December 27-February 21

Early one morning I was wrenched out of a deep sleep by shrieks of "No! No! Theo! No!" The clock read 4:34 as I leapt out of bed and scampered through the house. The lights in the boys' room were on and there were two boys in the baby crib. Matthias was huddled in the corner yelling while Theodore rolled over and tried to take a bite out of Matthias's leg. I wondered loudly what was going on, and Matthias answered, "It's morning time." Having been informed that it was NOT, in fact, morning time, Matthias meekly retired to his own bed muttering, "well, I thought it was morning time." I asked if he had woken Theo up. He had. I asked if Theo was trying to bite him. He was. And then, with a lack of caring that can only be achieved at 4:30 in the morning, I said, "That's what happens when you wake people up and climb in their beds. Let this be a lesson to you." I calmed the boys down, turned off the light, turned on the noise canceling fan (although for what, I don't know, since all the noise was coming from within the room), and went through the bedtime routine again. Then, with a firm admonishment to Matthias to not bother Theodore again until actual morning time, I departed for my own bed. Both being rather awake still, the boys chatted for half an hour or so before I finally heard the noises on the monitor diminish and we all drifted off to sleep.

Theodore has lots of words now. He mostly repeats what other people say, so he doesn’t always use his new words correctly independently, but he’s trying. My favorite new one is “away!”, often accompanied by a hand shoving a too close sibling out of his face. Oh, and “noom!” I don’t know what word Theodore is going for with “noom,” but it means television. Specifically the one in our bedroom. He also says hello (mostly to phones), hi (mostly to people), bye, okay, no, cheese, up, down, amen, bobby (belly), go, mommy, daddy, more, uh-oh, grandma, grandpa, help, thank you, and baa do do doo (baby shark).

Matthias excels at the associative property. You know, the one that says that an item is what it is. He was most persistent about it at the zoo when he overheard a little girl questioning whether he knew what a tiger was (“I do know! A tiger is a tiger!”), but he likes to bring it out at other times as well.

Kaitlyn lost her first tooth on Christmas Eve. She has since lost one more.

Funny things Matthias says:
Gruffalo instead of burrito.
Ungorilla instead of umbrella.
Aunt Jujillian.
Except instead of especially (I love everything in the world except mom and dad).
I smell like instead of I smell (I smell like chocolate).

For posterity:
-We have a cleaning lady. Deb comes once a month to mop floors and deep clean the bathrooms and kitchen. Kaitlyn and Matthias follow her around the house to help her and to make not-so-subtle comments about how WE never clean. Which, for the record, we do. I guess Kaitlyn and Matthias need more chores.
-We have a television in our bedroom. Because Bryan said, “If you’re going to fall asleep watching TV anyway, wouldn’t you rather not have to move to the bed when the show is done?” Given the fact that Bryan grew up with a television in his room, I’m somewhat amazed we made it ten years before buying one.
-Gretchen pulled out of gymnastics. She was enjoying it, but the stress of getting ready, the lateness with which we got home, and her tendency to hurt herself caused her too much stress. We had to give one month notice, but she decided not to attend any of those last few weeks, either, and has been much happier on Thursdays. We’re trying to make sure she has a dedicated arts and crafts time during that hour instead.
-We’re finishing our basement. We started the process of getting a home equity line of credit back in October, but had trouble with banks being willing to cover our manufactured home. We finally found a credit union willing to take us, signed the papers, and set about waiting for our contractor to finish up the job he was working on. Then a bunch of snow came and pushed everything back a couple of days. BUT. Now he’s ready and he should be starting this week!

Angelina and Josef came to visit one weekend and told the kids there are unicorns at the Columbus zoo. Josef even produced a picture. Now all the kids think that the Columbus zoo is the best, most magical zoo and they keep asking to go there. Matthias inquires almost daily if I think this or that animal (real or imagined) is also at the Columbus zoo with the unicorns.

We looked up what all our names mean for some reason that now escapes me.
Olivia Helen - Peace (or Ancestor’s Descendant), Light
Gretchen Bernice - Pearl, Brings Victory
Kaitlyn Elaine - Pure, Shining Light
Matthias Edward - Gift of God, Wealthy Guardian
Theodore John - Divine Gift, God is Gracious
Bryan Edward - Noble, Wealthy Guardian
Johannah Helen - (Name not found in database) God is Gracious, Light

Kaitlyn and Matthias are enjoying Catechesis very much. Their teacher says that Kaitlyn is a very helpful leader and that Matthias has improved noticeably in several skill areas since the beginning of the year.

Kaitlyn is now in set 4 of her phonics books. She’s working on consonant blends and two syllable words. She doesn’t enjoy reading very much yet, but she does a good job anyway. Matthias has been listening very carefully as she sounds out words and is now insisting that I work with him as well. He has read a couple of pages of the first book and is very proud of himself.

Olivia has finished multiplication in school and moved on to division. She has enjoyed both of those and thinks maybe she does like math after all. This is in stark contrast to her opinions on estimation.

Gretchen is learning cursive and is very excited to be able to use it more regularly. She does not approve of the steady pace with which they learn new letters. She compensates by making all her printed letters extra curly and flowery.

We saw the Bossards and the JA Fentons for Christmas. Annemarie perfected crawling out of her pack and play while she was here (a skill which she transferred to her crib as well) and now the Bossards won’t visit again until she’s fixed all her sleeping woes. Conveniently, that should line up with our new guest suite being available. Our visit to the Barhorst side for Christmas was postponed due to potential covid exposure, so we had that celebration in mid January instead. Our game shelf (which I had just organized and labeled) is no longer big enough. We saw the JA Fentons again at the end of January, because why not?! And then in the beginning of February Bryan and I left the kids with Steve and Murry and drove to Chicago for Samuel’s baptism. Despite having attended close to 20 Orthodox baptisms at this point, this was the first one in which we were godparents.

Bonus Post: Sound Bites 57

Me: Gretchen, what's that cup up by your bed?
Gretchen: ...Science.

Matthias: The bubbles from the ginger beard are inside me fighting my belly.

Kaitlyn: Theodore, you make me so angry!

Gretchen: Well you make me angry! You said that to a one year old!

Kaitlyn: Yeah, well... We ALL make mom angry!

Gretchen: That's true.

Matthias: I can see our house.

Kaitlyn: No you can't.

Me: Kaitlyn, just pretend he can. Say, "What good eyes you have."

Matthias: I CAN see our house.

Kaitlyn: What good eyes you have.

Matthias: It's because they're blue.

Me: *opening a chocolate bar*

Gretchen: What's that?

Me: If I tell you it's Brussels sprouts, will you not want it?

Gretchen: Yes.

Me: It's Brussels sprouts!

Gretchen: How many seconds until we get home?

Me: 660.

Gretchen: How many minutes?

Me: 11.

Matthias: How many clock?

Bryan, displaying suckers: There's cherry, blue raspberry, co--

Matthias: I know, I know what they are. Watermelon (actually cherry), blueblerry (blue raspberry), butter splatch (cotton candy), different watermelon that's yummier (fruit punch), and I don't know this last one (there's the watermelon!).

Matthias: What are you doing?

Me: Trying to have quiet time.

Matthias: Well... Is it loud time yet?

Matthias: Daddy, we're being bakeries!