March 8-15

If you missed it, there was a Bonus Post on Wednesday.

We have two sets of MeReaders now.  Each set comes with eight books and one electronic reader that will read each book out loud.  Olivia got the Disney Princess set for Christmas and liked it so much that we got her the Disney Classics set for Happy March.  Both sets contain a story titled "Aladdin," but it turns out that the actual stories are actually quite different.  The first thing Bryan and I did when Olivia opened the second set was check to see how similar the story lines were.  In the Disney Princess version, the story focuses on Jasmine.  Aladdin is a minor character and the Genie is mentioned in passing on one of the ten pages.  The Disney Classics version is much more similar to the movie.  :-P  We didn't tell Olivia about the differences, but after listening to them a couple of times, she figured it out.  One day I overheard her doing an experiment: She had both Aladdin books side by side on the floor and was using the readers to listen to both books at the same time.  :)

I've recently started trying a new tactic to avoid frustration at bedtime.  When both girls are in bed, I go into their room, sit in the chair, and sing songs for about ten minutes.  I don't feel like I'm taking extra time out of my evening, and they calm down and (theoretically) continue falling asleep without interrupting us anymore.  ...Gretchen is still a bit fuzzy on her part in this.  Anyway, I started with hymns, but now I have a noted Psalter, so I've begun using that.  The Psalms are grouped into 30 days (morning and evening), so if I keep this up then we'll be completing the Psalms about every two months.  Not a bad deal, especially if Gretchen starts staying in bed when I'm done.

The snow is slowly but surely melting here and we've had some nice enough days that we've been outside a little bit.  So far our outside time has been limited to walking to the mailbox and back, but that's mostly because Olivia freaked out the first time she got mud on her shoe, so I am disinclined to let them run free in the muddy back yard, lest I have to deal with the fallout afterwards.  We are anxiously awaiting more sunshine and temperatures that allow us to lose the coats.

And speaking of anxiously awaiting, Hippo is only three weeks (give or take) away.  Have you made your guesses yet?  Justine pointed out that Gretchen has not, so I guess I'll have to get on that.  Also of note, the baptism will be in Lima on Sunday, April 26.  All are welcome and we do have floor space if you need to stay overnight.

We're heading to Michigan this weekend for one last trip before Hippo's arrival.  Then it's down to Sidney for a few days so that Bryan can go in to work for some meetings.  He's hoping that saying the same thing in person that he's been saying via email will be more persuasive to the department for which he's currently building a database.  Wish him luck.

Pictures:

Josef and Gretchen (the last time we visited):

Gretchen was very attached to the baby powder one morning:

Olivia's fabulous post-braids hair: