Leaving on a Jet Plane

Boy have we been busy!

Last week we traveled to "wild and wonderful" West Virginia so we could introduce Claire to my dad's family. So it feels like the last two weeks have been PACKED full of business. During our vacation, I tried to do as little as possible, so much so that I almost missed taking any pictures of the event. It was so nice to do nothing but BE with my family. I didn't worry about cleaning, or going places, or getting crafts, gifts, or projects done. It was SO nice! Especially considering all of the worrying and planning I did in preparation for that week!

First, I made lists for everything. I made lists for things that we would need on our trip. I made lists for things I needed to do before the trip. A list for things to buy and people to talk to and most importantly, a list of ideas for entertaining Claire. No, I didn't actually reference this list while on the plane, but making the list helped me to remember the ideas on it a lot better.

Before I made this oh-so-important list, I did a lot of reading with the help of Pinterest and some of my favorite baby-raising sites. I got ideas from everyone and everywhere I could on how to entertain an active toddler on a plane. I knew that for Claire, I needed as many different ideas as possible with a very limited amount of physical items and space.

I wrote my list using the Evernote App on my phone so that I could see the list from any device.

This is my list:

Hand Activities
Pat-a- cake
This Little Piggie
I'm a Little Tea Pot
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Heads shoulders knees and toes
If you're Happy and you Know it
Popcorn Popping
Hokey pokey
I'm all made of hinges
Roll your hands
I have ten little fingers
Ring around the Rosie
Here we go Round the mulberry bush
I'm bringing home a baby bumble bee
The wheels on the bus
Here is the church

Songs
I am like a Star
ABCs
Twinkle Twinkle
Row your boat
Belly button song
Give said the little stream
Horsey horsey
Old Mac Donald
You are my sunshine

Games
what's that?
Make this face
Say this
Stack the drinking cups
Eat one item at a time
Read a book
Poke the straw through the lid
Put your shoes on
Listen to music
Watch shows


I also prepped some small activities that would fit in my bag. Me being me, I didn't finish any of them. But they are well done and worked well enough.

Activities that I made:
Felt Mr & Mrs Potato head pieces (in a ziplock bag--didn't finish the book)
One felt Chicken finger puppet
Gospel ABCs picture book (I got through letter "I" done)
A Weekly Vitamin tracker filled with buttons, beads, and pom poms

Completed Items

The eyes and nose were completed, but not the turkey or Christmas tree

Things I didn't get done or forgot:
The rest of the felt bags or even pages--Turkey with feathers, Christmas tree with ornaments, Flowers that button on, Cow and Pig felt finger puppets for the Barn Page that I didn't make.
The rest of the ABC book
A book called "Grandma's purse" full of fun things.

What actually happened on the plane:
We sang and played lots of hand games.
If Claire found something safe and interesting, I let her do it until she complained. This is by far the BIGGEST tip I have. I stretched out every interesting thing as far as it would go.
Claire liked to sit between our feet and explore the zipper on the diaper bag.
We looked at the SkyMall Magazine and she took the pamphlets and magazines out of the pocket and repeatedly put them back in again. That lasted a good 20 minutes. We spent time sipping out of the complimentary cups. We looked out the window. She played with the velcro on her shoes and practiced taking her shoes on and off.
She ate lots of snacks: Annies Cheddar Bunnies, Raisins, Vanilla puff stars--out of a self feeding snack cup with the plastic flaps on the lid.
She watched other people on the plane. And watched their individual tv screens.

I did not actually use the felt toys or the books that I brought. I was saving them until she got out of control and done with the other stuff.
We also bought a Nexxus 7 tablet specifically for this trip. We purchased a couple of apps from her favorite books and she enjoyed looking at those for a while. We also loaded the tablet with a few movies and episodes of her favorite tv show, Backyardiagans. This worked pretty well, but would have been better if she would keep the headphones on and if the sound on the tablet was better. That's another story though.

Overall the biggest thing is to stay calm. If other people give you dirty looks when your child cries, who cares? They can get off the plane and get away from babies. You can't. And right now, on this trip, it is all about keeping your little one happy. Another thing to remember is that, at least for me, the screaming and crying always seems worse to me than it really is. And every other parent on that plane has sympathy for you because they know what a chore it is to take small kids on a plane. It is NOT an easy task!

So when you make it off of the plane alive, rejoice! You succeeded!

November

This month Claire turned 15 months and just blossomed!

We started the month with a well-child checkup.
Her new stats are:
Height: 30.75 inches (50-75%)
Weight: 24 lbs 5 oz. (75-90%)
Head circ: 46.6 cm (50-75%)

It's so funny when you look at the graph tracking of her growth because she follows the trajectory exactly! She is a perfectly average sized little girl.

At 15 months old Claire loves to run and play. She's still, and I'm pretty sure will always be, a very active little girl. She tries to run everywhere she goes and almost always falls. And when she's nervous or looking up, she walks backwards blindly until she bumps into something.

This is what Claire does when you tell her to finish eating/chewing something.

She is now able to stack 6 blocks on her own.

She has figured out how to open our lever-handled doors.

At least she closes the door again!

She is constantly trying to figure out how things work--putting them together and taking them apart. I need to find more things like this to entertain her. Sure, there are things that she can put together around the house, but most of them aren't really safe. Like the cabinet locks. She loves putting those together for me!

The biggest development in the last month, however, has been in her speech. She has really been trying in earnest to communicate with us. She still won't copy what you say if you ask her to or repeat it several times as an example, but she relishes the moments when we understands the words that she uses. We love it too, though! It's really tiring dealing with tantrums and screaming because of Claire's frustration at not being able to communicate her wants and needs. So any use of words is welcomed!

She also LOVES to fix her hair in the mornings! We spend at least 10 minutes every day putting in and taking out bows, flowers, and ribbons. So much fun. Unless we are in a hurry. It's not so much fun then!

Sorting through all of her hair things. Putting them in and taking them out of the baggie.

Trying to put in yet another clip

All of her pretty bows and flowers!

Claire is so much fun to be with right now. Unless she is screaming. It's not so fun then.
We've started taking more videos of her because 1) she moves so much and 2) her actions are so funny and can't be expressed quite as well in pictures.

So, videos will be added later once they finish uploading.

Happy Halloween!

Here it is folks!
Our family Halloween costumes!
This year we were a family of musical puns inspired by our dear daughter's name, Claire Annette.

Claire was, obviously, a Clarinet. It was really hard to get a good picture of her. She really likes to move and run toward the camera before you've finished taking the picture.

I, her mother, was a  "treble" clarinetist.

Peter was our orchestral conductor. He dressed as a train conductor though because, well, come on! It's Peter we're talking about, and we were dressing as puns!

Here is Claire's costume. I also painted the back. I practiced drawing all the lines a couple times on paper first. Her hat is made entirely of felt and I'm especially proud of it. She wore the onesie over her black leggings so that more of the keys and rods would show. I also made her a tutu because it broke my heart to think that my baby girl might go through a Halloween without being girly.

Claire was a bit scared to go up to the doors the first few times, but she warmed up quickly. She loved running through everyone's front yards and waving "hi" and "bye." Once she realized that there was candy in her little bag, she tried to put it back in the people's bowls. She's really into sorting and putting things together right now.

We went trick or treating with some of our friends from church. It was a lot of fun chasing after Claire. Next year maybe she'll actually say "thank you" or even "trick-or-treat!"

Not Yosemite

Last weekend we decided to cross off one more of our California bucket list items: Yosemite.

We headed out around 10am and planned to spend the afternoon at the park and head back around Claire's bedtime. 

Claire fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up about an hour before we hit the edge of the mountains/forest.

We stopped and ate the foot long subs that we brought along from Subway. We made sure to let Claire run around for 30 minutes before starting on the road again. 

We weren't on the road 40 minutes before we hit some serious switch backs and Claire started crying. I knew that she wasn't going to make it so I turned around and went back over the 5 turns that we had gone through. Claire couldn't take it even though we were only going about 10 mph. 

She blew and it was no small ordeal. Peter managed to catch nearly all of it in the towel we brought for just such an incident though! 

We stopped at a Vista Point along lake Don Pedro to take in some views, let Claire's stomach settle, and get some pictures.

*Too bad they were SERIOUSLY over-exposed! Peter was playing with the aperture priority and didn't quite get it right. Granted, it was sunny so it was hard to tell from the display if the settings were perfect. I edited them a little, but I'm not an expert and don't have the serious amounts of time it would take me to figure it out. So if anyone wants some experience editing over-exposed photos, let me know! I can hook you up!*

 Claire had a lot of fun running back and forth between the camera and our posing spot with us.

 She could hardly wait to leap out of our arms and go and check the picture.

So I'm pretty excited about these really cute pictures. Definitely the first family pictures we've ever had where EVERYONE is smiling!

After 30 minutes of running around Claire still got nauseous 2 or 3 more times. Poor little thing! She was so sad. But such a trouper! Peter wasn't as lucky with catching everything the next few times. 

We made it home a few hours later.

And that was our trip Not to Yosemite.

Festive Pumpkins

Friday we went to Spina Farms to enjoy some family time at the pumpkin patch!

We went there last year and really enjoyed it. When we went on Friday, we realized that last year we must have gone earlier in the month because by the time we were done, it was completely dark already whereas last year the last sunbeams were still breaking over the mountains.

Anyway. We had fun chasing Claire through the pumpkins and taking a hay ride through the sunflowers.  

I had taught Claire the word "pumpkin" recently. (When I say "taught," what I mean is that Claire recognizes the object and will grunt and point in excitement until we correctly name what it is that she is "talking" about.) So she had fun running around and pointing at the pumpkins that caught her interest. 

She really did NOT like the hay that covered the ground though! She hated falling down more than usual and did not want to sit on it for pictures.

She really liked going through the hay bale maze mostly because there were other kids running amid the bales.

We found a few pumpkins, and Claire was super excited to sit next to them in the wheelbarrow.

So it was a fun evening, and I'm so glad that Claire had fun.