Barhorst Brewed: April 9-May 14

This baby has kind of been given the name Bean. When we first discussed what to call it, we were in the car and Bryan thought Arby's would be a good name because that's the first thing he saw when he looked out the window. However. The baby has been Bean in my head for a few months, and I'm the one writing the blog, so the name is Bean. It should be noted, though, that this name is not used much at all, and is pretty much for convenience and tradition at this point.

Olivia can tie her shoes. When she moved up to size 12, I decided it was time for tie shoes rather than slip ons. Luckily, I had this conversation with her before we got to the store and realized that casual little girl slip ons are much harder to find after size 11. That first day I spent 15 minutes with her talking her through tying her shoes. I ended up tying them (no surprise), but she helped and at least knew the process now. For the next two weeks, she whined about having to tie shoes. She would try to slip out the door in boots. She would convince Bryan that she had been trying for hours and he should just do it for her. She would tell me that she would do one if I did the other one, but then she would suddenly forget how to work laces. I made a deal with her that she should do the initial cross and then I would do the loops. When she mastered that, I told her she had to make the first loop, and I would run the bunny around the tree. Still she whined about the amount of effort I was making her expend. Then one day, she made the first loop without complaint. When it came time to tie the second shoe, I told her to make the loop and she threw her arms up in exasperation. I turned around to make dinner, telling her to let me know when she was ready for my help. Five seconds later she was scooting out the door with two tied shoes. I exclaimed, "What? You can tie your shoes?!" and she gave me a smirk before disappearing outside. And now she ties her own shoes always.

Kaitlyn is in a big girl bed. The day after Pascha Bryan and I decided that we were ready to fight the bed battle. We put the crib in a different corner of the room and brought up the toddler bed. Kaitlyn was very excited. She's done remarkably well with the new freedom, although she will always visit at least one sister before falling asleep for the night. She also likes to nap on Olivia's bed rather than her own. But she doesn't yell and scream in the doorway like her two sisters did, and she always ends up in her own bed before falling asleep for the night.

Gretchen Bernice had a birthday. She turned 4 on April 24 amid little fanfare. There was more fanfare earlier, when we had a small party for her on April 20. Then she spend the weekend with Grandma, receiving a present every day because that's how Grandma rolls. On her actual birthday, we did make a cake and give her our present. I asked what she wanted for dinner and she said, "Chips." Anything else? No, just chips. I made chalupas and she ate them happily with her chips.

When the weather got warmer, I took the girls down to the basement to go shopping for new clothes. We started by talking about money, and then I gave them each $7 (of play money) to spend. I brought the cash register down to the green room, set up all the dress racks, and told them that dresses were $1 each. They had to pick at least one church dress and the rest could be play dresses. We held dresses up and looked at tags and put back ones that were too short. Then they brought their purchases to me and paid for all of their new finery.

Pascha happened. Jacque and Will came for the weekend, and Kara and Jacob joined us for lunch on Sunday. Olivia and Gretchen slept through the whole midnight service, including the bells and the bright lights. Kaitlyn was awake the entire time, and swung from cuddly to slap happy and back again.

We've been getting together with friends to do school activities. While Olivia does phonics or math pretty much every day, the days with friends are dedicated to more crafty, hands-on activities. Since there are younger siblings involved, our ~~carefully planned~~ hastily slapped together ideas usually devolve somewhat. See the picture of cloud dough all over my floor below. We may have taken all of the children outside and sprayed them with a hose afterwards. The kids have fun, though, and we do get to do several things each time.

Olivia took a one woman stand against the English language the other day. She was learning the words as, has, is, and his. I told her as we started that sometimes s makes a z sound, but she declared that she doesn't like the z sound, so she wouldn't ruin s with it. She stubbornly read the words as "hass" and "iss," and no amount of persuading or threatening would make her change her mind. On that day, English was stupid and she was having no part of it. She has since come around to saying the words properly, which is good because spelling and pronunciation only get worse from here.

Things change quickly around here. Olivia's magic number is now 7 and Gretchen's is 100.

Any time someone calls to talk on the phone to one of the girls, Kaitlyn wants to "see the Oma." Never mind that these are normal phone calls, not video calls. Kaitlyn will follow the phone around saying "Kaitlyn want see the Oma." After I explain that not only is it not a video call, but it's not even with Oma, Kaitlyn looks mildly confused and then demands to see the Oma. At the end, though, when it's time to say goodbye, she says, "Oh, bye Keshia."

Gretchen learned that all of the helicopter seeds on our ground would grow into trees if they were in the ground, but would only die if left on the driveway. She began a one woman campaign to save all the maple trees, picking seeds up off the driveway and carefully planting them in the grass.

Kaitlyn has a weird little end of word stutter. It's the slowest stutter in the world, but seems pretty consistent. If she has a question or sentence ending in a consonant (t and s are the worst offenders) that is not immediately answered, she just repeats the consonant several times quietly. For example, "Kaitlyn lock it...t...t...t." Only ever at the end of a sentence; individual words don't suffer from this problem.

The garden is doing pretty well. I weeded a couple of beds (much to the consternation of my chiropractor, who can see our house from his practice) and Bryan weeded the rest. One has strawberries, one has asparagus, one will have broccoli, one will have tomatoes, and one will be for the girls to plant wildflowers. The last bed will probably get a weed mat and mulch so that we don't have to worry about it next spring. The raspberries look great; there are dozens of little shoots coming up, which is very exciting. Our trees look good, too. Correction: six of our seven trees look good. The last one looks dead, which is only a problem because it's either a pear or a plum and is therefore instrumental in pollinating one of the other trees. Unfortunately, we can't tell which tree it is because we forgot to write it down. Being 90% sure it's a plum, we have resigned ourselves to simply reordering both plum trees and simply having an excess of plums. We did also buy a pear that could pollinate either of our existing varieties, just in case. :) Our dead tree does look like it's regenerating from the roots, but that doesn't change our plans much since we bought a dwarf tree, so the one that is growing now is most likely below the graft and therefore not the same variety at all. Of course, we won't know anything for sure for a few years still, when fruit finally starts growing.

Last weekend I cashed in a Christmas present from Bryan and went to Fort Wayne for two days with my friends from church. We stayed with Kara and Jacob, got dressed up for a fancy dinner, went shopping, and saw an illusionist, all with no children attached.

On Monday I was back in Fort Wayne to sell dad's books to unwary seminarians. What didn't sell was donated, and there are many less books in my house than there used to be. Hooray. In order to make the trip, I moved all three girls into the back seat of the car and removed the middle seat. Boxes were stacked two high and toddler mattresses were used as a protective barrier. Now that we're home, I'm thinking I don't want to put the middle seat back in.

Jacque came to visit, ostensibly to help with makeup for the girls' dance recital, but mostly just to visit. She and I took a trip to Fort Wayne (it seems I'm there a lot lately) to meet with hall directors. We had lunch together and chatted about weddings and other things, which was lovely. We also took a trip to JoAnn to browse patterns and fabrics, just in case. :)

Today is the big dance recital. There are costumes and makeup and flowers in the hair. The girls are very excited. I will (maybe) provide more details ~~next week~~ the next time I write.

Look for a Baby Guesses Bonus Post on Wednesday.

Pictures and Video:
Vimeo video, password BarhorstBrewed
Sweet and Sassy

The movie must have been very scary: