Bonus Post: Sound Bites 35

Gretchen: I don't like big ants or little ants, but big ants are worse because they're so talented and gross.

Gretchen: If a bad guy stranger gets me then I will knock him down with my moves and walk on him.

Gretchen: If someone says to come with them then we say, "What's the password?" and if they don't know then we say, "Stay back!" and run away with our arms in the air yelling, "Help me help me help me!"
Me: What is the password?
Olivia: She told you already, it's "stay back."

Gretchen: Sometimes my brain just walks away from my body.

Gretchen: I want to be a grown up right now.
Me: Why?
Gretchen: So I can be a mommy and boss kids around.  I would like bossing kids.

Me: Kaitlyn, do you see the train?
Kaitlyn: No, I can't see it.  But I hear the train barking.

Kaitlyn: I love mommies, but I do not like daddies because they are meaned to me.  They got meaned to me at church and they got meaned to me in my room and they got meaned to me when I did not listen to daddy and put on my sandals.

Olivia: My lips hurt.  I think it is because I was playing with Matthias too much.

Me: We have to go to the airport to get Aunt Jillian.
Kaitlyn: But we cannot get the airplanes because they are too high.
Me: You're right, but one of them will land and let Aunt Jillian off.
Kaitlyn: And we will catch her.

Jillian: Name a color that doesn't have an 'e' in its name.
Me: Gray, if you use the American spelling.
Jillian: I can never remember which on is which.
Me: A for America, E for England.
Jillian: Oh!  I think I spell it with a y.
Me: ...Everyone spells it with a y.

Gretchen: I am going to take any wishes I do not use out of my heart and put them in someone else's heart.

Kaitlyn: Mommy, Daddy wants to marry you because he thinks you are a princess.

August 5-26

I forgot to mention that we have (another) new cat.  This is our third cat, though our only current cat.  Her name is Emma and she is at this point still restricted to the garage lest she get attacked by a larger, fiercer animal, like a raccoon or a bunny rabbit.

Jacque came to visit.  She was here to pick up some mail that still isn't making it to her new address, but also wanted to visit.  She and I geeked out over Music Together things and she held my hand while I ordered props for my classes.  She came to the zoo with us on Monday and then returned home from there.

We went bowling as a family one night.  One is not a good age for bowling.  At first, Matthias was incredibly excited about all the bowling balls.  Then he learned that he couldn't move any of them, and he got frustrated.  We moved on from that and he recovered completely when he saw the pins.  Forget lifting the balls, time to BE a ball!  He quickly learned to navigate the two steps down to the wooden floor and spent the rest of the night trying to sneak away from me so that he could make a mad dash down the bowling alley and knock down all the pins.  Unfortunately for his ambitions, I'm faster.

The Bossards were here the weekend after Jacque came.  Joseph came with the rest of the family this time and we made him play games with us in the evening (beginning with card club the night they arrived).  Bryan also took him to play ultimate frisbee on Sunday afternoon.  Kaitlyn and Walter continued their happy friendship, and the three big kids played school constantly.  Edward wandered between the two groups.  We failed again at a happy cousin line up (there's always one kid who doesn't cooperate... usually not the same kid).  I'm always hopeful for a repeat of the fantastic ones that were outdated two weeks later due to babies.

In church the week the Bossards visited, Matthias started singing "Amen."  Anytime the priest sang a phrase, Matthias was the first one in with "Amen."  Never mind that the preceding phrase was sometimes "...we pray to the Lord."  During the next week, I noticed that he also says "Amen" after prayers.  I can't get him to say it if I'm trying, but he's accurate if I just say prayers normally, so there must be some voice cue that I don't realize I'm giving.

Jillian arrived the day after the Bossards left.  Conveniently, the kids and I were already visiting the Kleins, so we just kept heading south to pick her up from the Cincinnati airport.  I think I knew that the airport was in Kentucky, but I did not realize that the quickest way there was through a corner of Indiana.  We took her to the zoo the day after she arrived (and now we're done with the zoo for a while since we didn't renew our membership).  Other than that trip, we haven't seen her a huge amount.  She's been in and out of the house -- mostly out as she visits her friends -- but willingly makes an appearance if I specify that I need her to watch kids or run an errand.  She's being transported up to Michigan somehow someday soon so that she can make the journey back to college before classes start.

Olivia started soccer and is really enjoying it.  Her first game is on Wednesday.  She also started school this past week and is "SO EXCITED!" about everything school related.  I was pleased to note that there were only two people she cared about meeting at the open house: her teacher and the school librarian.  Her favorite day so far was, predictably, library day.  Her playground friend Elaine is not only in her class, but at the same little clump of desks.

We had a meeting with the school a week before classes started and they worked very hard to convince us that they had the resources to support Olivia in first grade even though she's already done most of the work.  We did think that first grade would be less overwhelming for her, so that's where she is.  Thus far she's very happy.  :)

Mommy and Gretchen day happened this past Thursday.  Where Kaitlyn was a little young and didn't have much idea what was going on, Gretchen is the perfect age for this kind of thing.  She and I made a list of things to do over breakfast and then we did them.  I took her shopping so that she could spend some of her piggy bank money, we got her ears pierced, we did a coaster painting project in the basement, and we went out for pizza and ice cream.  We also bought hair chalk so that she could have rainbow hair, but ran out of time to use it on Thursday.  We postponed the hair coloring until Friday.

Miscellaneous kid things:

Kaitlyn talks about "Beauty and the Peas."  Even when she sings, we hear about this prince of old who upset a sorceress and was turned into a Peas.

Olivia was telling a story and ended with, "I did not appreciate that."  She may have gotten that from me.

Gretchen likes to use the word "embarrassed" but seems to have no idea what it means.  She most often uses it instead of the more appropriate "impressed."

Matthias can clap now.  He had a couple of weeks where if we clapped he would flap his hands, but if we said "yay" then he would clap.  He seems to be all straightened out now, barring the occasional hand-flap-for-reactions.  I also forgot to mention in the last post that he knocks on doors.

Kaitlyn's interjection of choice is "Boom!"

Olivia's first sentence on the first day of school: "Can I nap in the car?"
Olivia's first sentence on the second day of school: "I think you woke me up earlier this morning."  (It was later.)

Matthias is the best thrower of tantrums we've had thus far.  When he's mad he will swat away whatever is in front of him and dramatically fall on the floor, often with a lot of kicking and squirming involved.  Sometimes he is vocal about his displeasure, often the really great tantrums are largely silent with the occasional angry grunt as he looks over his shoulder to make sure I see how distressed he is.

Gretchen wears pants and shorts sometimes.  She came to me one morning and said, "You know how sometimes grown up girls wear pants?  I was thinking I'd do that."  I had one pair of size 5 jeans in the basement, so I brought them upstairs and then sent Jillian to buy shorts because we were going to the zoo and jeans are hot.  Since then, I've acquired another pair of shorts and a size 6 pair of jeans and now she wears them a couple of times a week.

Pictures:

Bonus Post: Flashback -- Kaitlyn's One Year Photos

I went looking for comparison photos, and discovered that I never put Kaitlyn's in my blog.  Here they are for posterity.  Sorry Olivia and Gretchen, I can't access yours anymore.  :(

July 1-August 5

Updates since I last wrote:

Matthias...
...plays peekaboo.  His preferred method is to hide behind a chair (table, crib, wall, etc) and lower himself so that he can't see me but I can still see his hands and the top of his head.  Then he pops up with an excited look in his eyes and waits for me to be astounded by his apparition skills.  He has recently begun using his blanket square as a way to hide his face as well.
...says mama, and I think he means it.  He's also experimented with dad and uh-oh.  His preferred all purpose noise is a loud, grating shriek.
...was sleeping all the way through the night (again) during June and into July.  He was consistent enough that I had decided he'd made it.  Then halfway through July he began waking up once in the middle of the night most nights.  As of this writing, he wakes up most nights, but throws in enough complete nights to keep me hopeful.
...only takes one nap.  He dropped his second nap sometime near the beginning of July (probably coinciding with his ruined nighttime record).  Now he takes one nap from about 11-1.  I've managed to push it as late as 12-2 some days.  About once every week or two he gets incredibly cranky and gets forced down for a second nap.  As a result of his one nap, his bedtime has migrated forward again into the 6:15-6:45 range (it had been in the 6:45-7:15 range).
...sings.  Usually he chooses to sing along with music in the car.  Sometimes he sings along in church.  Rarely does he sing when I'm just singing during the day.
...dances.  He's always danced a little, but he just figured out that he's doing it.  Now he walks into a room with music, looks at me, and bounces up and down.  When he's older, he can be embarrassed about the fact that his preferred dance move was the innocent baby version of twerking.
...cannot clap.  In a funny twist, he thinks he can clap.  The girls and I tried to teach him by grabbing his wrists and slapping his hands together, but when he tries to replicate it he just flaps his hands in front of him.
...closes doors.  This is his new favorite game mission.  Refrigerator doors, cupboard doors, car doors, room doors, drawers...  If it is open, Matthias will find it and he will close it.
...runs.  He tries, at least.  He speed toddles.
...likes to play fetch with himself.  He throws everything and anything and then walks after it to pick it up.  His favorite ball right now is a small onion that he can get whenever the pantry door gets left open.
...turned one!  Matthias had a birthday.  There was a car cake on his birthday, and then a polka dot cake for his party. 

Kaitlyn...
...can reliably buckle all of the parts of her carseat.  This means that she was allowed to move to the coveted back row of the van.  We have not tested this for very long, so we'll see if she gets to stay.  Olivia happily switched to the middle row so that she could be next to Matthias.
...learned that Olivia can read and now asks her to read books frequently.
...likes to color.  Well, more accurately, she likes to scribble with one color of marker.  But she appreciates having coloring sheets to scribble on.
...had a day out with me.  Mommy and Kaitlyn day was fun, but I'm not entirely sure that Kaitlyn realized the significance.  We went bowling, had lunch, and played at a park for several hours.  Then we stopped at the splash pad where she got very wet before falling asleep in the car on the way home.
...got to practice being the oldest child several times this summer.  In addition to VBS (June), Olivia and Gretchen went to Safety City for a week and had two different three day stints at a nature day camp.  Kaitlyn and I hung out together while Matthias napped.


Gretchen...
...woke up one night with severe stomach pain, prompting worries of appendicitis.  After a trip to the pediatrician the next morning, we determined that it was most likely not her appendix causing issues.  He though she might be coming down with a stomach bug, but nothing ever manifested.  All her symptoms went away on their own.
...has an updated weight stat as a result of the aforementioned doctor's visit.  She's 41.4 pounds.
...made a scavenger hunt.  This was the hardest kind of scavenger hunt, because she hid an uncounted number of rolled up papers all over the house and provided no clues.  Due to circumstances beyond her control, we didn't get to search for the papers until two days later, so she forgot where most of them were.  We are still finding papers tucked in corners.
...learned to write.  I never taught her to write, but she can make most of the capital letters now.  The same thing happened with Olivia.
...is very motivated to do school.  She's often found writing random strings of letters in her school books, and when she remembers that she's learning to read then she will bring me her reading materials and have me listen to her sounding out stories.


Olivia...
...starts soccer tomorrow.  She asked if she could try soccer, so we enrolled her in the fall session.  It's run according to school district, but is not connected to the public school as far as I can tell.
...has discovered the wonders of the library.  We haven't been to the library since Matthias was born, but we went last week and asked the librarian for suggestions.  She came home with ten books of varying levels of difficulty.  After discovering that she was particularly fond of a series called "Owl Diaries," I put a few more on hold for her.  We went yesterday to pick one up, left with four books instead, and she began reading in the car.
...also had a birthday!  She turned seven, which is very old.  She wanted birthday brownies instead of cake, and we are deferring her main birthday meal until after the Dormition fast ends.
...made a friend.  We met another little girl at a playdate and they exchanged life stories.  Elaine will be seven later in August and is also entering first grade at St Charles.

Stats at age one:
Olivia - 21 pounds, 10 ounces, 30 inches tall
Gretchen - 20 pounds, 12 ounces, 30 inches tall
Kaitlyn - 21 pounds, 10 ounces, 29.75 inches tall
Matthias - 23 pounds, 10 ounces, 30 inches tall

Other odds and ends:

We visited the Palsgroves and then the Bossards at the end of June.  The first one made it into my last post, the second did not.  Bryan came with us for this trip, and we played games with Joseph and Justine after the kids went to bed.

The kids and I took a second trip to Pittsburgh on July 20 to see Dad while he was in town.  We drove in after Safety City, stayed overnight and most of the next day, and then dropped Dad off at the airport on the way home.  Dad read books to the girls and tried to teach them baseball.  It stuck for a little bit, because they insisted that Bryan and I play with them the following day.

I went to my Music Together training and it was just as exciting and inspirational as they designed it to be.  I'm now licensed to open a center, which I'm hoping to do this fall.

I gave Matthias frozen peas one day because I didn't want to take the time to heat them up, and now "cold peas" are a sought after staple in our house.

Periodically I open cupboards and find toys hidden inside, courtesy of Matthias.  He also picks things up and carries them to other rooms before getting distracted, which makes finding things like shoes especially exciting.

"dressup" - the catch all word for tasty goop that goes on food

Pictures:

Bonus Post: Matthias's One Year Photos

If you're interested in buying pictures of Matthias (or viewing them without the watermark), here's a link: http://picti.net/uShLp  Otherwise, I have watermarked photos below.

We ordered the first one for our wall since it matches the girls.  My favorite is the standing one.  Bryan's favorite is the one where he looks like he's dancing.  Yes, he is falling off a stool in the middle there.