August 14-28

Kaitlyn walks into the oratory and immediately starts singing and crossing herself.  I would guess that she's trying to do the Beatitudes since that's what we sing every morning.

Gretchen and Olivia can both say The Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary unassisted.  They still fake it through the occasional difficult phrase, so we're working on enunciating.

Surprising words that the older girls use (correctly, for the most part):
Surely
Precisely
I rest my case
Perfect

Words that are still pronounced incorrectly: aziting (exciting), packpack

Kaitlyn's newest words: son, spirit, amen, marks, set, go, up, yeah, yes ("yeah...ssss" or "yeaaaaaas"), bye ("daa" while waving), nose, belly ("baa" while smacking someone's belly), down, can't

Kaitlyn has a favorite book: Toot Toot Beep Beep.  She brings it to bed at night, reads it in the car, and requests it often throughout the day.  I think part of it is that she doesn't have as much access to the other board books as Olivia and Gretchen did.  Even when she has other books available, though, this book is still her first choice.

I made salsa using a small number of my tomatoes and a somewhat larger number of CSA tomatoes.  I had planned to make only one batch of six pints, but I had many more tomatoes left than anticipated, so I ended up making 5 quarts each of two different kinds of salsa.  The good news is that they are delicious.  Next time I have tomatoes I'm making some pasta sauce.

I started babysitting two little girls last week.  Monday through Thursday we have a three-year-old and a one-year-old come stay with us during the day.  All the kids are used to each other now and things have been going pretty smoothly thus far.

We got the rice sensory bin out again.  Another mess was made, and my initial reaction was to never, ever do rice again.  BUT.  All three girls played in it and sprinkled it around and danced in it and generally amused themselves for such a long time...  And when it came time to clean up the rice, Kaitlyn was genuinely upset that I wouldn't let her rescatter the neatly swept pile.  So I guess maybe I'll buy a bag of rice periodically and let them spread it all over my living room.  Sweeping up rice is rather therapeutic...

We have a caterpillar.  I rescued him off our driveway and put him in a jar.  Since he was on the driveway rather than on a plant, I stuffed his jar with an assortment of leaves in order to find a variety he likes.  There is a type he prefers, so now I just have to hunt for that particular plant in my yard in order to keep him fed.  Periodically I stick something new in to see if he takes to that as well.  No luck so far.  Olivia is very excited to check on him every morning to see if he's a butterfly yet.

Pictures:
A trip to the zoo.  Which is who?

Gretchen drew a chalk picture of Daddy:

I mounted and framed the silhouettes that mom helped me draw:

Bryan made a baby icon stand for the girls.  Kaitlyn can reach it easily:

Our calendar has a months/days/weather section now:

The caterpillar: