Bonus post: Flashback -- The Apartment

A picture tour of the apartment where we lived when we first got married:

The gnome guarded our entryway:

The front closet.  Also a drill that Tom picked out and wrapped all by himself because my mother would like it and I am my mother's daughter.

The living room.  To the right as you come in and then swinging around the room counter-clockwise.

The wall to the left as you come in.

Our icon wall and dining room:

The kitchen.

The back hallway to the bathroom, towel closet, and bedroom.

August 4-11

Olivia is officially in a big girl bed!  After the great start we got during campout last week, we talked her into sleeping in her bed Sunday night.  Monday she chose to nap in the bed and that afternoon I moved her pile of blankets to the cupboard.

Gretchen has teeth.  Bryan thought she might be getting a couple, but 3 months is pretty early, so we decided maybe we'd just forgotten how hard baby gums get.  Earlier this week, though, I saw a tooth (although it was still slightly beneath the gum) and on Saturday I could feel it.  I expect the second bottom tooth will make its appearance shortly.

Mark your calendars: the First Annual Barhorst Fun Run will take place Monday, September 2.  Guests are welcome at our house for any and all of Labor Day weekend, although I may be at an audition for part of Saturday.  Bryan and the girls will be around to entertain you, though.  :)  The run will happen sometime Monday morning, time to be determined.  My vote is to hold it early and beat the potential heat.

Something I forgot to mention a few weeks ago:  Olivia said "I love you" for the first time.  She said it about three times and hasn't said it again since then, but it seemed important to note.

Gretchen has been increasingly more vocal lately.  Olivia likes to mimic the noises back to Gretchen, especially the screechy ones, and Gretchen usually grins back and makes more noise.  Olivia's favorite noise that Gretchen makes is kind of a shrieky squeal that, when repeated, makes it sound like I have a small herd of pterodactyls running around my house.  As obnoxious as the noise is, it's pretty cute when the girls interact like that -- except when Gretchen is trying to nap and Olivia climbs up the outside of the crib to look down and shriek at her.

As I put on the wrap for a walk the other day, Olivia came up to me carrying her baby doll and pointing at the wrap.  Correctly interpreting this as a desire to carry her baby the way I carry Gretchen, I found a scarf and wrapped it around Olivia so that she could stuff her baby inside.

I decided to go get some more pictures off of my old facebook account.  Since I'm happy with when this blog officially begins, though, I won't be backdating posts to put up pre-Olivia pictures.  Instead, there will be occasional Bonus Posts with (mostly pictorial) flashbacks to old times.  Look for the first of these posts this Wednesday.  :)

Saturday was supposed to be my longest long run in my FAB Fun Run training.  Saturday was also the day of the Springfield half marathon.  On Thursday night, I had a thought:  If I'm supposed to run 12 miles anyway, what's another 1.1 with other people around?  So I bandited the Springfield race.  I started from our house, ran around the neighborhood a little, and joined up with the official course just before mile 3.  Hot, sweaty, tired, and sore, I finished in 2 hours, 26 minutes.  That's a pace of "a little over 11 minute" miles, which is faster than a lot of my runs have been this summer.  Also, I beat my dad's full marathon time, which makes me happy.  :)

Pictures:

July 28-August 4

Gretchen has been getting better at grabbing things, although she still has problems letting go when she wants to.  We put rattles in her hand and she waves them around, trying to drop them and wondering why her silly parents think this qualifies as "playing."  Monday she grabbed the duck hanging on her carseat and started pulling all by herself, though!  I almost didn't notice, because Olivia can also reach the duck from HER carseat, but then I realized that the rattling sounded a little weak for Olivia's practiced hand.  A quick check in the mirror confirmed my suspicions.

Gretchen has been trying to roll over.  I'm not sure she wants to be on her stomach; I think she's more just curious about what might be over her shoulder.  She's made it to her stomach from her back a couple of times now, but always flops right back because both her arms are caught on the same side of her chest.

Tuesday through Thursday we went to Indiana for the Aufdemberge family campout.  Wednesday was wet, but the other two days were quite nice.  Though we had enough pack and plays, we convinced Olivia to sleep in the bottom bunk of the bunk bed in our cabin.  She had no trouble with this at all, perhaps because she was so exhausted every night.  Olivia thought the slide on the playground and the race car game (in the rec hall on Wednesday) were pretty nifty.  She practiced her sharing skills with (second cousin once removed) Camden, which means she used one of his trucks and generously let him keep the other one.  She also allowed him to play with her stacking giraffe, so long as she wasn't using it.  Her camp gift was a tutu, which she calls a "toot", from Elisa.  The toot was such a big hit that Olivia even wore it for naptime on Thursday.  Wednesday morning was a long (2.5 ish miles) fun run, and I won a prize for picking the most berries during the race.  One simply cannot pass up good blackberries for the sake of a better time.  :)  Thursday was the short (1 mile) run/walk and as I put Gretchen in the wrap and started walking, Olivia decided to follow me.  Bryan caught up with us, and the four of us took a rather large short cut (so as not to be walking all day) and finished in about 20 minutes.  Since all of the little kids ended up accompanying their parents on the short run/walk, the mini walk (1/8 mile) was canceled.

Thursday night we left for my parents' house, backtracking only once to retrieve the diapers (clean and dirty) that we'd forgotten.  Luckily, mom caught us before we were too far down the road.  Olivia didn't fall asleep until Ypsilanti, which was unfortunate considering that Ypsi was 2.5 hours in to the 3 hour trip.  To continue the "sleeping in a real bed" trend, we put Olivia on a mattress in Jillian's room.  That went fine until about 6:00 Friday morning, when I heard yelling and poked my head in to check on Olivia.  ...There was no Olivia.  The yelling was definitely coming from that room, though, so I moved the mattress (that, incidentally, was right up against the edge of the bed) and discovered a left heel.  I rescued Olivia from under the bed and convinced her to lay back down, but she never really went back to sleep.

Saturday was Olivia's birthday, so mom made a cake.  That was pretty much the extent of the celebrating since Bryan was at a bachelor party all day.  We did some gifts Sunday before piling back into the car for the trip home.

Pictures: