Claire's a Sweetheart

The last post about Claire was a little negative, so here is a better view of the adorable and cute things she does.

Pinkalicious is her absolute favorite book right now. Sure got it as a Christmas gift from her cousins. She thinks it is so funny. And she loves the ending! One day soon we need to make pink cupcakes.

Claire really likes saying "bye bye." She had started saying it to Everything. If for any reason something appears to have gone away or is moving or she wants it to go away or turn off she says, "bye bye." Like lights or birds or planes or when she thinks of daddy or the TV, diapers, bath water, books, bedrooms. Everything. It is really funny. You never really think about some things as going away, but babies only understand so many concepts and apply those to everything else whether it really works or not.

Her canine teeth are coming in. her bottom ones are about half way in, and just a couple days ago I saw her top ones peeking through as I was brushing her teeth.
That could be why she has been sleeping SO well lately! It had been such a blessing for me that she sleeps long enough for me to work and then get a little rest before she gets up. She has also been sleeping till nearly 7am lately.

She's become a more picky eater. I got really bad for a while about only feeding her foods that I knew she liked. It is really hard for me to come up with meal ideas and so the easy thing to do was just give Claire the same 4 or 5 meals. I would always offer her our dinners but I just planned on her mostly eating just vegetables. Now, we are bribing her. "Cupcakes are for after dinner!"

She loves to sing songs. Correction, she loves to tell ME to sing songs. "If all of the Rain drops were Lemon drops and Gum drops," "ABCs," and "If you chance to meet a frown" are her favorites right now.

She has gotten REALLY good at assembling her Lego Duplo blocks. She only has a few but she will sit contentedly for a good 15 minutes just pulling those 7 blocks apart just to put them back together again.

She missed her daddy SO Much last week while he was away! She cries nearly every time he leaves the room now if he doesn't say, "goodbye." She's dealing with some abandonment issues!

One of my favorite words for Claire to say is, "peanut butter." So funny.

Claire also doesn't just say more. She holds up her first little finger right next to her face and hunches her shoulders a little and ducks her head while she says, "muuuuuun more." It is always one more. And it is so darn cute it's really hard to resist.

That is all.

Happy Valentine's Day!

The month of February has been so much fun around here! Lots of love!

At Christmas I did 12 days of Christmas for Peter, and so Peter did 14 days of Valentine's for me. We've been doing 14 days of Valentine's for several years now, but we've decided that it's a bit nerve-wracking planning and executing 14 full days of surprises. So we may or may not continue. BUT my 14 days of Valentine's culminated in a beautiful bouquet of tulips in my favorite colors!

It could not have been any more perfect!
These flowers even came with care instructions and they are the first tulips that I haven't had fall over in the vase. Apparently the trick is to let them soak in the food/water for 3-4 hours with the sleeve still ON and then cut it off. A bit of delayed satisfaction there, but oh so worth it!

And despite packing and moving, I was super on top of things and made and mailed Valentine's cards sufficiently BEFORE Valentine's day that they should have all arrived in time!

I saw the idea on Pinterest and thought Claire would have a lot of fun doing it. Here is the final product.
I later learned from a friend who actually read the tutorial (I just looked at the picture) that the heart in the palm of the hand was not punched, as I thought, but a heart shaped piece of paper placed on the kid's hand after the paint and before putting their hand on the full piece of paper! Genius! Oh well.

We did two colors because Claire really likes purple, and she likes to say "purple." Thinking of you Rachel Lamb Kunkel!

During our photo shoot I tried to get a picture of Claire making her kissy face, and this is what I got.

I decided to go with this one though because it's just an ADORABLE smile!

Then I stripped her down to her diaper and let her play in the paints--kind of. I had to help her a lot to get a few good looking hand prints!

She really wanted to do purple! (This is her while saying "purple")

We had so much fun!

And a Valentine's day gift that I made for Peter was an "i love you because..." frame. The idea is that you use the picture frame as a white board with dry erase markers and leave quick little love messages for each other. I'm hoping that it just keeps us in a lovey mood because we see it often and try to think of reasons why we love each other.

Here is the link to the site where I got the idea from. I don't feel like taking a picture of mine right now, but it's almost the same. My writing is at the top and I don't have flowers on the frame.

I just printed the words onto an 8.5"x11" piece of scrapbook paper.

If you're interested in the pdf I made, email me and I'll get it to you. I even included faint gray cut lines to fit the 8x10 frame. You're welcome!

Super easy. Took literally 3 minutes. And then I complained that I took so long going to the Dollar Store to get a frame!

And my gift to my family is always food. So for breakfast I made heart-shaped Red Beet Pancakes!
They were delicious, and Claire ate them if I distracted her. Recipe found HERE.

And in case you were uncertain, those little hairs sticking out of the sides of Claire's head are completely natural curls. They get super tight after naps, especially if she sweats. (gross but true).

These are untouched. Beautiful!

Claire's Checkup

It's hard to believe Claire is one and a half years old! I realize I probably say that every time, but it's true!

She's still growing just perfectly. She's slowed down a bit, which is completely normal as she's approaching 2. Her new stats: 

Height: 31.75 inches

Weight: 25 lbs 8 oz. 

She's averaging about 60% all around.

Also, since taking these pictures we've cut her bangs. SUPER cute. Click HERE for that post.

Right now Claire LOVES to play outside. She asks to go to the park pretty much every single day. And we've been going a couple times each week because the weather has been so nice. Yeah, it's still a bit chilly--her hands get a little too cold sometimes--but it's so worth it because the sun is shining and it's good to get outside.

Claire also has taken a serious interest in jewelry, purses, shoes, and hair things. She already loved putting in clips--not leaving them in, just putting them in and taking them out again. Now she also loves necklaces and putting her cellphone in her purse and wearing my shoes around the house. It's super cute!

I've been working on getting her to play with her baby dolls. She likes pushing them in her stroller, but she usually ends up throwing the baby out of the stroller and trying to sit in it herself. So last week I finally bought her doll accessories which include things like a plate and spoon and milk and juice bottles with disappearing liquid. She really likes playing with the baby now. What she actually does with these things though is try to use them for herself. She sticks the baby doll pacifier in her mouth and laughs because it's so funny that she is trying to use it! (she did that all on her own). 

Her interest in jumping has recently been renewed because we've been playing "5 little monkeys jumping on the bed." She loves getting on the bed with me to jump around and fall down into the pillows. She just needs to learn not to go to the edge of the bed.

She also loves Barney. I found a sing-a-long Barney movie on Netflix that includes lots of classic kids songs that Claire already knew and loved and now anytime she wants to sing or dance she runs to the TV and asks for "Bah-bah."

Which brings me to the next topic: Talking. 

Claire still uses about 4 syllables to say EVERYTHING. It is SO hard because she wants to be understood SO badly, but won't change the way she says anything. It feels like correcting her is so pointless because she just smiles and looks at me bashfully. She also throws tantrums when I'm not getting her what she wants because I can't figure it out. Also, "yes" and "up" are the same sound: "uh" with a whole upper body/shoulders lift.

And this morning we had our first experience with time out. For a little while now Claire has been hitting and throwing things, but I've just been brushing it off as I'm ignoring her or she is just a baby but NO MORE! Today her actions were deliberate and just mean. She hit me like usual and I grabbed her hand and said, "No, Claire. We don't hit." And so she took her hand away and hit me harder. We did this a few times and she laughed about it each time. So I decided something had to be done. But how do you discipline an 18 month old? I put her in time out. She sat in the middle of the floor--as much "middle" as there is left in our boxed up house-- for one minute. If she stood up I said, "no. Sit down." Then after one minute I told her that she had to sit there in time out because we don't hit. "Hitting isn't nice and you need to say sorry." Again, the bashful smile and then a hug. Then not 30 minutes later she was eating a snack and decided to throw her cup down. I watcher her pick up the cup and told her not to throw it. She smirked and did it anyway. So we tried time out for the second time. I don't think it phased her at all. But maybe if we keep doing it she will realize that I'm not just sitting her down and carrying on with my business.

Life Right Now

Right now my house looks something like this:

Haha. But really.

There are boxes all over in every room. We've been packing for 3-4 weeks now. Just a few boxes each day. All that's left is the stuff we actually use--clothes, toiletries, toys, kitchen stuff, and electronics and crafts of course!
And the toys are all over. They can't be contained!
The walls are bare.
Some of our furniture is gone--yay Craigslist!

We are moving in 2 weeks.

So please excuse us while we don't blog.

Oh yeah. We also signed the contract to build our house a month earlier than was scheduled! Hooray!