Bonus Post: Cleveland Pictures

Pictures of Rudy's birthday party.

The drive-in movie:

Dancing in hula skirts:

Painting pictures:

 

Rudy and Kaitlyn with Bernie:

Bryan:

Olivia and Grandma:

Chalk:

June 11-July 2

It's tough being the littlest one.  The big girls had VBS a few weeks ago, and Kaitlyn never ever got to stay.  Since the Wey boys were also attending, Elesha and I traded off giving rides.  Kaitlyn also never got to stay with Mrs. Wey.  And then, to make a sad situation even sadder, Aunt Jillian had work most days, and Kaitlyn didn't get to do that, either.  She spent her mornings with me, telling me how it was Kaitlyn's turn to go to school and Mrs. Wey's and work.

A Gretchen mispronunciation: accilently.

A Kaitlyn mispronunciation: ehferma (elephant)

An Olivia update: She started both long vowels and subtraction last week.

We recently went to the zoo with the Weys and toured Africa.  It was a hot day, but that made the African animals more cooperative and active than usual, which was a pleasant surprise.  The lion even jumped right up to the window, startling all the kids standing there, before flopping down in front of it for admiration.  The giraffes were (as always) a big hit.  They're so big and really have nowhere to hide in their enclosure.  Also there's a viewing deck where you can pay to feed them lettuce, so they tend to be pretty close.

Last weekend we went to Cleveland to visit Keshia, Tyler, and Rudy.  It lined up with Rudy's birthday, so Keshia threw a luau themed party and decorated box cars for the girls to all watch Moana in their own personal drive-in.  They all had fun playing and painting and dancing in their grass skirts.  I will probably have a pictures only post soon once I get a chance to go through all the pictures that Keshia sent me.  I told Murry about how I did so many prostrations right before Kaitlyn was born, and she told Keshia and me that we better get working on our Easter crunches so that both our babies would come while she was there to watch all the other kids.  We declined.  :/

After Cleveland, the girls and I headed to Pittsburgh to see the Bossards.  Their new house is only two hours from the Palsgroves, so the drive was relatively painless.  The girls were three across in the back-seat-moved-to-the-middle and we Bryan and Jillian packed the back of the van full of Bossard belongings from the basement.  The kitchen table didn't actually fit in the van, so Bryan took that and the rest of the basement Bossard belongings to Pittsburgh in his truck on Saturday before meeting the rest of us in Cleveland.  This means that the Bossards are out of my basement!  Anyway, we spent Sunday night and all of Monday just visiting and hanging out.  The cousins played together and Justine and I unpacked a few things that I'd brought and decided where furniture was going to go.  We took the kids up to the empty attic and ran them through an exciting series of games and races, managing to get several good cousin pictures in the meantime.  Again, those will go up when I get a chance.

On Tuesday the movers came to drop off boxes.  I spent the morning keeping children in the playroom while Justine and Joseph directed traffic.  After lunch we put on a movie and I began the task of unpacking (mostly dumping boxes of toys into the playroom) while Justine double checked everything with the movers.  Then the real work began.  Over the rest of Tuesday and the beginning of Wednesday, we managed to unpack the kitchen, dining room, playroom, the boys' bedroom, the bathroom, and part of the living room.  Not everything was put away in a permanent home, but it was all out of boxes.  We were impressed by the packing skills of the kitchen guy especially.  We were unimpressed by all of the labeling skills -- sharp knives were found split between a box labeled plasticware and another labeled canned goods.  On Wednesday afternoon I needed to leave, so I stole some cardboard from Justine, rigged a shelf for the portable DVD player, and loaded the girls into the car.  The movie was supposed to be saved for a little later in the trip, but Kaitlyn took an early nap on the couch and was awake enough that we started the movie as soon as we hit I-76.  The last two hours of our trip were cranky, at least until all three girls fell asleep within half an hour of home.

Things we learned:
-When you get Justine's early rising boys together with my comparatively late to bed girls, everyone goes to sleep late and gets up early.  However, if Kaitlyn and Walter are sequestered away from the rest of them (and each other), everyone tends to get a bit more sleep.
-A pile of grass clippings and a ride-on bulldozer will keep all six children happy for about an hour.
-If you don't care about organization, having each child fill one of those fabric cubes to the top with toys will get the playroom relatively clean in a short amount of time.
-It takes seven cups of oatmeal each morning to feed everyone breakfast.

We spent Wednesday evening at home and then went down to Sidney on Thursday afternoon so that Bryan and I could squeeze in our La Comedia date before Bean is born.  We were originally scheduled to see this show on July 9, but I called and got our date switched to opening night in hopes that we would make it.  :)  The show (Beauty and the Beast, which, incidentally, is the first thing that Bryan and I ever saw at La Comedia nine years ago) was good, but the trip was made more memorable by the drive home.  We were with the Weys in their van and every warning light on the dashboard came on, one after another.  Then all the dials dropped to zero even though we were still traveling along at about 65 miles per hour.  Jon lost the ability to accelerate and moved over to the shoulder in anticipation of having to stop.  The headlights dimmed so much as to be useless, so he turned them off and was rewarded with a renewed ability to accelerate.  We probably would have made it to that next exit, except that another car had broken down on the shoulder and we couldn't pass them safely.  Half a mile from the exit, we gave up and stopped to call a tow truck.  The tow truck driver suspected a bad alternator.  Bryan's dad came to pick us up, the Weys took our van home, and we stayed in Sidney until their van was done in the shop the next day.  While we were driving we were joking about how after the show would be the perfect time for me to go into labor because Murry already had the kids.  As the van slowly lost power, we thought maybe I'd go into labor five minutes after we stalled on the side of the road.  However, we ended up right next to a hospital, so clearly that was too convenient and no baby came.  The night was pleasant, though, so the timing for a breakdown wasn't too bad, all things considered.

Yesterday (assuming nothing happens after I schedule this post) Bryan and I went to a wedding in Toledo.  The girls stayed with friends and then Jillian picked them up for dinner and bedtime.  Related note, Jillian got her license while I was in Pittsburgh.  She took the whole driver's test in Bryan's giant truck.

Today we're back in Sidney for a pool party, and then I think we're planning on being mostly home until Bean arrives.  Maybe I'll work on my Easter crunches this week.  :)

Pictures, all out of order:

Bonus Post: Sound Bites 21

Gretchen: You know, when I do very hard work I forget everything.

Gretchen: When I am a mommy, I am going to let my big ones eat pizza and my little ones eat macaroni and cheese.  And I am going to let them do whatever they want.  Will that make me a grandma-mommy?  Because Grandmas let us do whatever we want and Mommys don't.

Jillian: If your mommy has three daughters and Aunt Justine has three sons, who has more sons?
Olivia: Mommy doesn't have any sons.
Jillian: So who has more sons?
Olivia: None of them?
Gretchen: Aunt Jillian does!

Olivia: You are not the boss of the world.
Bryan: That was you, in your daughter's voice, just now.
Me: That was actually Oma, through me, in my daughter's voice just now.

Kaitlyn, kissing my stomach: Good boys belly.

*Kaitlyn hands me a toy.*
Kaitlyn: Help, mommy.  Fix it please.
*I fix it and hand it back.*
Kaitlyn: I did it!  Mommy, look Kaitlyn made!

Olivia: You are getting very heavy like Mama Bear when Small Bear tries to sit on her lap but can't because her belly is full of the new baby.

Olivia: Moo.  Moo.  Moo!
Me: Are you a cow?
Olivia: No, Gretchen said this one's name was Mu.  *pause*  Gretchen, her name can't be Mu or mommy will think I'm a cow.

Me: What are you doing?
Kaitlyn: Eating your clothes!

Gretchen: That's the Creightons' house.
Me: Are you sure?
Gretchen: Yes, it has steps.
Me: But the Creightons are in Ohio and we are in Pennsylvania.
Gretchen: It has steps AND a door.

June 4-11

The girls, Olivia especially, like to call me Mommy-moiselle when they're being goofy.  I think it has its origins in mademoiselle, which I'm sure they heard in a movie somewhere.

Bryan and I went to a wedding last Sunday without the kids.  I sang in the choir and Bryan got drenched while directing traffic.  The reception was in an open air venue near a lake, so we were glad to not have to worry about chasing Kaitlyn around.  We managed most of a (somewhat sideways) slow dance and took a nice walk around the lake before heading to Steve and Murry's to sleep and collect the girls.

We have Jillian.  She finally completed her trip from Connecticut to Michigan via New York, and the girls and I picked her up at Jacob's house on Monday.  She has taken up residence in our guest room and is proving herself a useful babysitter when I need to run a quick errand.  She does want a better paying job, though, so on Friday we took her to an interview.  I brought a tiny card table with chairs and the girls and I set up school in the car where the middle seat is still missing.

Olivia and Gretchen had water safety classes at the YMCA all week.  All the classes were in the therapy pool, which is a comfortable 90 degrees and only 2'6" on the shallow end.  After the first day, Kaitlyn was no longer invited (she was incredibly upset that her mother wouldn't let her in the water), so she got to bond with Aunt Jillian.  Water safety does not, it turns out, cover things like not running near the pool or not jumping into the deep end.  It did, however, teach them how to blow bubbles and the basics of a few strokes.  By the end of the week the girls were at least comfortable in the water and were able to jump into an instructor's arms without panicking.  They still don't like getting their eyes wet, and they sometimes forget to blow bubbles when their heads go under, but now we have something to work on.

Kaitlyn can open all our doors now.  She used to only be able to open ones that she could push on while turning with her right hand, but now she can open the pull ones as well.  Naptime has become an exciting affair since I have to pull the changing table over a few inches to block the bathroom door and then put our gate across the bedroom door.  I also put one of our school screens (you may know them better as the Christmas tree screens) in front of the door so that when it invariably opens she can't see what she's missing.

One of our cherry trees produced blossoms this year, which was a surprise since we weren't expecting fruit for another 1-3 years.  We got about two dozen tiny tart cherries that were quite delicious.  I'm excited to have more fruit growing in our backyard down the line.

Pictures:

Bonus Post: A Photo Shoot

Trying to get good pictures for Grandma's wall...

Olivia:

Gretchen:

Kaitlyn:

The best ones:

May 14-June 4

A checkup was had.  Gretchen is 38 pounds and 40.75 inches.  Kaitlyn is 29.2 pounds and 34.5 inches.  Both are looking a little bit tall for about half the dresses they picked out during our basement shopping expedition, so I had to go downstairs and swap some out.

Olivia is finished with her kindergarten phonics book, which means she can read words with normal short vowels.  She's also about a month away from being done with the first grade book (and normal long vowels).  Good thing I picked up the second grade book at the last conference!  In other school news, she's progressing well through her math lessons, and I expect we'll be starting subtraction in the next week or two.

Gretchen wants to learn to read.  She's actually pretty interested in all of Olivia's school work, choosing to hang around and shout out answers while Olivia works rather than going to play.  Since she's showing such interest, I've been working on flashcards with Gretchen to improve her letter recognition.  She gets 20-23 letters right on the first try each day, but they're not always the same letters.  :-P

Kaitlyn likes to get out the dance recital tutus, put one on, and dance to my video recording of Sweet and Sassy.  She's actually not too bad.  Unrelated, she has a few phrases I wanted to get down: First, when something that's missing has been found, she says, "There she is!"  It doesn't matter if it's a person or an object, the pronoun is "she."  I assume this is from us playing peek-a-boo with her when she was smaller.  Second, when being buckled into her carseat, Kaitlyn complains that the straps are too tight, saying, "Too more!" or "Too good!"  Gretchen always prompts us to pull her straps tighter using the words "more" and "good," so that's probably where Kaitlyn got it.  Third, Kaitlyn would make an excellent Latina.  Her preposition of choice is "a," pronounced "ah."  She uses it mostly instead of "to," as in the following example: "Gretchen give blanket a Kaitlyn."  Other times it is just added into a sentence unnecessarily: "Gretchen hit a Kaitlyn head."

Murry offered to watch the girls over Memorial Day weekend, so Bryan and I had Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon without kids.  Jacob, Katya, and Zach came down for part of it, and Kara visited as well, so games were played (after everyone slept in sufficiently).  Katya and Kara helped me box up dad's "keep" books in the basement according to author, and then we organized tiny shoes onto a shelf so that the next sizes will be readily available.  Side note about the shoes: I have approximately twenty pairs of size 8 little girl shoes in my basement right now.

The garden is fully planted.  We mulched the strawberries so that there's less weeding to do.  I can't tell what baby broccolis (started from seed) look like, so we may be mulching that bed as well if they don't make it clear that they're not weeds soon.  Bryan has started building an enclosure to keep bunnies and birds out.  He has posts in the ground and now we just need to run clothesline and attach a net.

Upcoming activities: We have a wedding, water safety classes, and VBS in our future.  Also trips to Cleveland and Pittsburgh.  Oh, and a baby, although that will probably be sometime after the next update.  :)

Pictures and Videos: