Christmas and Claire

 

Whew, I sure love the Holidays but, it is soooo exhausting being the adult in them. Although way more fun! Claire loved all things Christmas. Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Santa (until we asked her to sit on his lap, then not so much), ornaments, and who can forget presents. On Christmas Eve with Levi’s family, Claire got absolutely spoiled (food, utensils, cookware for her kitchen, clothes, a doll house, etc.) and we got all done and she said, “More presents?”, I don’t know where we’d put anymore!

But we really tried hard to teach her about the more important aspects of Christmas. We attended a festival of nativities in the beginning of December. There was live music, a gym full of nativities from all over the world made from everything from gingerbread, to plastic, stone and fabric and a wonderful little Bethlehem play area for kids that included a tent full of wheat (random I know but the kids would not come out of there!). It was amazing! We were telling Claire about each member of the nativity and we pointed to baby Jesus (she knows adult Jesus) and asked her who it was and she said “Baby!”, I said “Yes, baby who?” and then Claire said “Baby Who!” I think by the time Christmas rolled around she understood that it was baby Jesus but “baby who” was so cute!

Christmas Morning was so much fun! Although staying up till 2 in the morning was not the greatest idea. Claire was so so so slow at opening her stocking. I was expecting that she was just going to rip into her stocking, dump everything out, throw it aside and move on to her bigger presents. But she took each item out, inspected it, told us what it was and either wanted to eat it or play with it. We were so anxious so we kept telling her to keep going faster but it was truly adorable. It was finally time to unveil her present from Santa, she pulled the blanket off and this is the expression we saw… priceless!

We were worried that she would play with it for a day and then be bored with it, but 2 weeks later and she’s still cooking all sorts of delicious food for us. The only problem being that she know thinks that she can really cook. The other day she hopped the gate, opened the fridge, took out the eggs (18 count) cracked all but one and got most of them into a plastic container. Several days later we found an egg in a random drawer, silly girl. Apparently this all happened in just a couple minutes when Levi was looking for something but he couldn’t even be mad at her because it was so adorable. So he fished the broken shell bits out and they scrambled them up for lunch. That girl can sure gobble up eggs!

Christmas day included a stop at the Borts’, I don’t think their menu could have been more delicious! We’re so lucky to have such wonderful friends whose whole family has adopted us. We then spent the afternoon at my parents’ house and got to see my baby brother and his wife, Carina (Uncle Ewic and Aunt Ina) for the first time in 6 months. It was so good to spend so much time with them while they were here. Claire loves them both so much, I love seeing her interact with her aunts & uncles. The day after Christmas we went to Zoo Lights with my mom (thanks for the zoo membership!), Eric and Carina, and we all had a blast despite the near freezing temp and sprinkles. We had to be shuttled in because the zoo parking lot was so full but who knew that would turn out to be such an exciting event for Claire. She was mesmerized by all the lights, as were we. I hadn’t been since I was a little kid and Levi wasn’t sure he’d ever been.

It’s always a little sad for me when the holidays are over. There’s not much to look forward to for the next couple months and no more paid holidays off until memorial day, that seems so far away, but I’m sure it’ll be here before we know it. Well I better get to bed, I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as we did, Happy New Year!

Giving Thanks, Getting Shots

I love Thanksgiving! Good food, family and giving thanks for it all. We had the wonderful opportunity to host Thanksgiving at our house this year. I was a little bit nervous as this was our first year doing it but the thought of staying home all day (we have gone to 3 different houses in one day in the past) was so very appealing.

We had Levi’s family over and his dad’s parents. Claire has not been at all interested in the Thanksgiving food, which is weird since she usually loves green beans, rolls and mashed potatoes. She has been much more interested in drinking cup after cup of milk; she’s definitely my child! We had all of the traditional food and it was all homemade (thank goodness our guests brought some dishes!), and all delish! Claire didn’t want any pumpkin pie instead she licked whip cream off both her grandparents’ pies.

The funniest part of the evening, by far, was when Claire’s babydoll keep pushing the pumpkin decorations off the table. After the babydoll spent some time in the corner, the baby then had to pick up the pumpkins and put them back. It was the cutest thing, we couldn’t even be mad that Claire had made her baby be naughty.

 

Onto today-Claire had her 2 year checkup. She is Amazon girl! She measured at 38.25 inches (99th percentile) and 29 lbs 4.5 ozs (79th percentile). I’ve heard you can double their height at age 2 and that’s approximately how tall they will be as adults. Yikes, that would put her at over 6 feet tall, like 6’4”! Levi and me are a little taller than average but not that much! Hopefully she goes through an ungrowth spurt for a couple years so the other kids can catch up. :) I noticed that BMI is now on her paperwork, her BMI is 14.09 (2nd percentile). Wow, I wish my BMI was 14! Actually not really, I like food too much. The Dr. said she is just perfect in everyway, but we already knew that. ;) She had to get a flu shot but she did great, didn’t even cry. I can’t believe the next appointment isn’t until 3 years old, a lot can happen in a year, I don’t know if we’re ready for this. Plus it’s nearly impossible to get a hold of anyone over the phone there.

I’m only 24 days late… Happy Birthday Claire!

I’m not sure where November has gone, by it’s just about over, yikes! We had a small party for Claire the beginning of this month. It is so hard to believe that she’s 2. She was a bit of a crab the day of her birthday (why do they not take naps the days they need them the most!?) but got over it as soon as she started opening her presents. What wonderful family and friends we’ve surrounded our daughter with, thank you to all those that came and celebrated with us and made her day special. To the right-Claire pushing her “walk”

She is such an amazing little girl. She is very independent and intelligent. She loves counting to 13 (but usually skips 6, 11 and 12), she loves having books read to her, running, spinning in circles, she’s constantly asking “what’s that?” and “what are you doing?” She doesn’t want to have anything to do with baby stuff (bibs, high chairs, etc), except for diapers but she’s super interested in potty training so hopefully that’ll happen soon. She loves everyone and is constantly saying “Hi!” and waving. She has recently started trying to sing songs like “Twinkle, twinkle little star” and the I love you song one of her bears sings, it is pretty much the most adorable thing we’ve ever seen. Although she can make us want to pull our hair out a lot of the time, we love her so much and are so glad she’s a part of our little family.

Our group is growing!

 

 

 

 

 

My mom made this adorable playhouse out of felt.

I’ll have to take some better pics of it.

 

 

 

The Elmo pinata was really hungry, hahaha, silly girl.

 

 

 

Dan having to show these girls how to finish Elmo off.