June 8-15

I have somehow forgotten to mention Gretchen's progress towards walking these last few weeks.  Since I don't want anyone reading my blog years from now to assume that Gretchen never learned to walk simply because I didn't ever mention it, here we go:  Gretchen takes steps frequently.  I don't know exactly when her first steps were, but they've happened.  Her most impressive achievement to date was when she took 7 steps, fell down, and then stood back up to take 7 more steps.  In the later portions of this week, she's been going out of her way to stand up and walk a few steps before crawling the rest of the way to her destination.  Beyond that, though, she seems largely uninterested in the process of walking.  Or perhaps more accurately, she's decided that walking a a fun hobby, but certainly no way to live one's life permanently.  :-P

Bryan and I have officially begun the process of looking for homes in Lima.  We have two years before Olivia starts school, which is when we want to be settled, so we're not in a huge rush.  Ideally, this means that we will be able to hold out until the perfect house comes along, even if that means we only look and don't buy anything for another year or so.  We'll see.  :/  There will be a bonus post about our house search saga... sometime.  :)

Justine discovered that you can search a blog for specific things.  In the upper left corner, right next to the Blogger "B," is a little search box.  You can put in a word and the blog will pull up all the posts containing that word.  I'm very excited about this feature.

Olivia's favorite phrase lately is "Um, I don't know."  My question asking has gotten both more creative and more repetitive.

We've noticed that Olivia's playtime has turned a corner.  She does a lot of quiet playing by herself (which is not really new), but now she narrates what she's doing.  She makes up stories for the toys she's playing with and moves them around as they act things out.  Olivia has also discovered that puzzles are quite a fun activity, and she will work on one patiently for a while before asking for help.  Whatever isn't done when she does ask for help isn't getting done by her, though.  "Can you help me with this?" means "Will you do this for me?", and any attempts to enlist Olivia's aid in finishing her own puzzle are met with, "Um, I don't know."

No pictures this week since I'm writing this from Steve and Murry's house.  That just means you get extra pictures next week!