong enough that they're almost not worth mentioning anymore.  She has some trouble still, and tends to launch herself backwards and forwards rather unexpectedly, but she can hold her head up.  She's also managed to capture her hands, and now spends most of her increasingly frequent waking hours with said hands shoved in her mouth.

Bryan wanted Olivia to experience exciting stuff on the 4th of July, so he bought a few little things for her to try.  After the first smoke ball sent all of its smoke to follow her as she backed away, she got a little nervous and stood as far away as possible when Bryan lit the next ones.  She liked watching them, but didn't want to be engulfed by smoke.  :-P  She was unimpressed with the sparkler and got rid of it as soon as it stopped sparking.  Her favorite by far were the pop-its.  She took great delight in throwing them on the ground to explode.

Although I am successfully running again, I will not be running the Springfield half-marathon in August.  One, I have yet to run more than 5 miles.  Two, I don't want to pay $55 to run.  I DO want to run a half-marathon sometime, though, so Bryan said he'll make one up and won't charge me to run it.  :)  We're going to host the First Annual Barhorst Half-Marathon.  It'll be in the fall and I might be the only one running it (although I welcome running buddies/competitors).  You should think about coming.  Details some other week.

Pictures and Video:
Bryan took this video specifically to have a record of some of Olivia's words:
Olivia Talks 5

Olivia's 4th of July:

Olivia works on her camp gift:

Gretchen finds her hands:

Olivia holding Gretchen, Gretchen sticking out her tongue for no reason, mommy failing at pictures: