Gretchen: You know, when I do very hard work I forget everything.
Gretchen: When I am a mommy, I am going to let my big ones eat pizza and my little ones eat macaroni and cheese. And I am going to let them do whatever they want. Will that make me a grandma-mommy? Because Grandmas let us do whatever we want and Mommys don't.
Jillian: If your mommy has three daughters and Aunt Justine has three sons, who has more sons?
Olivia: Mommy doesn't have any sons.
Jillian: So who has more sons?
Olivia: None of them?
Gretchen: Aunt Jillian does!
Olivia: You are not the boss of the world.
Bryan: That was you, in your daughter's voice, just now.
Me: That was actually Oma, through me, in my daughter's voice just now.
Kaitlyn, kissing my stomach: Good boys belly.
*Kaitlyn hands me a toy.*
Kaitlyn: Help, mommy. Fix it please.
*I fix it and hand it back.*
Kaitlyn: I did it! Mommy, look Kaitlyn made!
Olivia: You are getting very heavy like Mama Bear when Small Bear tries to sit on her lap but can't because her belly is full of the new baby.
Olivia: Moo. Moo. Moo!
Me: Are you a cow?
Olivia: No, Gretchen said this one's name was Mu. *pause* Gretchen, her name can't be Mu or mommy will think I'm a cow.
Me: What are you doing?
Kaitlyn: Eating your clothes!
Gretchen: That's the Creightons' house.
Me: Are you sure?
Gretchen: Yes, it has steps.
Me: But the Creightons are in Ohio and we are in Pennsylvania.
Gretchen: It has steps AND a door.
28 June 2017
11 June 2017
June 4-11
The girls, Olivia especially, like to call me Mommy-moiselle when they're being goofy. I think it has its origins in mademoiselle, which I'm sure they heard in a movie somewhere.
Bryan and I went to a wedding last Sunday without the kids. I sang in the choir and Bryan got drenched while directing traffic. The reception was in an open air venue near a lake, so we were glad to not have to worry about chasing Kaitlyn around. We managed most of a (somewhat sideways) slow dance and took a nice walk around the lake before heading to Steve and Murry's to sleep and collect the girls.
We have Jillian. She finally completed her trip from Connecticut to Michigan via New York, and the girls and I picked her up at Jacob's house on Monday. She has taken up residence in our guest room and is proving herself a useful babysitter when I need to run a quick errand. She does want a better paying job, though, so on Friday we took her to an interview. I brought a tiny card table with chairs and the girls and I set up school in the car where the middle seat is still missing.
Olivia and Gretchen had water safety classes at the YMCA all week. All the classes were in the therapy pool, which is a comfortable 90 degrees and only 2'6" on the shallow end. After the first day, Kaitlyn was no longer invited (she was incredibly upset that her mother wouldn't let her in the water), so she got to bond with Aunt Jillian. Water safety does not, it turns out, cover things like not running near the pool or not jumping into the deep end. It did, however, teach them how to blow bubbles and the basics of a few strokes. By the end of the week the girls were at least comfortable in the water and were able to jump into an instructor's arms without panicking. They still don't like getting their eyes wet, and they sometimes forget to blow bubbles when their heads go under, but now we have something to work on.
Kaitlyn can open all our doors now. She used to only be able to open ones that she could push on while turning with her right hand, but now she can open the pull ones as well. Naptime has become an exciting affair since I have to pull the changing table over a few inches to block the bathroom door and then put our gate across the bedroom door. I also put one of our school screens (you may know them better as the Christmas tree screens) in front of the door so that when it invariably opens she can't see what she's missing.
One of our cherry trees produced blossoms this year, which was a surprise since we weren't expecting fruit for another 1-3 years. We got about two dozen tiny tart cherries that were quite delicious. I'm excited to have more fruit growing in our backyard down the line.
Pictures:
Bryan and I went to a wedding last Sunday without the kids. I sang in the choir and Bryan got drenched while directing traffic. The reception was in an open air venue near a lake, so we were glad to not have to worry about chasing Kaitlyn around. We managed most of a (somewhat sideways) slow dance and took a nice walk around the lake before heading to Steve and Murry's to sleep and collect the girls.
We have Jillian. She finally completed her trip from Connecticut to Michigan via New York, and the girls and I picked her up at Jacob's house on Monday. She has taken up residence in our guest room and is proving herself a useful babysitter when I need to run a quick errand. She does want a better paying job, though, so on Friday we took her to an interview. I brought a tiny card table with chairs and the girls and I set up school in the car where the middle seat is still missing.
Olivia and Gretchen had water safety classes at the YMCA all week. All the classes were in the therapy pool, which is a comfortable 90 degrees and only 2'6" on the shallow end. After the first day, Kaitlyn was no longer invited (she was incredibly upset that her mother wouldn't let her in the water), so she got to bond with Aunt Jillian. Water safety does not, it turns out, cover things like not running near the pool or not jumping into the deep end. It did, however, teach them how to blow bubbles and the basics of a few strokes. By the end of the week the girls were at least comfortable in the water and were able to jump into an instructor's arms without panicking. They still don't like getting their eyes wet, and they sometimes forget to blow bubbles when their heads go under, but now we have something to work on.
Kaitlyn can open all our doors now. She used to only be able to open ones that she could push on while turning with her right hand, but now she can open the pull ones as well. Naptime has become an exciting affair since I have to pull the changing table over a few inches to block the bathroom door and then put our gate across the bedroom door. I also put one of our school screens (you may know them better as the Christmas tree screens) in front of the door so that when it invariably opens she can't see what she's missing.
One of our cherry trees produced blossoms this year, which was a surprise since we weren't expecting fruit for another 1-3 years. We got about two dozen tiny tart cherries that were quite delicious. I'm excited to have more fruit growing in our backyard down the line.
Pictures:
07 June 2017
Bonus Post: A Photo Shoot
Trying to get good pictures for Grandma's wall...
Olivia:
Olivia:
Gretchen:
Kaitlyn:
The best ones:
04 June 2017
May 14-June 4
A checkup was had. Gretchen is 38 pounds and 40.75 inches. Kaitlyn is 29.2 pounds and 34.5 inches. Both are looking a little bit tall for about half the dresses they picked out during our basement shopping expedition, so I had to go downstairs and swap some out.
Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels. She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels). Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference! In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.
Gretchen wants to learn to read. She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play. Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition. She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters. :-P
Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy. She's actually not too bad. Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!" It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she." I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller. Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!" Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it. Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina. Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah." She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn." Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."
Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids. Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently). Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available. Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.
The garden is fully planted. We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do. I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon. Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out. He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.
Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future. Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update. :)
Pictures and Videos:
Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels. She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels). Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference! In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.
Gretchen wants to learn to read. She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play. Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition. She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters. :-P
Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy. She's actually not too bad. Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!" It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she." I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller. Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!" Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it. Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina. Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah." She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn." Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."
Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids. Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently). Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available. Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.
The garden is fully planted. We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do. I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon. Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out. He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.
Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future. Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update. :)
Pictures and Videos:
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