My Exciting Nesting!

It's Saturday night...actually technically Sunday morning...12:30...and I'm still up. I didn't watch the Colts game...nope...I folded 6 baskets of laundry and put them away. FUN! THEN...I scrubbed three bathrooms. I have to scrub the toilets after Claire's asleep, or she wants to get her little face in there and look really close. They she'll ask funny questions like, "Why you brushing the toilet? Why the toilet dirty? I brush it too???" In other SUPER exciting homemaker news, I have folded and put away all the Christmas towels and linens too...it's fun to decorate and enjoy the stuff up, but not so fun to put it all away!!! I also got all the de-thawed lights put away. Christmas is officially over in our house. :(

In other nesting news, I cleaned out all our medicine/toiletries areas of the house because...well...honestly it was something to do in order to not get around to folding 6 baskets of laundry, and I'd already played too much today...(Can one possibly play with ones kids too much?) Actually, I saw this blog post at Pretty Babies and decided to see what I had expired floating around.

I was doing pretty good in the kitchen cabinet where we keep a few things. I trashed some mouthwash and deodorant guests had left in the guest bathroom that had expired. I thought I was doing pretty good. I went through the shelf above the changing table area and trashed some nipple cream that expired last month...not too bad. But definitely wouldn't want to use that since it might be ingested. Through out some expired samples of butt cream...why do they give those things out?

SO this is the part of blogging that is fun to read about...at least for me. I've read about other people nesting and cleaning, and I think it's great. It's very inspiring to get my own butt in gear to do some cleaning!!!

Moving to Claire's bathroom, I just trashed some rubbing alcohol that expired June 2009, so that stuff must be good about 2 years because it was for her belly button...I was still doing pretty good! THEN...I moved to the master bath and found LOTS to trash...LOTS AND LOTS! There were a lot of contact solutions, mostly various samples from cough, ahem, Josh. Trashed lots of decongestant and cold remedies stuff, another bottle of rubbing alcohol...most of it expired within the past 2 years. I was actually surprised that I found as much as I did since I am really anal about watching food dates. I figured I wouldn't find anything before 2005 since that is when we moved here. Some people might think it's fine to use that stuff that expired because it's just less potent, but um...that's nasty and disgusting in my opinion because if it EXPIRED 2 years ago or whatever...WHEN WAS IT MADE? And this stuff is going on OR in your body like food...it's absorbed! Also trashed some nasty orange toothpaste that expired. I didn't know toothpaste had a date on it! Oh, and trashed one tube of teething gel...I think that's about it...except for the winner...a bottle of medicated powder that expired...ready...MARCH 2003!!!!!!! YIKES!

That means we moved it AT LEAST twice while expired. HA! So then later I thought I should check my purse and trashed some hand sanitizer that expired June 2007 and some ibuprofen the same. YIKES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was a good way to child-proof too since we don't have locks on the cupboards. We just put safety knobs on the bathroom doors, and hopefully it will be a long time before Claire masters those!!! So she's never in the bathrooms alone.

Well, that's it! Hope all the rest of you had fun watching the Colts game. I've tried to get into it, but usually find myself picking up a book or magazine if I sit with Josh to watch it.

PS...we did Moon Sand again today. THAT STUFF IS FUN! :)

New Year Interview

Claire's current favs, just a week shy of being 2 and 1/2!!!

Favorites:

• cereal – Cream of Wheat

• vegetable – corn

• drink – purple grape juice

• toy – her Night-Night Baby Dolls that she sleeps with

• TV Show – Barney??? (My *goal* is no TV until after supper, and then Josh would put a DVD on for her!)

• game – Ring-Around-The-Rosie

• book – Everyone Poops or Goodnight Moon

• restaurant – Momma's Breastaurant open 24/7/365 :) or any place that serves ice cream!

• holiday – Christmas

• animal – snake (only because this involves Daddy pretending to "get her" with Playdoh snakes)

If you could change your name, what would you choose? Claire

What do you love about each person in our family? I love you!

Where would you like to go on vacation this year? OmaOpas! (It's one word for her!)

What are some of your wishes for this year? I not know!

New Tooth

FINALLY! One of Claire's 2 year-old molars has broken through! I kind of hope she gets the other 3 before April...I mean come on!!! Some kids have had theirs for a year by her age! I noticed she was eating a lot less and waking up more...and earlier. YUCK! Plus she was being a little more clingy and cranky. Just for fun, I felt around on her gums...and there was a tooth!!!! It's her bottom lower left one of the bunch!

Moon Sand, Scissors and Beards?

Random blog title, I know...but what else would link all three of these tidbits?

We got a package today! Claire has started to love boxes in the mail as much as me ;) I used a gift card from her "Glama" Lynn to get her some fun stuff, including some Moon Sand. Crap is that stuff messy but fun. I thought it was going to be like Play-Doh. NOPE! It's more like just SAND! But colored and very "wet" but it feels dry. It's really pretty hard to describe. It said for ages 3 and up...but she'll be 2 and 1/2 in about a week, so that means she's ready for it, right ;)???

It says to put it on an easily washable surface...I opted to just pour it directly into a 9 by 13 Pyrex. It also made it great for when we were done. I just shut the plastic lid on it with all the molds inside that it came with. You can mold the sand and it stays amazingly well. It sorta reminded me of playing with packed brown sugar. It's sorta wet, but not...you've just gotta try it. I had as much fun as she did!

Then I also ordered her 2 more pair of all plastic scissors. They don't cut hair! BONUS! I figure all scissors cut really differently so this will give us some more chances to try cutting. She is still working on the Open/Shut motion with one hand, let alone the actual cutting without hand over hand assistance. I have a feeling this might just click one day, so we'll see.

Also, a cute toddler assumption story:
We have a book about Noah's ark. Or course Noah has a huge white beard. She is very interested in the beard post Christmas probably because of all the Santa imagery we saw everywhere. She said, "Noah has a beard. Santa has a beard. Daddy has a beard. I no have a beard. You (talking to me) no have beard. Girls have chins." This cracked me up. In her world, most guys have beards or goatees...and girls have chins!

Children's Museum

Here is a video of Claire at the museum playing:



And here is another video of her playing at the water table:

Jamming With Richie

Video taken on Christmas day:

SNOW!

SNOW! It's an annual tradition to take a picture of the house with the first good snow covering! It snowed last week, but it's almost already melted off. Today it was 40! That'll take care of it pretty fast!
Claire LOVES playing in it. She is fixated on digging in it and getting her mittens as wet and dirty as possible.

National De-lurking Day

Word on the street is that today, Jan. 14, 2010, is National Delurking Day.

You know what that means? If you read my blog but never comment, today’s the day to leave a little note to let me know you exist. :)

Don’t be shy. Say hi. You know you want to. ;)

As always, thanks for reading!

Science and Industry Museum

Claire's favorite display at the museum of Sciene and Industry was the baby chicks. You can see how excited she is here. I am laughing at her.
Baby animals are so adorable!

I think the chicks had just as much fun looking at us!

The Christmas Around the World Display:

Trying to pose by some of the trees...they had about 50!

The fairy tale castle. Claire also really liked this but kept asking "Where the Princess go?" since there was no Princess actually in the castle. I said she went to the store. :)

Christmas Eve 2009

We celebrated Christmas Eve at my parents house with a gift exchange per the German custom of a big dinner and gift exchange this evening. (I know these are a bit late, but better late than never!)
Claire enjoyed looking at all the "little fires" on the table!

My little Santa Baby! (And she likes to take off her sweaters, etc. because she likes the bows on her undershirts. Hmm. Next size up, I need to buy plain ones...but hopefully this phase will pass too.)

MEAN FACE!

Claire squints her eyes when I ask her to say "cheese" for the camera. She closes them like this if I ask her to open her eyes big. Stinker!
Here is her mean face. If I shoot her my "mean Mommy face" or "teacher glare" she now shoots one right back!

It's hard to not completely crack up when she does this.

Little stinker. I wanted to get a cute picture of her wearing this outfit. This is a Gymboree dress with matching floral shirt that I found at a garage sale in Walden near my parents house. It even have matching socks and barrettes (which don't stay in her fine hair)!

Helping Mommy Bake

Claire LOVES to help me make anything. She is really getting good at dumping stuff in without spilling...however she has discovered by observation how to turn on the mixer, hence the flour flying out all over the counter...see below:
YUMMY! This is banana bread batter that she is enjoying. She can eat a whole piece for breakfast now! I let her try to break open eggs for the first time this week. It went about how I expected it to go. SMASH...egg shells all in the measuring cup. Oh well, she had fun! And I have just as much fun watching her figure things out.