August 2-9

Our friends the Sledges came to visit last Saturday and were able to stay until Tuesday morning.  Bryan got to play lots of old video games with someone more on his level and the four of us played Dominion every night.  We're trying to convince the Sledges that they want to buy a house near us, so we also spent time driving by likely domiciles.

One night last week I was putting the girls to bed and had a sudden urge to play a particular piece of music.  After everyone was quiet, I went to my workroom, located my practice mute, and played viola for over an hour.  I did not find the piece I wanted to play.  I did, however, rediscover all sorts of old music and when I finished I hung my viola up on the convenient viola holder that is mounted on the wall.  Since then, my viola has been so wonderfully accessible that I've played almost every day.  It's not much -- ten minutes here and there, just playing rather than practicing -- but any playing at all is a vast improvement.  The first time I played during the day, Olivia was in the room and, after recovering from her surprise, said, "Mommy, can we get a little violin for me so that I can play like that?"  Then she went and fetched Gretchen, "Gretchen, come and look at what Mommy is doing!"  Gretchen came running in, stopped short, and said, "Oh Mommy, that is beautiful."


Olivia recently asked when Kaitlyn would start wearing dresses, so I caught a fabulous sale at Meijer and picked up three dresses and two skirts in Kaitlyn sizes.  She can wear the dresses until she starts crawling, but then she's relegated to skirts until she walks because dresses and crawling just don't go together.  She looks incredibly cute, and Olivia is pleased that Kaitlyn is FINALLY getting dressed in the morning (it would seem that 3-year-olds don't accept sleepers as appropriate attire for the day, even for those under four months old).

I've decided that Kaitlyn sounds like a dial-up modem.  Maybe I'm mis-remembering what babies sound like, but she's the first one that has inspired this thought.  Her squeals and clicks are rather endearing, and she's recently added a low growly sound that fits right in with the rest of her electronic connection repertoire.  It's too bad that when she's old enough to read this post she won't have any idea what I'm talking about.  Google it, dear.

Gretchen has developed a recent disdain for forks.  Suddenly she eats everything with her hands, painting her face with the goop and crumbling the rest in tight little fists.  Since she does still eat everything and it takes less time than it used to, we haven't been fighting it too much.  Gretchen also has a new love for washing her hands, so she happily trots off to the bathroom after every meal to spend twenty minutes or so cleansing herself.  I'm not sure if these two new habits are products of each other or merely coincidental.

Olivia had a birthday on Monday.  She is now a proud four years old, unless she's counting bites of vegetables at dinner time, in which case she'd like to be three still, thank you very much.  She got dresses, princess dolls, and a "flute" (a recorder).  She also got $5 which she used to buy a Barbie.  She was very happy to be shopping with her own money, but I found it rather depressing since she doesn't understand the concept of money at all and everything she saw was about eight times what she could afford.  She was very accepting of "you can't afford that", though, and seems perfectly content with the Barbie that we discovered on clearance.

Thursday we drove to Michigan for a wedding (and to spend some time with my family).  Gretchen scandalized traumatized the whole household with her bare bottom and her little toddler potty that we set up in the corner of the living room.  She continues to do well with potty training, though, and we even made a dry trip (in underwear!) to the park for a couple of hours on Friday.

Pictures and Videos:
Vimeo Video (password BarhorstBrewed):
Olivia and the Monsters
Gretchen Sings
Monsters!
Baby Rudy (spoiler: the real, live baby Rudy is not in this video)
Life Lessons With Olivia
Monkey See, Monkey Do

Google's AutoAwesome strikes again, showing the difficulties of getting three children to look at the camera at the same time:

Olivia and Gretchen play with nerd game minis:

The book picture:

 

Kaitlyn:

My new brain (the small binder that organizes my life) cover:

The best pictures from our photo shoot.  I took 20, but these are the only  ones where all three girls were looking the right direction:

Olivia accidentally took a screenshot while video chatting with Oma and Uncle Joe on her birthday:

 

Gretchen was calling this washcloth her "king."  She walked past me saying, "I have my king.  I am a king now."

Who needs toys when you have boxes?