Flat Chloe Visits Claire

Click here to view this photo book larger

If you need a laugh...

When we say bye to people Claire's started to say, "See ya next time I see ya!" instead of bye!

Today Claire was holding her baby doll and using her shoulder to hold her yellow Barbie phone on the other side. Then she puts her fingers to her lips and shushes her baby. Then she said, "Baby, you needa stop talking now. Mommy's talking on the phone." Hmm. I wonder where she's heard that one? ;)

Frosty February

We had freezing fog recently one morning. This left the trees and everything coated with an absolutely beautiful white layer of frozen fog snow. This is my favorite tree. I planted it as the size of a stick!
Side yard with Weeping Willow:

Even the wreath on the door had gotten frozen fog on it!

I took these pictures the morning of February 12th.

Claire enjoying make snow castles and eating snow (click to make these full size):

If you've spend time in the Midwest, you know that sand toys are snow toys in the winter time!

She is also crazy about making snow angels every time we go out!

I promise she was facing the camera when I snapped this...

This is my new header photo if you haven't noticed:

Her snow angels look pretty good with the arms:

The snow froze really hard so it was easy for us to walk on without sinking in!

Aren't these trees great? Sadly, the white frosting on all the trees melted off by about 11 in the morning. We had gone out right after breakfast!

GLAMA LYNN!

Here is Claire with Josh's mom, "Glama" Lynn. Glama is not a typo...it's her version of Grandma...it means "Glamorous Grandma." Hehe.
The only pictures we managed to take of them together were at the airport when we dropped her off, and we got none with Josh and his mom. So much for me being on top of pictures! But hey...they could get things organized too!

Flat Chloe came with to the airport! It's like a paper doll for Claire to play with!

The Flat Stanley Project

We recently got a new thing to do! Some of our friends in Florida, mailed us a "Flat Chloe" which is a spinoff of the Flat Stanley Project. It is basically to promote literacy. We have Flat Chloe for 1 month, then mail her back to the real Chloe who is Claire's age and doing this project with preschool. We take Flat Chloe wherever we go and take lots pictures.

Here is Flat Chloe at the church nursery with Claire's favorite toy...the dollhouse! (Ignore the Valentine's Candy in her mouth...)

Claire has to wear her sunglasses like I do if it's sunny out! I will never complain about too much sun in February though!

30-30-30

So I recently turned 30. So unexciting. Josh turned 30 the next day. Also unexciting. But what was slightly exciting to a dork like me was that I was 30 weeks pregnant the day I turned 30 and Claire was 30 months old. WOW! Now what is the chance of that???!!!

I haven't blogged in some time. I promise I haven't been slacking on purpose. In fact, I am preparing you for me to go missing when the new baby arrives. LOL! Nah, I just have been busy. Josh's mom was here for a whole week. We managed to go out not once, but twice in her time here. We didn't do anything super fancy, but eating out at a sit-down place without a 2 year-old is a feat in itself. We went to Steak-and-Shake one night and I can't even remember where we went the other time, but it was someplace local and equally unexciting. I just was thrilled to order a milkshake for my drink. I didn't have to share it. And I didn't have to worry about Claire wanting to just eat a milkshake and no food. :)

Having back-t0-back birthdays kinds of sucks. LOL! That's why we got married in the summer so at least our anniversary is by itself. So we have both our birthdays and Valentine's Day all in a row. PLUS, Josh asked me to marry him on Valentine's Day, so that's sort of another "holiday" that is piled in there. We usually get one another an ice cream cake. Like one year I'll get Josh one, and the next year he'll get me one. Ritter's and DQ are favorites. I got him one from Culver's this year and, well, it kind of sucks, which surprised me. It'll probably be sitting in our freezer for awhile. :) If you come over, ask to try some!

Then, this past Friday morning I went with Claire to look at a Preschool. I'm totally for her going to preschool. I remember LOVING preschool and school and of course all my teachers all the way through. I'm just torn if I should start her NOW this fall or wait one more year. She will be a young 3, just turning 3 at the end of July. But I think that she'll be more than ready. I have to remind myself that's several months away, too!

Then after looking at the Preschool, we zipped up to Valpo for no reason at all, really. Well, I want her to continue seeing my parents a lot so if she is with my mom for a few days when the new baby is born, she'll be fine, but I think she would be anyways.

Well, anyways, it's back to our regular routine. I'm trying to limit our days out of the house to 3 per week. That leaves me 2 week days to catch up on laundry, grocery shopping, and nesting. Ack. It's hard because I'd like to take Claire somewhere everyday or have others here to play daily, but there are just not enough hours in the day to get it all done.

Perhaps for the first time ever, I'm back after 2 nights away and have actually unpacked everything and done the laundry...now it's just time to fold!

On my to-do list: WRITE A TO-DO before the new baby is born list!

In other exciting news Claire has started a "Tumbling Tots Gymnastics" class with a few little friends. Class size is limited to 8 with 3 teachers. Good ratio! It will run through the end of March, so my goal is to not have the baby any earlier than April 1st. :) I feel REALLY REALLY REALLY HUGE!

I think I said that before. I never ever felt this big with Claire. I feel like I did the day she was born. I like can't even sit how I'd like to. I have to sit forward or I can't breathe. :) Is this normal for 2nd pregnancies? Good lord.

Some funny things Claire has said lately:

I spilled milk/cereal down my shirt the other day. Claire scowled at me and goes, "What you getting on my baby brother?!?"

Eating lunch with my brother Rich in Valpo and talking about the advantages/disadvantages of preschool. During a lull, with perfect timing in the conversation, Claire chimes in with "BABY POWER!" It was hilarious.

We were shopping with my mom on Sunday, and my mom was asking me about some item. Claire scowled at her and stated, "Oma, you no need that. Put that back." That was hilarious because she's never said that to anyone before. But apparently she's heard me say that before! :)

Today, I watched 2 other little almost 2 year old girls. Claire was trying to "talk" to them, but they weren't responding to her liking. So she said, "Mommy, Catrece can't talk. I'll teach her to talk." I thought this was really cute. And Catrece can say more than plenty for her age, by the way!

Other Claire news... She was incredibly cranky yesterday. I was like, hmm, I wonder if she's getting her top two 2-year-old-molars. Sure enough...they are both peeking through her gums! Yay! I'm glad that all her teeth will be through before April!!!

She has been sleeping great lately...it only took her like, um, 30 months to sleep through the night. And I don't mean like the 4 hours stretch, I mean like, go to sleep at night and not wake up till morning. ;) I think God is giving me a little sleep-vacation before baby boy arrives. Well, I do have to get up and pee, like, um hourly, but at least I can go right back to sleep without soothing anyone. I've heard that is common though for kids who don't sleep through the night (despite extended nursing or not) to not sleep through the night until about 2 1/2 or until all their teeth have been cut. So does that mean...PERMANENT TEETH TOO??? That would explain 6 and 7 year olds still wanting to crawl into bed with parents!

And what's the big deal about turning 30 anyways? I hope to God that I'm getting older. I wouldn't want to be 21 with 2 kids. ;)

I'd rather...

After I gave Claire her bath today, she did not want to get dressed, as usual. She runs around naked, wearing just her hooded towel which she calls her "towel hat." I told her she needed to get dressed so she wouldn't be cold. Ever so mature-like she goes, "I'd rather be naked." Ahh joys. The naked-toddler-after-bath-chase. There needs to be a simpler word for this.

Ultrasound Check

I'm behind on blogging, as, well, everything else. And, as I mentioned, I fell on the ice and went in for a standard OB check. The ultrasound tech wasn't there, but they scheduled me to come in and have an ultrasound just to check everything. Apparently sudden falls can tear the placenta away from the uterine lining and/or cause leaks in the amniotic sac, causing low fluid. So I went in and had an ultrasound. Everything looked great, so that was a relief. I'm still sore, but I guess that's to be expected after hitting the driveway.

I turned 30 yesterday at 30 weeks pregnant. Today I'm 31 weeks according to my LMP. However, the baby is measuring a full 3 weeks early buy ultrasound. They measure the head, belly, and legs, and somehow average them together to determine how big baby is. They estimate him at 5 lbs already, which put me at 34 weeks and 3 days....so who knows when he'll come. He just might weigh in at 10.15 like I did. Oh, and my GD test was totally normal. Apparently baby boy just likes the Bradley/Brewer's diet I've been following, although I've only managed 2 baked potatoes with skins this week.

Today, Josh is 30. Why do people make a big deal about 30? Seriously...not a big deal, but I guess I could care less about age. They say there are no milestone birthdays after 21 until you turn 55 and can get senior discounts. Things to look forward to!

Josh's mom flew in last night from FL to be here for his 30th. So she'll be here a week. I plan on taking full advantage of free babysitting. I already was able to do several things today while they played!

Last Friday morning when we woke up, there was no snow on the ground. Then we got a big dumping from Fri.-Sat. Then more came on Monday. We've gotten a total of 10 inches! That is more snow than this town has had since 1977. Ha! That's before I was born. ;) It's not supposed to warm up in the 10 day forecast, either, so this snow is going to stick around for awhile.

Funny Sayings

Claire sat up in bed and said, "Bees don't have toes." Ok. That was random. What was she dreaming about? LOL!

Later, we were doing a dolphin puzzle. I was talking about how dolphins have fins and flippers. She said, "Dogs and cats have tails! People don't have tails. They have butts." She's very observant.

Late this afternoon, folding the third basket of laundry, she observed, "Mommy, why you doing laundry all the time???"

On a random note, I've noticed when she helps me make food, she tries it. Tonight I just had her help dump in ingredients for meat loaf. She was thrilled to help and excited to try what she had made! She ate almost an adult sized slice of meatloaf! :)

Slippity-Do-Dah!

Slippity-Yay! Ok, so late afternoon on Saturday I slipped on ice in the driveway while taking Claire out to play. Josh was shoveling the porch off since the Bobcat won't fit there to clear the snow. :) Don't know what the heck I'm talking about? Well, check out the pictures on facebook! Our neighbor clears the snow with his Bobcat in about 2 seconds. It's great.

Luckily Claire was in the grass so I didn't land on her/drop her while carrying her or something. BUT being you know, 30 weeks pregnant, falling is the last thing that is good.

So I got paranoid and ended up going to the OB after all. Everything checked out fine. I'd rather be safe than sorry! I am pretty sore though. I didn't catch myself. I couldn't. Ice is NASTY! It's not like when you trip or stumble on a toy or something out of place. Ice makes you move in ways you never knew possible. I was on the ground before I knew I had slipped. Yikes! I landed on my left side...leg/hip/arm. Not so fun.

SNOWING LIKE CRAZY!

This morning we barely had any snow on the ground...just a patch or pile here or there. WELL...NOW we have a ton! Claire started asking to play in the snow ALL day. I told we would wait until Daddy came home. Well, so we finally went out about 5 and BRR! It was really really wet, heavy, sticky snow. PLUS it was windy, so it was blowing sideways. I started freezing my face/eyes off after about 5 minutes. And she didn't want to come in! But I told her we could go out again tomorrow. So hopefully it will stop coming down. It's not so fun to play in when it's falling because then it melts on your face and makes your face all cold and wet and freezing. Maybe I should invest in some ski masks and goggles? :)

And I figured out why her boots get full of snow. Her snowpants are only a 2T. Yeah...they were a tad big on her last year, but this year, too small. I could barely get them zipped on her today. Her jammies that she sleeps in, you know the footed ones...they are a 5t and a 6T...insane. This girl is freaking tall...like me I guess. I'm just glad she's slender enough to still fit into the 2T snowpants, even if they are like floodpants. :)

Today I did a "deep clean" vacuum of our bedroom which involved pulling out furniture and cleaning under things...something I've never done since we've moved in. AND YIKES!!! Well, in my defense, we've never lived in once place as long as we have here! In May it will be 5 years. That's a lot of dust, let me tell you! And Claire had a blast, too. For Christmas, she got a gift card from her Glama Lynn and Grandpa Jason, so I ordered her among other things, a toy vacuum, which finally arrived. Who knew toy vacuums would get back-ordered?!!? But our neighbor Christopher has one that she loves to play with so I thought she'd enjoy it.

It's really cute watching her pretend to vacuum. I watched Christopher all day yesterday, and boy, I don't think he put that vacuum down for more than 10 minutes!!!

She also has recent fascination with this Strawberry Shortcake puzzle. It's 15 pieces and says ages 4-7 on it. She LOVES it. She seriously will sit and do it 10 times in a row and still want to do it some more. It was actually one of my puzzles when I was little so it's extra cute! I think I want to shoot myself in the foot if she wants me to "help" her with it again. I guess she just wants me to "play" with her because she can do it by herself! Today I had to laugh when I saw her doing it UPSIDE DOWN! Like, she flipped all the pieces over so they were the brown cardboard and put it together that way, with no help from the picture! I was actually really impressed!

While cleaning up our bedroom she wanted to get in the pack-and-play. I plan on setting up the bassinet feature for the new baby. Yeah...gotta find all the parts! But Claire climbed in and can't even lay down sideways in it anymore! She still said "MY PACK-AND-PLAY!" I told her we were cleaning it up for her brother. I also shoved her bed (aka mattress) on the OTHER side of ours. I had it by Josh's side. But then she kept rolling off. So I put her mattress against the far wall today. Hopefully that will keep her in it better. I wedged the Pack-and-Play against it since it has soft mesh sides. I think it will work and we won't have to buy another baby-gate-fence thingy for the bed.

I need to make a to-do list of things I need to do before the new baby comes. I feel like we are down to crunch time. And like I said before, I am feeling exceptionally huge. So I think I'll try to get all the big moving and stuff done. Then if I have time, I really need to get scrapbooking and organizing print pictures!!!

There is just so much to do. It seems like just normal daily things take longer. I want to have Claire help me with daily routines instead of parking in front of the TV. And she loves it. The other night I made red potatoes. She helped me wash potatoes! She'll go get her footstool anytime that she gets to help. She basically had a blast "scrubbing" the potatoes and playing in water for awhile. Then she wanted to help me cut them. This is where helping is bad sometimes because, um, she so cannot use a sharp knife yet.

So I got out her playdough and told her to cut up "playdough" potatoes, which she was really pleased with since I gave her a real butter knife to use. She was begging me though, "PLEASE MOMMY! PLEASE LET ME CUT A REAL POTATO!" She'll also get really mad if I start the dryer. She wants to press the button! Luckily that's an easy fix!

So while it's snowing like crazy out there, we're trying to get a lot done in here because, well, once the new one comes along, there will be like, oh, say a year of slacking again. ;)

How am I feeling?

I've been feeling fine...other than the fact that I feel like, well, as big as a freaking house. I swear I am as big now at 30 weeks as I was at 40 weeks with Claire. I know they say that you get bigger sooner with the 2nd plus, but DANG. I think they say boys are bigger and second babies are bigger too.

Some things I've done because I forget I have a big baby belly:

Spit while brushing my teeth and gotten the spit all over my belly.

Have to fold in the mirrors to walk between our 2 cars in the garage. Can't squeeze through sideways anymore.

Hit my belly on various doors/doorjambs/counters. No bruises yet. I did bruise my belly one time with Claire in a parking lot. I turned sideways and smacked into a rearview mirror. Dang that one hurt.

Given up sleeping on my back in the past few weeks. I am a huge back sleeper. :(

If all the Raindrops...

Claire's newest favorite song we've been singing in this storytime session is "If all the Raindrops..." Watch the "music video" here:

Oh so Organized?

Well. I'm organized for now. Ha. I took Claire to pick out bins this morning. She wanted to climb in them...

I needed some different sized toy bins for toy organization. I had gone almost a whole year or maybe a tad longer before I got 2 large clear rubbermaid bins for Claire's toys. I just keep the lids in the closet so they are like toy boxes.

But...all the little toys would fall to the bottom and get "lost"---and she would only play with the toys on top! So then about last year at this time I got about 5 small baskets for toys, but they are really too tiny.

So today I got some smallish to mid-sized bins to organize toys. So now there is a bin for her Barbies, a bin for baby-ish toys like teethers/rattles (got to keep this out for littler friends!), a bin for things with wheels (and here I thought she had a lot of girly stuff!), a bin for random little "crap" toys/figurines, etc, and finally, a bin for blocks. I put one of the big bins in the closet to rotate the bigger stuffed toys/dolls. Her wagon is actually empty instead of full of toys, so she can play in it, which she did tonight, which kept her nicely away from the toys I was trying to sort.

The upstairs always seems more organized for some reason. It's mostly just books and stuffed animals/dolls in her "playroom." Plus, I think we spend a lot more time downstairs.

Now...I wonder how long this will last....ha! Actually, I'm trying to get into an evening routine of picking up. She thinks it's still fun at this age. Of course she gets easily distracted, but I think it will be easier if she knows Barbie stuff goes in the Barbie bin, etc.

She is pretty good about keeping her toy food stuff by her toy kitchen and her books on her book shelves. She knows her shoes go by the back door and her pens/pencils/papers go in her little desk. Yeah...I found a little plastic desk at a yard sale when she was like 11 months old! They were nearing the end of their day, and basically gave me anything I touched for 20 bucks TOTAL!!! It's the same garage sale I got her bike seat at.

I saw the exact same desk at Big Lots around Christmas for $30 so I was excited that it's a "new" desk, that's still being sold. It even has a little drawer in it and shelves on the side. The top is angled with pockets and places to put stuff. I decided to just let her keep her "own" paper, pens, and pencils in it since she LOVES that stuff and wants to play with it everyday. And knock on wood, she has never drawn on a wall or anywhere she shouldn't...knock on wood that she won't do this tomorrow just because I said she hadn't yet. Way to screw myself! :)

I actually got her craft stuff organized too. I re-purposed a 6-drawered mid-sized caddy thing that I've had forever. So she has all her crafty fun stuff there, which I stashed in the cupboard under the microwave. I couldn't do messy crafts anywhere but at the kitchen table. She's still pretty messy with the paint/glue.

We've also started leaving the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs down because she doesn't play on the stairs or anything anymore. She would the first several times because of the whole novelty of the thing...but I'm still a little leery to leave the top one down. I know that most home accidents are on the stairs. Kids fall mostly from stairs, highchairs, and changing tables, right? Hmm...so maybe I should leave the bottom one up?

I have to keep the top gate up though because otherwise she would have no boundary and be free to roam the upstairs, and that's just too far away in this house!

So I'm feeling a little bit organized, but not nearly as much as I'd like to be. I feel like there is still a lot that I need to do soon AKA...before baby boo two arrives. I guess picking out a name would be another good thing to do...ack. We are so not going to decide on this until like, um, he's born! Yeah, it sometimes feels like when you start organizing, that you just realize how much more stuff there is to organize.

Feeding Baby Brother

Today completely out of the blue, Claire lifted up my shirt and tried to feed her baby brother a cheddar bunny through my belly button. She's so sweet trying to share. ;) I explained that he won't be able to eat or drink anything other than nummies for a long, long time! She seemed satisfied when I told her that she could tell him about her food or show him food, just not feed it to him.

On another note, she continues to leave the "l" out of clock. So if you hear her talking about her "cock" puzzle, it's just a clock puzzle. And although when she talks about a "cock-a-dile" it may sound like a racy 900 number, she's really just saying crocodile.