Murry and I took the older girls to the Lunch and Learn children's theater production at La Comedia a couple of weeks ago. The show was Click, Clack, Boo! and Gretchen and Olivia loved it. They are the perfect age for this sort of thing. The next day, Murry and Keshia and I took Olivia, Gretchen, Kaitlyn, and Rudy to Frozen on Ice. We had front row seats, which was really fun. The skaters/actors interact with the audience quite a bit (there were corner podiums built just so that they could pause there to wave) and we got to wave to pretty much everyone. Kaitlyn sat in stunned silence the whole time and has since asked to go back and see "real Frozen" several times. Gretchen was the most engaged, bouncing up and down with excitement, waving enthusiastically to characters, and trying to catch the fake snow that came down from the ceiling in frequent bursts. At the end, she threw her head back and said, "Best. Time. Ever."
Last weekend Bryan and I took Kaitlyn to Cleveland to visit Rudy while the other kids stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. There was a Halloween party while we were there, so Kaitlyn was a dragon and Rudy was a showgirl. Then they traded. :) Bryan and I were Gomez and Morticia Addams. The two girls had a great time together and it was nice to spend some time with just Kaitlyn.
The Bossards came to visit this past week. On Thursday Justine guest taught a Music Together class for me and then later we took all the kids trick-or-treating. They stayed long enough to say hi to Jacob (who was down for monthly D&D) and left Saturday morning.
Bryan discovered a hamburger bun in the oven on Wednesday. This was a source of some confusion for a minute or two before he figured out what it meant. Per Kaitlyn's unwitting request, this bun in the oven has been nicknamed Hamburger.
Kaitlyn loves looking at crucifixes. Whenever we're in church, she looks for the crucifixion icon. When we're at home she asks to hold whatever crucifix she sees in the room. She is especially interested in the nails in Jesus's hands and feet. I'm not sure what prompted this obsession, but it's been going on for a couple of months now. I bought her a small plastic card of the crucifixion icon for her to keep with her whenever she wants.
Olivia and Matthias had check-ups last week. Olivia is 51.2 pounds and 49.25 inches tall. Her throat clearing turned hacking cough is most likely a nervous tic as we have suspected. It has been slowly improving recently. Matthias is 25 pounds, 11 ounces and 31.25 inches tall. He likes exploring the doctor's office but gets panicky when the doctor and nurses come in.
Gretchen is loving the little school things we're doing. She writes all the time without being asked, and we did a craft where we made some pretty postcards so that she can send mail to people. Recently she asked to learn how to sew, so I set her to perfecting a running stitch. It's more wobbly than a straight line, but she can do it. I found a pattern for cute little flowers that use only a running stitch and she finished her first one yesterday. She is eagerly awaiting the day that I let her use the machine.
Kaitlyn can count, but her one to one correspondence is shaky. If she is physically moving things (putting pom poms in a jar) then she does okay, barring the occasional skipped number (who needs sixteen?). If she is just pointing at objects then her numbers don't line up with the objects at all, and she also double counts some and misses others completely. It is strange to me to realize that she is the same age Gretchen was when I was babysitting Sophia and Evalynn, because then I remember that I had Gretchen doing school related things almost every day.
Bryan gave the girls Create Your Own storybooks and Olivia has eagerly started hers. She's going through the pages in order, so of course the first thing she filled out was the Table of Contents. She has chapter names and pages written down and is now filling in the story to match up appropriately. :)
Pictures:
28 October 2018
14 October 2018
October 7-14
This is mostly the words from my last post, but I've updated it to be current with this week as well.
Celina trip -- A couple of years ago Bryan started a Christmas tradition of sending me on vacation with friends from church. He picks the place and how the money is spent, my friends and I arrange the dates and plan the actual vacation. This year he got us an airbnb house in Celina, Ohio, along the shore of Grand Lake St Marys. There isn't much to do in Celina other than wander over to look at the lake; due to algae contamination swimming is discouraged. With an entire house to ourselves, though, we mainly stayed indoors playing games and watching movies. We did walk around Celina a bit and wandered down to the lake a couple of times so that we could say we'd done it.
Fun run -- We held the sixth annual Barhorst Fun Run on Labor Day. This meant that we got to see the Bossards, the Smiths, and the Fenton (Jacob) again. :) There were more kids than adults, so many of us ended up doing a leisurely fun walk instead. We've cut the official 5k and just have a one mile loop measured. Those who want to do more miles just have to run more loops. The vast majority of runners misunderstood the verbal directions and turned before the Lutheran church rather than after, resulting in a 0.8 mile fun run. Justine and I ran a full mile after everyone else was done and although our times were technically slower than the front runners of the first loop, we finished with little enough extra time that Olympians could not have made up the 0.2 miles to catch us, so we declared ourselves winners. I credit my first place finish to Justine running half a block behind me and yelling that if I didn't watch out she would beat me for the second time in our lives.
Wedding -- Bryan and I gleefully abandoned our children for a week (sorry, kids!) and took off for Josef and Angelina's wedding in Florida. It was a lovely vacation, marred slightly by the fact that Bryan apparently had a run-in with some poisonous plants while doing yardwork the day before we left. He spent the whole trip trying not to itch his entire self. Other than that, we had a nice time. We shared a large beach house with my family and had the chance to enjoy several walks in the sand (although no dips in the water due to red tide and dead fish). Bryan managed to catch the Browns game at a local bar (their first win in forever), I explored the nuances of wedding music with Justine and Jacque (and learned that I can hit the notes if I sing solfege but not if I sing the written words), and after the festivities were done we spent our last night in a hotel and figured out how to use uber to go see a movie.
School -- Olivia loves school. Her favorite day is Friday, because that's library day, but she likes all the other days, too. When discussing which days she would have to go to school (because she was still hazy on weekends), I casually mentioned that, excepting summer vacation and a few days off during each school year, she would go to school every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the next sixteen years or so. She was beside herself with excitement. I am interested to see how long this infatuation lasts.
Music Together -- I started! I've had several weeks of classes now and at this point the only consistent attendees are my children and Elesha's children. I'm doing this primarily for my kids, though, so we have a grand time with the Weys every week. We have had other visitors drop in, and I do plan to try to find some more students for the winter session. Justine is planning to come teach a class in a few weeks. I'll attend as a parent and call it professional development. :)
Matthias successfully made it to sleeping through the night consistently sometime in August. I think it was actually before the August 26 post, but I forgot to mention it. After we got home from the wedding, though, fear of abandonment combined with cutting his last four teeth caused him to regress a bit. He's been waking up steadily later each night, and is now at about 5:45, so I'm hoping he gets back to normal soon.
Gretchen is becoming quite responsible and independent. She volunteers to help with anything and everything and has certain things that she considers her job. She almost always makes her bed without being asked, gets Matthias out of his bed and high chair when he cries, and sporadically decides that we need to do school RIGHT NOW. She has an amazing capacity to listen without seeming to (sometimes even when she's talking about something else), evident in her ability to repeat things back when I think she hasn't been paying attention. She combines this talent with an equally amazing ability to immediately forget whatever it was that she was supposed to do. It's quite baffling.
The cat that you just met last post is no more. She was entirely too brave and friendly and got in the way of a car while we were in Florida. Free kittens are pretty easy to come by, though, so Bryan's mom already has a replacement lined up for us. This one was also named Emma, until Gretchen and Olivia convinced Kaitlyn that Shalina would be a better name since we already had a cat named Emma. Shalina it is. Bryan says if this one doesn't make it then we're done for a while.
Olivia lost both of her top front teeth within 24 hours and has been struggling to eat properly since then. She also reports that the teeth immediately to either side of the gaping hole are loose, further hindering her attempts to chew.
Gretchen reads. She's almost finished with the first set of 10 phonics books (we have six) and is eagerly awaiting the day when I will let her advance to the next set. She has grand plans every morning of reading a whole stack at once, but as yet has only managed to get through about one third of a single book in one sitting. Gretchen also writes. Oh my, does Gretchen write. She loves to write letters (Dear ____, I hope you have a happy day. I love you. Love, Gretchen) and has recently taken to writing stories. When Will and Jacque were here for the fun run, she also wrote a piece of music. She uses predominately capital letters, though she throws in the occasional lower case letter just for fun. At the beginning of October I printed a blank calendar for Gretchen and now she has colored star stickers that symbolize various schooly things so that she can mark her accomplishments each day. It's all very exciting.
Matthias regrew a fingernail over the past couple of months. He got his hand caught on the hinge side of the playroom door and obtained a horribly mangled finger that ruined the rest of his previously happy day. He seemed to be able to bend it, so we decided to take a wait and see approach to finding care. I did at some point tape it to the neighboring fingers (the way you would tape a jammed finger), mostly so that I could tape a silicone ice cube against it at the same time. A side benefit of the tape was that he was so confused and then determined to remove it that he stopped screaming to focus on this pressing new problem. By the next day his finger had returned to its normal sausage shape, and he seemed to be doing much better. The fingernail did not fare quite as well, however, and came off some weeks later without him noticing. He DID notice all the bandaids that we put on to keep him from ripping off said fingernail prematurely. The erstwhile nail is now almost completely regrown.
Kaitlyn loves bananas. I'm not sure how to word that strongly enough in a blog post. Kaitlyn loves loves loves loves LOVES bananas. She would subsist entirely on bananas if I ever bought them, which I don't because she eats the whole bunch in a matter of hours. On the rare occasion that I do buy bananas, the bunch has a special home in Kaitlyn's lap. She patiently holds it in the cart, lovingly puts in on the belt, possessively grabs it back after it has been rung up, and eagerly holds her bananas in the car all the way home. Occasionally her delight gets the better of her and she uses her finger to break one banana open (in the middle) on the way home and then scoops out little bites of banana, as if I won't notice a gaping hole in the banana upon our arrival. She then steadfastly refuses to eat "the broken banana," so we usually cut it up and feed it to Matthias while Kaitlyn has a new much loved (read: slightly bruised) but wholly unopened banana.
Matthias can follow simple directions. Whether or not he chooses to do so is another matter, but he understands things like "bring me...", "close...", "take this to...", "come here." He doesn't like the word "no," he does like the words "outside" and "nurse." He knows that meals start with a lot of words, frantic waving of one or both hands (his form of a cross), and amen. His favorite toy is his stacking cups, which he knows have a specific order. His second favorite toy is anything that can be used as a ball, which is everything, up to and including the cat, if you're dedicated enough. He has just this week begun showing interest in using cars like cars rather than like balls.
Words Matthias says: Go!, Mama, uh-oh, amen
Consistent sounds Matthias has: dyah (in response to any question), eego (when handing someone an object)
Pictures:
Celina trip -- A couple of years ago Bryan started a Christmas tradition of sending me on vacation with friends from church. He picks the place and how the money is spent, my friends and I arrange the dates and plan the actual vacation. This year he got us an airbnb house in Celina, Ohio, along the shore of Grand Lake St Marys. There isn't much to do in Celina other than wander over to look at the lake; due to algae contamination swimming is discouraged. With an entire house to ourselves, though, we mainly stayed indoors playing games and watching movies. We did walk around Celina a bit and wandered down to the lake a couple of times so that we could say we'd done it.
Fun run -- We held the sixth annual Barhorst Fun Run on Labor Day. This meant that we got to see the Bossards, the Smiths, and the Fenton (Jacob) again. :) There were more kids than adults, so many of us ended up doing a leisurely fun walk instead. We've cut the official 5k and just have a one mile loop measured. Those who want to do more miles just have to run more loops. The vast majority of runners misunderstood the verbal directions and turned before the Lutheran church rather than after, resulting in a 0.8 mile fun run. Justine and I ran a full mile after everyone else was done and although our times were technically slower than the front runners of the first loop, we finished with little enough extra time that Olympians could not have made up the 0.2 miles to catch us, so we declared ourselves winners. I credit my first place finish to Justine running half a block behind me and yelling that if I didn't watch out she would beat me for the second time in our lives.
Wedding -- Bryan and I gleefully abandoned our children for a week (sorry, kids!) and took off for Josef and Angelina's wedding in Florida. It was a lovely vacation, marred slightly by the fact that Bryan apparently had a run-in with some poisonous plants while doing yardwork the day before we left. He spent the whole trip trying not to itch his entire self. Other than that, we had a nice time. We shared a large beach house with my family and had the chance to enjoy several walks in the sand (although no dips in the water due to red tide and dead fish). Bryan managed to catch the Browns game at a local bar (their first win in forever), I explored the nuances of wedding music with Justine and Jacque (and learned that I can hit the notes if I sing solfege but not if I sing the written words), and after the festivities were done we spent our last night in a hotel and figured out how to use uber to go see a movie.
School -- Olivia loves school. Her favorite day is Friday, because that's library day, but she likes all the other days, too. When discussing which days she would have to go to school (because she was still hazy on weekends), I casually mentioned that, excepting summer vacation and a few days off during each school year, she would go to school every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday for the next sixteen years or so. She was beside herself with excitement. I am interested to see how long this infatuation lasts.
Music Together -- I started! I've had several weeks of classes now and at this point the only consistent attendees are my children and Elesha's children. I'm doing this primarily for my kids, though, so we have a grand time with the Weys every week. We have had other visitors drop in, and I do plan to try to find some more students for the winter session. Justine is planning to come teach a class in a few weeks. I'll attend as a parent and call it professional development. :)
Matthias successfully made it to sleeping through the night consistently sometime in August. I think it was actually before the August 26 post, but I forgot to mention it. After we got home from the wedding, though, fear of abandonment combined with cutting his last four teeth caused him to regress a bit. He's been waking up steadily later each night, and is now at about 5:45, so I'm hoping he gets back to normal soon.
Gretchen is becoming quite responsible and independent. She volunteers to help with anything and everything and has certain things that she considers her job. She almost always makes her bed without being asked, gets Matthias out of his bed and high chair when he cries, and sporadically decides that we need to do school RIGHT NOW. She has an amazing capacity to listen without seeming to (sometimes even when she's talking about something else), evident in her ability to repeat things back when I think she hasn't been paying attention. She combines this talent with an equally amazing ability to immediately forget whatever it was that she was supposed to do. It's quite baffling.
The cat that you just met last post is no more. She was entirely too brave and friendly and got in the way of a car while we were in Florida. Free kittens are pretty easy to come by, though, so Bryan's mom already has a replacement lined up for us. This one was also named Emma, until Gretchen and Olivia convinced Kaitlyn that Shalina would be a better name since we already had a cat named Emma. Shalina it is. Bryan says if this one doesn't make it then we're done for a while.
Olivia lost both of her top front teeth within 24 hours and has been struggling to eat properly since then. She also reports that the teeth immediately to either side of the gaping hole are loose, further hindering her attempts to chew.
Gretchen reads. She's almost finished with the first set of 10 phonics books (we have six) and is eagerly awaiting the day when I will let her advance to the next set. She has grand plans every morning of reading a whole stack at once, but as yet has only managed to get through about one third of a single book in one sitting. Gretchen also writes. Oh my, does Gretchen write. She loves to write letters (Dear ____, I hope you have a happy day. I love you. Love, Gretchen) and has recently taken to writing stories. When Will and Jacque were here for the fun run, she also wrote a piece of music. She uses predominately capital letters, though she throws in the occasional lower case letter just for fun. At the beginning of October I printed a blank calendar for Gretchen and now she has colored star stickers that symbolize various schooly things so that she can mark her accomplishments each day. It's all very exciting.
Matthias regrew a fingernail over the past couple of months. He got his hand caught on the hinge side of the playroom door and obtained a horribly mangled finger that ruined the rest of his previously happy day. He seemed to be able to bend it, so we decided to take a wait and see approach to finding care. I did at some point tape it to the neighboring fingers (the way you would tape a jammed finger), mostly so that I could tape a silicone ice cube against it at the same time. A side benefit of the tape was that he was so confused and then determined to remove it that he stopped screaming to focus on this pressing new problem. By the next day his finger had returned to its normal sausage shape, and he seemed to be doing much better. The fingernail did not fare quite as well, however, and came off some weeks later without him noticing. He DID notice all the bandaids that we put on to keep him from ripping off said fingernail prematurely. The erstwhile nail is now almost completely regrown.
Kaitlyn loves bananas. I'm not sure how to word that strongly enough in a blog post. Kaitlyn loves loves loves loves LOVES bananas. She would subsist entirely on bananas if I ever bought them, which I don't because she eats the whole bunch in a matter of hours. On the rare occasion that I do buy bananas, the bunch has a special home in Kaitlyn's lap. She patiently holds it in the cart, lovingly puts in on the belt, possessively grabs it back after it has been rung up, and eagerly holds her bananas in the car all the way home. Occasionally her delight gets the better of her and she uses her finger to break one banana open (in the middle) on the way home and then scoops out little bites of banana, as if I won't notice a gaping hole in the banana upon our arrival. She then steadfastly refuses to eat "the broken banana," so we usually cut it up and feed it to Matthias while Kaitlyn has a new much loved (read: slightly bruised) but wholly unopened banana.
Matthias can follow simple directions. Whether or not he chooses to do so is another matter, but he understands things like "bring me...", "close...", "take this to...", "come here." He doesn't like the word "no," he does like the words "outside" and "nurse." He knows that meals start with a lot of words, frantic waving of one or both hands (his form of a cross), and amen. His favorite toy is his stacking cups, which he knows have a specific order. His second favorite toy is anything that can be used as a ball, which is everything, up to and including the cat, if you're dedicated enough. He has just this week begun showing interest in using cars like cars rather than like balls.
Words Matthias says: Go!, Mama, uh-oh, amen
Consistent sounds Matthias has: dyah (in response to any question), eego (when handing someone an object)
Pictures:
07 October 2018
03 October 2018
Bonus Post: Sound Bites 36
Gretchen, eating a granola bar: I'm using my muscle teeth to eat this. *points to incisors*
Olivia, referring to a child at church: Mom, do you think he likes to read, or do you KNOW he likes to read?
(I know nothing (and had said nothing) about the reading habits of this child.)
Kaitlyn: Mommy, I do not like the coconuts in my apple.
(She was referring to the seeds.)
Gretchen: Yum! I wish this could be on my tongue always.
Kaitlyn, adjusting a rocking chair for Matthias: There. Now you can reach the Kingdom of Heaven.
Me: Stay right here, I need to go tell Daddy something.
Kaitlyn: Wait! Do you trust him?
Bryan: I don't get a cookie?
Me: I'll go get you one.
Olivia: Why did you say, "I don't get one?"
Bryan: Because she gave everyone else one but not me.
Olivia: Like she didn't love you.
Kaitlyn: I want to go on a hike.
Me: Do you know what a hike is?
Kaitlyn: Um... a bear?
Me: No, a hike is walking around outside.
Kaitlyn: Well I want to walk on a bear.
Me: The bear might eat you.
Kaitlyn: If the bear is a bad guy then I will get down and I will step hard on the ground with my shoe and it will get light and he will say, "Oh, do you have sparkle shoes and you stepped hard on the ground and they got light?" and I will say, "Yep!" and he will say, "Ooooo!"
Bryan: Gretchen, did you hear Mommy?
Gretchen: Yes.
Bryan: What did she ask you to do?
Gretchen: I just forgot as soon as she said it.
Me: Please don't take my shoe.
Kaitlyn, continuing to grab at my shoe: I'm not.
Me: What are you doing?
Kaitlyn: Just getting your heavy leg.
Olivia, referring to a child at church: Mom, do you think he likes to read, or do you KNOW he likes to read?
(I know nothing (and had said nothing) about the reading habits of this child.)
Kaitlyn: Mommy, I do not like the coconuts in my apple.
(She was referring to the seeds.)
Gretchen: Yum! I wish this could be on my tongue always.
Kaitlyn, adjusting a rocking chair for Matthias: There. Now you can reach the Kingdom of Heaven.
Me: Stay right here, I need to go tell Daddy something.
Kaitlyn: Wait! Do you trust him?
Bryan: I don't get a cookie?
Me: I'll go get you one.
Olivia: Why did you say, "I don't get one?"
Bryan: Because she gave everyone else one but not me.
Olivia: Like she didn't love you.
Kaitlyn: I want to go on a hike.
Me: Do you know what a hike is?
Kaitlyn: Um... a bear?
Me: No, a hike is walking around outside.
Kaitlyn: Well I want to walk on a bear.
Me: The bear might eat you.
Kaitlyn: If the bear is a bad guy then I will get down and I will step hard on the ground with my shoe and it will get light and he will say, "Oh, do you have sparkle shoes and you stepped hard on the ground and they got light?" and I will say, "Yep!" and he will say, "Ooooo!"
Bryan: Gretchen, did you hear Mommy?
Gretchen: Yes.
Bryan: What did she ask you to do?
Gretchen: I just forgot as soon as she said it.
Me: Please don't take my shoe.
Kaitlyn, continuing to grab at my shoe: I'm not.
Me: What are you doing?
Kaitlyn: Just getting your heavy leg.
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