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:

One new video (password BarhorstBrewed):
Gretchen's Zoo

Olivia loves showing off her princess costume (photos by Sarah):

Watching Finding Nemo with Gideon and Elias (photo by Sarah):

Gretchen makes sure that Baby Simeon always has his pacifier (photos by Sarah):

The girls have a double date with the Wey boys (photos by Elesha):

Taking a quick nap (on the kitchen floor) before lunch:

Hippo's recent photo shoot. Three profiles, one creepy alien baby, one incomprehensible blob (that is supposed to be a profile with an open mouth), and three of the new 3D renderings that our ultrasound tech did: