April 10-17

I made the girls a calendar.  They want to know when things are happening, so I drew a calendar with little pictures on it and we cross of a day every night.  I'm hoping this will help with Gretchen's confusion about when her birthday is -- she knew at Kaitlyn's birthday that her own birthday would be in a month, so now she's just patiently waiting: "Is it month yet?"

Olivia had her school readiness screenings this week.  I was given very little information, but I know that she got to use scissors once.  They're sending results ...sometime.  The two big disappointments about the screenings (from her point of view) were that Gretchen didn't get to come and that the school that had cookies for the open house did not also have some at the screening.  :)  In the car on the way to the first screening, I had to combat a litany of "I am only happy if I am with Gretchen.  I love Gretchen.  I will be sad if Gretchen is not there."  At least she loves her sister.

Gretchen has been taking control of her play a little more, creating her own dialogue rather than following Olivia's lead.  She got an hour of being the oldest while Olivia was at school and didn't quite know what to do with herself.  She did help me decide what to make for dinner, so I guess that's something.  :)

Kaitlyn is walking about half the time now.  She tends to speak in tongues, but has the occasional "uh-oh" and is beginning to say "no."  Her favorite word is still "dadadadadada."  She loves being outside and will stand at the window staring outside for long periods of time, waiting for some unwary visitor to open the door and let her out.  I'm trying to give her more time outside now that it's warm again.

Bryan built a rockbox for the girls.  It's an in ground sandbox, but with pea gravel instead of sand because we didn't want to deal with the mess.  Olivia and Gretchen have some buckets and a couple of large plastic trucks and are quite happy to dig in the rocks.

On the garden front, our fruit trees are getting leaves, which is very exciting.  My raspberry patch has 13 plants with leaves, which might be more exciting.  I have three rhubarb plants growing and the peas and broccoli are in the ground.  :)

Pictures:

Kaitlyn's 1-year pictures:

Our updated picture wall:

A bunch of cuties:

Kaitlyn stole my burrito:

Johannah and Sarah at the conference:

Three sisters and a window:

Kaitlyn plays peek-a-boo: