July 12-19

We visited Cleveland last week for Rudy's baptism.  The girls were very excited to meet their new baby cousin.  Olivia has of late been quite concerned with babies in bellies, and she is wondering when Aunt Justine's baby will come out.  She also spends large amounts of time going through lists of everyone she knows and asking whose belly each individual came out of.  We had an interesting talk about adoption based on this curiosity.

Gretchen is worried that her hair is going to fly away.  Whenever we walk in the wind, she grabs her hair and holds it onto her head.  It took me a while to figure out why she was constantly grabbing her head when we walked outside.  I asked once, though, and she told me that she didn't want her hair to fly away.  No amount of explanation or coaxing will convince her that this is not a very real and present danger.

Olivia always makes sure that people know daddy is a boy.  When we are out in public, we are invariably asked if Kaitlyn is a boy (interesting side note: people always assumed that the other two were girls based on their amount of hair, but now that we have two older girls the default guess is boy).  When I reply that Kaitlyn is, in fact, a girl, the response is something along the lines of "Another girl.  All girls."  This is when Olivia jumps in with, "We have a daddy.  He is a boy.  Four girls and one boy."  This conversation is so routine that when one cashier didn't ask, Olivia proceeded to inform her that, "Kaitlyn is another girl, but we have a boy daddy."

We've had a lot of talk about sisters and daughters in our house these past few months.  Olivia and Gretchen are constantly helping their sisters and putting their daughters to bed.  Sometimes the mothers are holding the daughters, sometimes the sisters are crying, sometimes the daughters are not listening...  All the dolls, barbies, and princess action figures (is that an oxymoron?) in our house get used regularly in one role or another.

Thursday was a big day because we switched began the process of switching our cell phone network from T-Mobile to Verizon.  T-Mobile just wasn't working out for anyone, with the possible exception of Josef.  So we all went haring off to Verizon (some hared faster than others, with everyone finally arriving 48 hours later (I'm sure Justine has more to say about THAT)), and only about a week too late for Jacob's taste.  The hope is that our phones will now work as phones again.  :)

Pictures:

Kaitlyn and Mommy:

Murry with all her grandbabies.  One of them was being uncooperative:

Kaitlyn in the bumbo and flying saucer:

My crazy quilt squares: