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:
Matthias reads in his cage:
This giant orange ball made him so happy and simultaneously so sad:
Watching Daddy mow the lawn:
Kaitlyn is a battery:
Olivia reads to Matthias. His favorite part of every book is "The End!", so he tends to close books in order to skip to that part.
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