Growth Spurt! And other news...

OK. Above we have a picture of Olie's shoes at the beginning of summer when he wore a size 9.5. And next to those are the shoes he's currently wearing - size 11!!!!!!! Now Olie is tall, but his feet are huge! I did a stealth comparison. There is one other boy, Owen, in Olie's class who is as tall, but Owen's feet are nowhere near as large. This perhaps explains why Olie is so good at releveing.





Last week we had a nice visit with Gramma and Grandpa Updyke, who were delighted to meet little Solvi. With her easy smile, our girl continues to charm wherever she goes, and Gramma and Grandpa were no exception.

Solvi is now rolling over both ways quite easily and spends much time on her tummy looking at her reflection in the mirror and trying to "kiss" the "other" pretty baby. Her favorite new talent is razzing, the polite term for making fart sounds with your lips together. She's also very close to sitting up.




Solvi absolutely adores her big brother, her eyes following him where ever he goes. Luckily the feeling seems to be mutual. Olie insists on hugging Solvi all the time.

Olie is doing well is school. He's definitely the most, errr, outspoken, active, and "enthusiastic" in class. At snack time on the very first day, the teacher, Gena, asked each kid what they had on their shirts. Answers had to be coaxed out of the other children. But long before it was his turn, Olie leapt out of his chair, ran right up to Gena, held out his shirt, and pronounced, "I have a whale on my shirt!" Luckily Gena thinks his enthusiasm is marvelous.

In school Olie is not yet learning anything other than how to socialize, but still the independent progress on his ABCs and 123s is rather astounding. While visiting R&E a few weekends ago, Erik baby sat Olie for a bit while the later was watching Bob the Builder. When we returned, I moved to turn the TV off, and of course Olie protested. Now each episode of Bob is about 12 minutes long, so in an attempt to ascertain if he could watch more I asked, "How many have you watched?" "Four, I think." replied Erik, thinking Olie would have no idea. "Actually," Olie stated. "It was five." And he was right!