Yay for Babysitters!

Well I am really grateful that my mom and Rich were able to come down for the weekend and help out. So in return, we took them out for brunch on Sunday.
Apparently the color of the day was: GREEN!

Claire also turned 23 months on Sunday! Wow...her bday is getting closer and closer!

Weekend with Oma and Richie

My mom and my brother Richie came down for the weekend to help out. My mom watched Claire while we had the sale and Richie helped out all around! They brought down this cool little trike for Claire that my Dad found at ... a GARAGE SALE! YAY!
Rich was teaching Claire how to pedal. She kept talking about it all the next day. "Uncle Richie! PEDAL! BIKE! Uncle Richie! Pedal!"

Notice how clean the garage is in the back ground! WOOT WOOT! :)

Claire really likes her new toy!

Claire loves to play in this rug...she likes to roll up in it like a taco!

Josh and I went out for dinner Saturday evening while my mom and Richie watched Claire.

Richie made some awesome mac and cheese for those not going out to eat.

Ahh. How I miss my little girlie when I'm not with her!

Cheese! Do you think she looks like me?

Happy Father's Day!

After Claire wakes up from her naps on weekends, she likes to snuggle with Daddy or Mommy!
Happy 2nd Father's Day to my Baby's Daddy! :) Lol!

Aww! She looks so cute! :)

Vacation Bible School

Claire had a fun week last week at Vacation Bible School or VBS. We hung out in the nursery with the under 2 crowd between the opening and closing "jam sessions."
Playing with sand inside was really fun for Claire until she started flinging it off the Neat Sheet. SO we picked it up since she was the only one that would play with it. Nobody else was interested in it.

Here is one shot with all whooping 4 participants.

I put more photos on Facebook if you want to see them.

She had a blast with this register toy, but it was really annoying because it made noise.

So we had a busy week last week between getting ready for the garbage sale and the VBS events. Seriously. I had a garbage sale. I refuse to ever have a storage bin. If it has been in a box for 3 months, I don't need it. If I forgot I had it, I don't need it. LOL. SO SICK of stuff! I now have a pantry and closets that have space. I took four more bags to the Goodwill yesterday morning and one bag to a consignment store in town. Sure, I COULD get more on Ebay, but I'm so done with that too. Again...hating to deal with stupid people.

Toy House

When Anja was visiting we found this cute toy house for a steal at a garage sale.



She is so in love with it. My mom has one like it for her house, too. You can never have enough toys of something that kids really like!

Claire and Mommy go on a Walk

Here is a quick video of Claire and I starting to go on a walk:

Car-Crazy Claire part deux

This picture reminds me of my brother David, or pictures I've seen of him at this age. She has sort of a "I'm being goofy for the camera face on" hehe!

Disney sunglasses for only 2.99! What a steal! And notice her little green purse...you probably saw it in pictures of us at the zoo..well it's her new companion. She will sometimes call it "my pursey" or sometimes she will call it "my diaper bag" which cracks me up. Because I call my purple back pack "my diaper bag" so she wants to carry around a bag just like me which is hilarious and cute.

Claire LOVES cars. Anytime we are on a walk and she sees a car in someone's garage, she wants to go and get in it. So I have been taking notes of which houses to try and walk on the other side of the street ... and also to make sure I'm pointing out the ever so interesting tree so as to avoid her running into some random people's garage and throwing a fit because I stick her back in the stroller. She likes to walk most of the time we go on a walk.

Ahh, yes, digging around for a goody. She has been known to stick all sorts of interesting things in here from used band aids, chewed gum wads, diaper wipes that I have given her to 'wipe' her babies faces (a great 2 minute distractor!), but the funniest thing ever found in her purse was a sauce packet from take-out food we brought home. Now that she can climb onto the tables by moving the chairs around and climbing up on them, nothing is safe on the tables anymore either!

"I can haz a car-nap!" There's nothing like a long day to wear Claire out!


This photos were actually from Anja's camera from the Castleton mall recently. This weekend we had a blast...we went on walks everyday as well as ate outside a couple times in our backyard! We also went to the school playground to play with Daddy!

Today we went to Mom's Club Breakfast Club this morning where they have a "breakfast pitch-in" and then we played in baby Kya's backyard on her swing set. Claire loves SLIDES as well. She probably went up and down the slide 50 times as well as went on the swing. She refused to play in the sandbox and got very mad when I had her touch the sand. She hates sand! This was brand new fresh out of the bag play sand, but no! She does not like to be dirty. Someone said that this was a readiness sign for potty-training, but we had a bit of a back slide when she got sick, and probably because I was sick too. She went from using only 2-3 diapers/day and going on the potty the rest of the time, to now fully refusing to go sit on the potty at all and is using diapers all day, everyday and night. She also slammed her hand in our master bath potty seat. The other 2 bathrooms have a "whisper close" seat which prevents little fingers or wee-wees from getting slammed. So i think it could be that or just not feeling well...or the rectal thermometer...she figured out quickly where that was going and she did not like it. She would cry, "Diaper! BACK ON! NO! NO! Diaper ON! DIAPER ON!...." I couldn't even check her temp. when she was saying that! :(

She is really amazing with names and remembers a lot of what has been going on. She knows slides can be hot. When we get to a slide, she asks "Slide HOT!?" so I will check. Today Josh watched Claire and asked if she went in a baby pool at Kya's house. AMAZING! I said, yes! He said, that she said "Mommy Drive! I swim! Baby Kya! PLAY!" Josh's friend Dave came over on Saturday, and Claire noticed the new and unusual shoes and said, "Dave shoe! Dave shoe!" She also says, "I love you Mommy, I love you Daddy!" When I put her to sleep tonight, she said "I love you Mommy; I love you Daddy." Then I asked her who else she loved and she said "I love you Oma!" I said, "Oma loves you too!" She said, "I love you Opa!" I said, "Opa loves you too!" She said "I love you Richie!" (She is getting better at the R!") and I said, "Richie loves you too!" She said "I love you Nummie!" I said, "Nummies love you too!" She said, "I love you Holly." etc...she loved her baby, her friends, baby Kya and baby Amelia, and also, she said "I love you TOWEL HAT!" She calls her towel hat the little towel that has the one corner in it that fits on her head. She loves that thing! I'm just amazed that she can start to talk about her day like she is. I asked her "What did you do today?" She said! "I slide! WHEE!"

Something else she notices, every time we are in the garage is if Daddy's car is there or not. If it's not, she will say, "Daddy car all gone. Daddy work." She also wants to push the button. Big mistake of letting her do that. She will say "I push but!"

EVERYTIME she drops something, she will say what the item is followed by "uh-oh and drop." Say she drops the sippy cup. She will say, "Sippy cup, uh-oh, drop!" She also loves to say "heavy." She will push around the dining room chairs and say, "chair, heavy!" Or she will try top pick up and carry her little ones and say, "HEAVY! CARRY! CHAIR! HEAVY!" It is pretty hilarious. She will also say "Heavy! ME!" When she is trying to climb onto something. I am trying to get her to say "I" instead of me more, which she will, but "I heavy" isn't really right. But this is "hard" is a tough concept.

So there are pros and cons to her development. Like yesterday I asked Josh if we should go to the school playground or Riley Park. She goes, "Riley Park! Riley Park!" Seriously? She of course then goes to get her shoes, my shoes and stands at the door, saying, "I want bye-bye! NOW!" "I want, I want, I want!" Lately, she wakes up and the first thing she says is "I want gum! I want jebbies (jammies) auck (off)." She wants to start her day naked, chewing gum. She loves to chew gum. When we were eating corn this weekend, she was saying "corn gum" noticing the fact that she had some chewy parts of the husk in her mouth that she could continue to chew on. She will also say "meat gum" when she has some gristle bit in her mouth. She doesn't want to spit it out. It is so gross, and grosser that I know she likes chewing the gristly piece that might find it's way into her mouth.

I hadn't posted much on her development lately, so there is a bit of fun new stuff for you. She can also say "Grover, Bert, Ernie, Abby Dabby, Baby Eintin (Einstein), Cookie Monster (no longer Cookie Elmo :( ), Bardey (for Barney)." She loves all of her character books. She has a Barney band book she wants me to read over and over! She can also say "base-kit ball" for basketball and gets excited whenever we see a hoop on a walk!

She is also very specific when I feed her. She wants to point to the bite of food she wants. She will say "diffint one" for different one if she doesn't like what is on the spoon. She can also say "nu-nu" for noddle now.

Picture Obsessed

This is Claire in our spare room, looking at pictures. She LOVES looking at photo albums with real people in them. She may look nekkid here, but she actually has on a diaper. :)
Oh, AND her teething beads. Or her "necky" as she calls it...her hair is really starting to get long. I actually have started combing it with the No-Tangles Spray as it will get little bed head knots in it while sleeping since I bathe her at night.

I can haz Stickerz!!!

Claire's favorite little place to sit is in our back doorway!
She is madly in love with these Barbie shoes. I only paid $1.70 for them at the Consignment store, and she is obsessed with them.
She is also obsessed with stickers. Luckily I have quite the stash left from my teaching days! I suppose she can use them in the meantime!

Our Little Nudist

Claire, well, she likes to be naked...observe...

Actually, Claire loves to be naked. Of course, I don't know any small toddler who doesn't enjoy being naked...after her bath she runs down the hallway and runs to "her laptop" as she calls it and plays with the mouse.

Cooking with Anja

Anja is an awesome cook. One night she made us some yummy curry chicken complete with pineapple and mandarin oranges in it. Yummy-ness in the making:

My Pursey!

Claire is in love with her little Pursey that she got from Oma and Opa for Easter. She takes her little treasures in it everywhere we go.
These are the bottoms of her new Stride Rite shoes. She had a ball at this play area!

Claire puts on necklaces and hats everyday. She had her purse in her right hand, but you can't see it in this shot. She LOVES her accessories! Oh, and she picked out these sparkly shoes herself...I'll try to post a closer shot of them soon!

In her pursey (that is what she calls it) she carries her cell phone, a little book (she loves little books), a rock from the park, stickers she has collected, hair thingys, and other little toys. I have to try to clean it out as she will often tuck something in there like an animal cracker or other food items. Also having been found in there are chives, dandelions, and grass from our yard. It's pretty funny what she wants to put in there. If she can't get it in because it's too big she will push on it dramatically screaming, "FIT! FIT!"