July 6-13

Lots of Olivia updates this week:

Olivia has learned the word "naked."  Not only has she learned it, but she thinks it's hilarious.  Anyone who does not meet Olivia's standards of dress is identified as being naked.  Loudly.

I've mentioned the Monkey Silly Song before, where Larry from the Veggie Tales teaches us how to tell the difference between a monkey and an ape (a monkey has a tail, an ape does not).  Olivia enjoys singing this song, and we've used it to properly identify one of her small plastic animals as an ape.  After we finished discussing it one day, though, she picked up a plastic sheep and said, "The sheep doesn't have a tail.  It's an ape!"

In the car, we sometimes sing There's a Hole in the Bucket.  Olivia was trying to sing this and got all the words and melody right except for one small problem: she got caught in a loop.  "There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there's a hole in the bucket..."  I finally rescued her from her loop and told her to "fix it, dear Henry," to which she responded with a quizzical, "fix it?!"

We are gaining an understanding of time over here.  Olivia always wants to know what time it is (and always insists that the time is one-two).  I showed her where the clock is in the car, so she reads the numbers off even though she doesn't know what they mean.  She does have a vague understanding of order of events, though, and correctly uses words like "first," "next," and "later."  She's also been trying to explain when things happen, and this is where the confusion shows.  "Last night" means "earlier than now" and "tomorrow" means "much later."  When Bryan comes home for lunch each day, he often gets a recitation of all the things (like breakfast) that we did "last night."

And one Gretchen note: She says woof.  Kind of.  If you can catch Gretchen at the right moment, she will answer "what does a dog say?" with "fffff."  My mom taught her this trick while we were in Florida and is quite proud of the fact that she still does it.  :)

Pictures:

Some Florida pictures from Aunt Rebecca (Jillian, Gretchen, Johannah, and Rachelle at the beach; Gretchen with Rachelle; Olivia shows off her red, white, and blue nails; Olivia eats ice cream):

We saw this truck full of watermelons as we drove home.  They didn't look very secure as we sped down I-75: