March 19-April 2

We are very concerned with seeing underwear over here.  Seen underwear is both embarrassing (when it's your own) and hilarious (when it's someone else's), and slight measures are taken to ensure that one does not have underwear showing while changing.  "Slight" entails hiding behind a pillow and chastising others when they look, but does not ever extend to going into a less public room, preferably one with a door.  No measures are taken to ensure that underwear is not seen while sitting in decidedly un-ladylike ways.  Does this count as modesty?

Kaitlyn is capable of opening doors, but our house has unusually high doorknobs and she cannot reach them.  This has been great for keeping her out of (some) places she doesn't belong.  However.  This past week we left a chair too close to a door and she realized that she could push the chair against the door and then open the door.  I'm actually surprised that it took her this long; she's been pushing chairs around the kitchen to get up on the counters for months.  Regardless, it took until this week for her to realize she had this power, but now no door is safe.  Luckily for the rest of the family, chairs are generally inconveniently far away from doors and she doesn't feel like putting forth the effort to get them most of the time.

Gretchen has an imaginary friend named Hokya.  It took us a few weeks to realize this because Hokya first appeared immediately after the girls met Jacob's girlfriend, Katya.  We figured that Olivia and Gretchen were just incorporating a slightly mangled version of Katya's name into their play.  My pronunciation has been corrected several times, though, and Gretchen refers to Hokya as a separate (pretend) being rather than as whichever Barbie she is playing with at the time.  When asked to describe Hokya, Gretchen says that she is just pretend.  Upon further questioning, I have learned that Gretchen pretends that Hokya looks like Gretchen.

Olivia has grown a lot this winter.  All her winter dresses are several inches short in the sleeves, and her size 6 leggings that I thought would made it to summer are suddenly hovering above her ankles.  I finally went out and bought some size 7 leggings for her and the smallest dresses got passed down to Gretchen.

Bryan's work has a recognition system that allows managers to award points for good work.  The points can then be spent on various items.  From what I understand, it's pretty arbitrary.  It's also being discontinued, so Bryan's manager has been handing out his allotted points freely in order to use them all up before the program ends.  As a result, Bryan was recently awarded more points than he's ever had before and was able to spend them on a Barbie Jeep for the girls.  They somehow failed to notice the giant box in our TV room, so they were surprised and delighted when they came out from playing to discover a fully assembled miniature car taking up most of the floor.  ("They" in this case refers to Olivia and Gretchen; Kaitlyn "helped" Bryan and me put the jeep together.)  We let them play together in it indoors for a few days before installing the battery and moving it outside.

Kaitlyn had a birthday!  She's two now, which means very little in terms of, well, anything, but we celebrated anyway.  Olivia in particular was disappointed by Kaitlyn's unchanged appearance on the morning of her birthday.  Apparently she was expecting a dramatic change.  :)  Kaitlyn has no idea that she's two, despite our attempts to coach her.

Pictures:
I made some new crazy squares:

Kaitlyn on her birthday:

The girls smile for the camera.  Kaitlyn appears to have reached the awkward smile phase:

Driving the new jeep (before the battery was attached):