August 18-25

Gretchen news:
-She's in 6-9 month clothes.  I don't remember when that happened with Olivia, but I think it was a little later.  I swapped out all the smaller sizes this week and Gretchen doesn't even look like she's swimming in the bigger stuff.
-She officially has two teeth now.  More potential for biting her thumb when she manages to catch it, but that hasn't bothered her yet.
-Baths are terrible.  It's like James has come again.  Sometimes I can trick her into being accepting of the water, but then she'll move her limbs and instantly be upset again.  The only thing worse than baths is bedtime.
-Bedtime is terrible (you knew that was coming).  She takes a final nap beginning between 4 and 5 and then is determined to be awake forever!  ...Or at least for several hours.  Preferably no less than 4.  I can't even convince her to take another nap sometime in there, so by the time she goes to bed for the night, Gretchen is one tired baby.
-She's a leech.  Olivia held on about as well as a sack of rice when she was being carried.  Gretchen is much more interested in preserving her own skin, so she'll cling like a baby koala to whatever she can grab.  Usually that's my shirt, but every now and again she'll get the back of my arm instead.  :(  Oh, and one Sunday she grabbed on to the communion cloth when it was put under her chin.  That was a fun 30 seconds or so while we all tried to disentangle her clenched fingers.  :)

Olivia news:
-She sings.  This should surprise no one.  The other night, Olivia made up a wonderful head-banging rock song about Oma and Opa.  It went something like this: O-MA!  O-PA!  O-MA!  O-PA!  James!  Omao-PA!  O-MA!  O-PA!  We've also heard songs about the mommy and daddy octopus.
-She's about to lose a fingernail.  She shut her finger in a door a couple of weeks ago and it didn't look so bad at first, but now the nail it probably 98% detached.  Bryan insists that we try to keep it from coming off completely, so we go through copious amounts of band-aids and masking tape in an attempt to keep it covered.
-She doesn't like listening to crying.  Whenever Gretchen is sad, Olivia says, "Don't cry, baby."  This usually starts out gently, but quickly escalates until Gretchen is crying and Olivia is yelling, "Stop!  Don't cry!  No!  Stop cry!  Don't!  Stop, don't cry!"  We also heard a "quiet, baby!" come from Olivia's room one trying night.
-She's good at filling in familiar words and phrases.  If I pause at the right point, Olivia can help read most of her books.  She also does parts of the Lord's Prayer and the Creed.
-She knows some colors.  Olivia will identify things as being yellow, blue, black, and green.  She gets yellow right almost all of the time, but the other three are hit or miss.  She can also say purple, orange, red, and pink, but has to be reminded that those colors exist first.
-She's in full potty-training mode.  Bryan built a little set of steps so that Olivia can get up to the potty and sink by herself.  Since she already knows how to unsnap her own diaper, convincing her to put herself on the potty was pretty easy.  Of course, that means she can also get off by herself, which would be fine if she could put her diaper back ON by herself.  As it is, I generally catch her running around naked (because I have to leave the room when she goes to the bathroom -- there are worse things) and have to recapture her to put a diaper back on.  Next week we're buying some training undies and seeing how that goes.

Johannah:
-I'm auditioning for two orchestras in the next month.  Lima has openings for subs and Springfield has section positions.  We'll see how those go.  Regardless of the results, my Monday orchestra starts back up tomorrow and I'm pretty excited to be playing regularly again.
-I got a food processor.  Let the peanut butter making commence.  Well, let me buy the peanuts, first, and then it will commence.  For those of you who don't know about the peanut butter project, I'll tell the story next week.  Short version: there are 73 pounds of peanuts in my future.  If you want to buy some for about $1.30 a pound, I will not object.  I have only one rule: I'm not going to ship them, so I'll have to be seeing you in person in order to deliver them.

Bryan:
-Working late has decreased so that he only has to stay late twice a week.  It's been nice to have him home at the normal time again.
-He declared August "get stuff done" month.  We have an ever-growing list taped to the bedroom door that we've been steadily chipping away at.  Bryan's biggest accomplishment was the steps for Olivia, but he's gotten lots of little stuff done, too.

Pictures:

August 11-18

There are some birthday pictures up on the July 28-August 4 post.  We also took a video, but I'm having trouble getting it to upload...

Tim Horton's is up and running.  Just in time for the FAB Fun Run.  In case visiting us and running wasn't enough, there's coffee just down the street.  We can incorporate a stop into the run if need be.  :)

There are a few ladies at the church we go to that tend to tell the same stories every week, pretty much word for word.  I assume it's because they don't remember that we've already heard these stories so many times that we could recite them back.  Or, in the case of one woman who is a native Greek speaker, perhaps these are the only stories she knows in English.  Also, her accent is so thick that the first dozen or so times I heard her stories, I caught a few more details each time.  Thursday I had a new experience.  The Greek woman pulled me aside after church and I knew I was going to hear her favorite story again.  Only this time, she seemed to also forget that I don't speak Greek.  I heard the whole thing in Greek!  She uses the same inflections and hand motions no matter which language she's speaking, so I knew which answers were appropriate.  I felt like I really understood what she was saying.  :)

Google is taking new street view pictures in our neighborhood.  I've now seen four of the street view cameras mounted on cars (splashed with the Google Maps logo, which is how I know what they are) as I walk around.  Does this mean that when the website gets updated I'll be in four places at once?

Olivia can count to ten with a little help.  Actually, she can count to 9, and then puts 30! on the end.  As a stalling/waiting technique, she and I count to thirty a lot, and she says thirty for me when I pause at the end.  Of course, now she thinks 30 comes after 9...  Some days she does better than others with the whole counting thing.  Often she counts like the king in Monty Python: 1, 2, 5!  Oh well.  She also knows that two is more than one, so she sounds very smart when she's talking about seeing two trucks or having two monkeys.  Unfortunately, I've come to the conclusion that she doesn't really know how many two is; I'm pretty sure two just means "not one."

My motivation for running has been lacking since I ran the half marathon.  I was afraid that might happen.  I know myself well enough to realize that I need something to work toward in order to keep working.  That's why I don't tend to just walk around the block (or around the mall in the winter).  I need to be going somewhere.  My motivation is certainly not helped by the fact that the days are getting shorter so my morning runs are getting darker.  No one wants to get up when it's still dark out...

Gretchen is a spectacular sleeper.  She's also a great napper.  Unfortunately, she's not so hot at actually falling asleep.  We've been trying to find the optimal bedtime lately, but no matter how early or late it is, she sleeps for 30-60 minutes and then wakes up.  Bryan thought maybe she was taking a nap and then needed to be up for a bit, so we tested that theory.  Her normal naps are at least an hour, though, and she wakes up happy.  This pre-sleep nap is shorter and she wakes up cranky.  She's cranky if we get her up, she's cranky if we leave her down...  She fusses for 1.5-3 hours and then goes down for good.  It's like she knows it's coming, too, so some nights she'll fight the pre-sleep nap as well.  Those of you who were at camp know how well Gretchen goes down for daytime naps: put her down, stuff a pacifier in her mouth, cover her with a blanket, give her something to hold so she doesn't grab the pacifier, and she's good to go.  Light and noise don't bother her and she's similarly unfazed by toddlers peeking over the edge of her bed to see if she's really asleep.  At night time, though, she stiffens her limbs, bites her pacifier, and makes terrible noises that sound like an alien might come bursting out of her belly at any moment.  We're going to keep working on this.  Twenty-five points if you suggest a working solution before I think of it myself.

Pictures and Video:

Bonus post: Flashback -- The Apartment

A picture tour of the apartment where we lived when we first got married:

The gnome guarded our entryway:

The front closet.  Also a drill that Tom picked out and wrapped all by himself because my mother would like it and I am my mother's daughter.

The living room.  To the right as you come in and then swinging around the room counter-clockwise.

The wall to the left as you come in.

Our icon wall and dining room:

The kitchen.

The back hallway to the bathroom, towel closet, and bedroom.