November 23-30

I've started running again.  After the half-marathon in April, I pretty much stopped cold turkey, but this week I decided to begin hopping on the treadmill every morning before the girls get up.  I have about 15 minutes between Bryan's alarm going off and their usual wake-up time, which is just enough to fit in a mile or two.  Nothing too strenuous, as that would put Bryan right over the edge (he's already only grudgingly accepting of the fact that I chose 5 months pregnant as the appropriate time to start running again), but enough to get me up and moving and full of endorphins for the day.

Olivia read Cat in the Hat to her monkey the other day:  "The sun did not shine.  It was too wet to play.  So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.  I sat there with Sally.  We sat there, we two.  I sat there with Sally.  We sat there, we two.  Well...  What would YOU do if your mother asked YOU?  Oops, I forgot the middle!"  Contrary to the end of this display, however, she actually knows this book quite well.

We've been working with Olivia on actually listening to the bible story read during prayers at night.  Usually I'll give her something to listen for and then ask a question at the end.  She has yet to know the answer.  The other night, though, I told her to listen to where Jesus and his family went to hide from Herod.  Bryan and I even redirected her attention as I read the line about Egypt a second time.  At the end of the story, I asked where Jesus and his family were hiding.  "Um...  The laundry room!"  Bryan had to leave the room to compose himself.

We learned on Sunday that Gretchen knows the word "hat."  A baby in a hat sat in the pew in front of us, and Gretchen spent 20 minutes saying, "See baby hat!"  Nothing could dissuade her from making this observation or convince her to make it it a quieter voice.  The whole back right of the church knew that Gretchen could see the baby's hat.  Continually.

As illustrated in the story above, Gretchen attempts sentences for most of her communications.  Her favorite question to ask is "doing?"  At breakfast, we talk about how we "see Daddy water", "see milk", "want oatmeal", and know that "Daddy go work."  She listens to conversations and chimes in whenever she hears a word she recognizes, and she repeats everything.  As a result, she says "minute" quite clearly with absolutely no idea what it means, and she's attempted "seriously."  Seriously?

This extended weekend we'll be spending with my family, so there are sure to be plenty of pictures from the paparazzi adoring aunts and uncles next week, assuming I can convince them to send said pictures to me. 

Pictures:

November 16-23

You may not know this, but our house came with 7 locks and only 4 keys.  We had 2 deadbolts, but zero deadbolt keys, and none of the doorknob locks matched each other.  Bryan released his inner handyman this week and fixed our doors so that now we have one key that opens the knobs and deadbolts on both the front and back door!  The next project (postponed for the time being) is to replace the lock in the sliding door with one for which we have a key.  :)  This weekend Bryan also spent time with his dad finishing some walls in the basement so that we can get an electrician to come outfit his office with light and heat!

More news in Bryan's life: He got older!  His birthday was Friday and he's now only two years away from 30.  Also, we've entered the brief window of time during which I can tease him about how much older than me he is.

Words not mentioned in previous posts that Gretchen says now, either because she already knew them (and her mother forgot to list them earlier) or because she learned them this week: coat, boot, ribbit, work, milk, more, baby, sock, belly, eye, potty, hello, peekaboo, up, down, look, see, want, plug, fork, plate, hot, book, oatmeal, crown, stroller, ice cream, phone, ball, thank you, please, Scooby Doo, open, Lolly (Olivia), doing, big, barbie, oh.

Phrases Olivia uses (one from me and one that she still says wrong):
"You're a silly goose!"
"You need to talk about Gretchen." -- meaning that I need to talk TO Gretchen.

We're at a tough developmental stage right now.  Gretchen is into parallel play, so she will happily go off by herself and play quietly.  She likes to be in the same room as others, but doesn't require it.  Olivia, however, is a copycat, and thinks that everyone else's ideas are the best.  Unfortunately, this means that Olivia follows Gretchen around the house, stealing her toys and taking over her games.

Gretchen has a dish and utensil at every meal now.  Her preferred use for the utensil is to hold it in her right hand while she puts food in her mouth with her left hand, but she's improving.  Her coordination is better with a fork than with a spoon, mostly because I don't give her very many spoonable foods to feed herself.

Gretchen has begun potty training.  It's going very slowly and thus far she has not produced anything while actually sitting on the potty.  She wants to sit, though, so sit she does.  A plus to potty training this time around is that Gretchen says "potty" very clearly, so I always know what she means.  Olivia's word for potty was "dobby," which was the same word she used for pretty much everything else in her life at the time.

Olivia has elaborate conversations with her dolls and stuffed animals.  During quiet time, which is one of the only times she's not following Gretchen around, I listen to her make up stories and scenarios to keep Barney and her babies amused.  She's also started projecting her wants onto her playthings, as if the fact that Barbie wants a piece of cake might trick me into leaving a piece of cake unattended on the table.  :)

Pictures:

November 9-16

Gretchen is trying her hand at sentences.  This week we got "What doing, Mommy?", "Where Daddy go?", and "No, Olivia, no sit Mommy."  She's been stringing words together for a while, but this week is the first time I heard clear sentences.

More old Gretchen words: chair, sit, coat, milk, sock, pants, shirt, car.

Olivia "reads" books by talking through the pictures.  This is wonderful, as she is now more content than ever to sit quietly with a book.  She also enjoys reading to Gretchen.  However.  If the words in the book do not match what she sees in the pictures, Olivia will (occasionally, but with increasing regularity) call out the actual reader, claiming that words/pages were skipped.

Tuesday was Hippo's ultrasound.  Everything looks great, and Bryan and I got a wave during the scan.  :)  The office that I'm with now started doing a 3D rendering during ultrasounds, so a few of the pictures we got are really cool.  Those are all below.  Of course, if you move during the rendering then you get wavy pictures, so Hippo's moving hand in the third 3D picture makes his head look wobbly.  Side note: "his" is used generically here; we did not find out the gender, even by accident.  Bryan says he's 52% sure Hippo is a girl, though.

I showed Olivia and Gretchen the ultrasound pictures, and Olivia looked at me and said, "that's a head!"  I told her it was a baby, and she wanted to know whose baby.  "Our baby!"  "Gretchen's baby?"  "No, our new baby that's in Mommy's tummy right now."  She looked skeptical.  When Bryan went over things with her again later, she lifted up my shirt and said, "there's no baby there!"  Bryan told her it was inside, and pointed to a section of my stomach.  I pointed to a different spot and mentioned that the baby was over there.  At that, Olivia looked at Bryan and said seriously, "No, Daddy, it's over here, actually."

The girls also had appointments this week, so we got to find out how big they are.  Olivia is a full meter tall and weighs 33.2 pounds.  Gretchen is 33.5 inches and weighs 25 pounds, 4 ounces.  Six inches of height difference looks incredibly large at this size.  :)  As for milestones, both girls are doing well.  We did learn that Olivia can't draw a person yet because she is bothered by the imperfect circle for the head and refuses to move on.  She is, however, crushing it in the language department, where she's apparently supposed to have mastered sentences of 3-4 words.  For those of you who haven't heard Olivia recently, she speaks more in paragraphs than in sentences.  :)  I was also told that Gretchen's ability to put on her own socks and shoes is a little ahead of schedule, but her dislike shots is about par for the course.

During the appointment, the doctor asked Olivia if she was going to have a baby brother or sister, and she said sister.  Then the doctor asked if she had baby dolls at home, and she said, "yes, but not in my tummy!"

This was concert week for me, so I had rehearsals every night.  My family came down for the concert on Saturday, which was a nice, albeit brief, visit.  Josef and Alison stayed through until today.

Pictures and Video:

November 2-9

The Halloween party in Cleveland last weekend was nice, but even nicer was getting to sleep in for an extra hour on Sunday.  I think we'll send the kids to Grandma and Grandpa's for Daylight Savings day every year!

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but our lovely little backyard fence got slightly smushed on the U-Haul's way out of our driveway.  It was still functional, but less aesthetically pleasing than it had been.  I am happy to report that this has been remedied.  On Wednesday we had a guy come out and by the time he left, our fence had regained the decorative half of its title.

Gretchen's recent words include milk, snapkin, cake, and ponytail.  She also says car, baby, plug, blanket, book, mommy, daddy, and (I think) Olivia.  The latter list is made up of words I've neglected to mention, even though she's been saying them for a while now.

I had a craft show on Saturday, so Bryan watched the girls.  Everything seems to have gone fairly well, although I do question Olivia's outfit choice.  After the girls went to bed, though, Bryan came up to me and said, "I'm going to go lie down for the first time today.  You have a hard job."  If I'm ever feeling under-appreciated, I'm taking a day off and leaving Bryan alone with them.  :)

On Saturday night we went to church.  When we came home and began eating dinner, Olivia looked up from her plate of quiche (which she was eating without complaining) and said, "I need more broccoli, please."  ...  We're not sure whose child we accidentally brought home from church, but we're keeping her.  :)  As a side note, I made this quiche with ground beef and California veggies.  Members of KAQ, I recommend that you try it before renewing your membership this year.

Also food related, I have an informational bulletin for my mother and siblings: Cream of Wheat is simply farina (a ground up part of wheat).  Farina can be found in bulk food stores for $1-1.50 a pound, which is significantly better than the cost of Cream of Wheat at the grocery store.

Pictures:

October 26-November 2

Gretchen has started singing "Alleluia."  It comes out "ah-luuu," and she sings it over and over, especially in our chapel after prayers.  She got to try it out at a liturgy for the first time on Friday and was quite proud of her participation.

My words coming out of Olivia's mouth:
"That is my plan."
"Shall we get Gretchen?"
"You're driving me crazy!"
"Yes, that would be fine."

Our newest baby is now being affectionately called Hippo.  When I was pregnant with Olivia, I was never hungry.  When I was pregnant with Gretchen, I was hungry all the time, but usually for healthy things.  With Hippo, I'm most hungry late at night, and then only for snacks.  :/

We've been quite busy this week, mostly with Halloween related things.  Olivia loves it, because Halloween means she gets to wear her fairy princess costume out of the house more often.  We did storytime in costume on Wednesday, went trick-or-treating on Thursday night with some friends (it turns out that our road doesn't have enough traffic for anyone to bother with handing out candy), and attended a Halloween party on Friday.  Then the girls went to Grandma and Grandpa's for a couple of nights while Bryan and I attended another Halloween party on Saturday at his sister's house.

Pictures and Videos: