My Babies

My wee little babies on the days they were born...


It's fun to look back at the pictures of Claire when she was a newborn. I have hardly any pictures from the hospital of her sleeping - she almost always had her eyes open. And I have hardly any pictures from the hospital of Ryder with his eyes open because he was almost always asleep - and he still sleeps A LOT.

Claire at 5

Claire is FIVE! It's hard to believe that it has really been five years.


I'm amazed at how much she has changed in just the past year. Her speech has improved so much and when she is playing with her toys, she is having them "talk" to each other. Since a lot of her toys are related to tv shows, she sometimes will have her toys act out an episode that she has seen recently. She is very independent and once she makes up her mind, there is no changing it. She can recognize lots of sight words already. She wants to tell us about life and tries so hard to express how she feels or what she wants to do. When she & I come home from somewhere and we walk into the house, so yells "Daddy, we're home!"

I asked Claire about some of her favorite things:

What is your favorite color? Pink
What is your favorite food? French Fries
What is your favorite treat? Ice Cream
What is your favorite movie? LaLaLoopsy Videos on YouTube
What is your favorite tv show? All of Them (Peppa Pig, LaLaLoopsy, Paw Patrol, Octonauts, Dora, etc)
What is your favorite book? Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
What is your favorite animal? Red Panda, Elephant and Zebra (or All Of Them!)
What is your favorite song? Built For War by Megadeth
What is your favorite place to visit? Playground
What is your favorite toy? LaLaLoopsy Dolls
What is your favorite stuffed animal? Bear-Bear & Red Panda
Who is your best friend? Ethan

Some of her favorite phrases right now are:
...a little bit... : in reference to her wanting to do something that we have said no to.
I'm MAD : usually accompanied by a foot stomp
go away...right now! : when she wants to do something by herself.

December Daily - December 10

Claire ended up coming home sick from school today. It is probably just a cold, but we're not really sure. The problem is that when Claire is sick...everyone is miserable. She is not really the type of child that wants to curl up on the couch and snuggle, I've heard of such children, but when Claire is sick, she wants to keep going and bouncing and doing things but only things that she WANTS to do. She absolutely MUST have her way. Which makes for a trying few days. Let's hope she gets over this...whatever it is...quickly.


So, even though Claire protested, we did watch Despicable Me 2 tonight. Such a fun movie...although possibly not terribly appropriate for a 4 yr old. I know, it's rated PG, but there are some jokes that I wouldn't want her repeating! But it was funny and we enjoyed it and Claire only complained about watching it for about 30 minutes.

30 Days Of Lists
I'm joining in on the 30 Days of Lists - December Edition challenge. Each day they post a list topic and then we make a list. Here is today's list:

I was a friend this year by...

• Listening
• Baking things for people (dinner rolls for Thanksgiving, cookies for my nephew's party, treats for people at work & some of Justin's friends)

This was hard for me...maybe I wasn't a good friend this year? Maybe it is the fact that I don't really have many friends, I have family members...and co-workers...and acquaintances...but not a whole lot of friends.

December Daily - Nov 30, 2013

I know, it's not December yet. But there aren't enough days between December 1 and December 25 to get everything done...especially anything involving both kids since Anaya will only be here for about 4 - 6 days in there, depending on the days that you count since she gets her so late on Fridays.


This morning Claire & I went to Bass Pro Shop and took a picture with Santa. I specifically wanted to go today because they had a special, if you donated a toy to Toys for Tots, you got a free photo package that included the digital file. And then Claire enjoyed looking at the fish, and roaming around looking for "wildlife". And we were lucky enough to get there early while there wasn't much of a line for Santa. They also let you take your own pictures of your kids with Santa which so many places (like the malls) won't let you do. I can't decide if I like their picture or my picture better.

Later, I dragged everyone out in the backyard for another attempt at a family picture. I need to figure out someway to tell Justin & Anaya to act like they like each other...and the rest of us. They just stand, stiff, I'm usually attempting to put my arm around Justin and holding Claire's hand (partially to keep her from running away) and then they are just standing there...with about 3 inches between them. I did get a couple of good pictures and I ordered my Christmas cards so I'll actually post the family picture when I do my December Daily page about our Christmas cards.


This afternoon, I also took both girls to Hallmark for our annual buying of a new ornament. I love this tradition because I used to do it with my parents, I have a box in my Christmas closet of all my ornaments from when I was a kid. I also kind of dislike this tradition because Hallmark ornaments are getting SOOOO expensive. We walked out of the store and Anaya was like, "Really, FOUR ornaments cost that much money." To which I could only say, "Well, yes, at Hallmark..."

We also set up our Christmas tree and hung the new ornaments. We didn't get out all of the old ornaments because I just didn't feel like it. I'll probably go dig them out of the closet in a little bit so that we can do them first thing tomorrow morning. I probably won't do any other decorating until Tuesday/Wednesday since we're getting carpet installed on Monday. I know, setting up the tree probably should've waited, but Anaya and Claire wanted to and Anaya really wants to help us decorate it. It isn't going where there is new carpet being installed, but it is where some of the furniture was going to be stored WHILE the new carpet is installed. Oh well, it'll all work out.

And while Claire's outfit today was super adorable. And she managed to wear it ALL DAY without peeing herself. I kind of wish I could've changed her at some point since I have so many different "events" and she is wearing the same clothing in all of them. Oh well.

Snippets

I'm not sure how Claire ended up as cute as she is, because Justin and I...we're not that cute. But Claire is adorable. She's other things too, like smart...and funny...and stubborn...and fearless. But she was just being particularly cute this day.

On Tuesday, we had another OB appointment and an ultrasound. The baby boy is definitely a baby BOY. I'm measure big again. I have 22 cm of amniotic fluid. The normal range is 5-25 cm, so while I'm still in the normal range, I'm in the upper normal range which means they want to keep an eye on it. I had extra amniotic fluid with Claire too, so I'm pretty sure it's just the way I am when pregnant.

In addition to the freezer cooking extravaganza that I did last weekend, I also have 3 crockpot meals, 4 dozen homemade cookie dough balls, a quart of chili, and 4 other casseroles from times where I split a casserole (frozen half, ate half for dinner) in my freezer. Perhaps I should stop freezing so much food? That's 27 main dishes that I already have frozen to eat sometime between now and March. But I still wanted to freeze a couple of soups (to have for lunches) and waffles (as an easy breakfast) and cinnamon rolls (just because they are delicious).

For reasons that I can't quite explain, I have been watching The OC again. It isn't available on Netflix which is really sad, but The WB has seasons 1 & 5 available to stream. Season 1 was the best season anyways. But their commercials are really obnoxious.

We've finally started painting the kids' rooms in preparation for moving everyone around to make room for the baby. We also ordered carpet, although we haven't set up an installation date yet. But soon, very soon, we will hopefully have all the kids in their new rooms and a nursery yet up for the baby boy. Anaya gets to have a pink & purple room the next time she is here since we painted it Claire's colors, but we're not moving furniture until after the carpet...I'm sure she'll LOVE it...

The Penguins! The Penguins!

Saturday morning, Claire & I got up bright and early (seriously, out of the house before 7:45am) to go to the zoo and see the Penguins. I wanted to go to Friends of the Zoo special morning event in hopes of it not being too busy and because there were free donuts! and coffee! and juice! Although we got there and found out it was free Pancakes (Chris Cakes Pancakes) and sausage and juice! I was sad about the lack of free coffee though. Justin & Anaya had no interest in going with us, so it was just Claire and I. Actually, Anaya thought she might go, to see the penguins...until she realized that we were going so early and walking around the entire zoo.


When we went to Boo at the Zoo two weeks ago, we didn't see very many animals. We definitely made up for it this time. And since we were there so early the animals were just coming out and getting fed, so we got to some animals a lot better than normal. Of course, it was also pretty chilly, so quite a few animals were inside. Since this was also the first Saturday after Halloween, they also had their pumpkin smashes going on. We only saw the Chimpanzee pumpkin smash, but that was probably one of the better ones to see. I tried to convince Claire to go see the Elephant one, but she really wanted to go to "Asia" to see the red panda.


We got to see the crocodiles, which Claire always calls alligators. We saw the hippos out of the water for once, usually we only see their eyeballs peeking above the water. We walked all over most of the entire zoo - except for Australia - but we saw most of the Australia animals from the train. We even walked through the Tropics building, which we don't normally do, because Claire wanted to see a Toucan and I figured that was the best place to find one (and we did). Although there were a ton of people in that itty bitty building because they were about to let some of the Tropics' monkeys smash pumpkins.


We had a lot of fun at the zoo. We were there for almost 5 hours, which was about 2 hours longer than I had planned to be there.

October Activities (Part 2)

I posted about some of our early October activities already, and it seems like I just found more and more stuff to go do in the second half of the month! And now that October is over, I'll tell you all about what we did!


On my last October Activities post, I lamented about wanting to go apple picking but not being sure that we would get the chance. Well, we did. I looked at a couple online, and discovered that Cider Hill Family Orchard still had picking, so Claire & I got in the car on Sunday afternoon and went to pick apples! The only issue we had was the Claire was convinced that green apples were BAD and we should only pick red apples...but the only variety that was available were called Gold Rush and they were green. It took me a while to convince her that they were okay.


We went to Enchanted Forest in Lenexa at (the newly renovated) Sar-Ko-Par Trails Park this year. I don't think we went last year, but we did two years ago. Maybe we've gone twice, because it kind of seems like I took Anaya with us there once too. It was sooooo much better this year. The last time there was a HUGE line to get back into the "creepy" area and it just wasn't worth the wait. The park has been renovated and now there is a very nice pond that they set it up around and $3 got your under 12 yr old child unlimited bouncing in the bounce houses, a pumpkin to paint and rides on the hay ride (adults could ride the hay ride for free and I didn't actually see them check for kids wrist bands there at all). They also had puppet shows and magicians and other performers set up around the pond and SureWest provided a free face painter. She could've worn her costume, but I opted to not put her in it since it seemed like a good way to get it dirty and it's going to be really hard to clean anyways.


We've been to Mahaffie Farmstead quite a few times. In fact, since I grew up here, I even remember going there in high school to do a community service project for one of my classes. However, I had never gone to their Trick-or-Treat Off the Street event. It is pretty cheap per person ($3 each) and once you're in, everything is free! Claire wore her costume (which everyone LOVED). Claire was possibly more interested in seeing the farm animals than she was in trick or treating. And they had a hay ride, so of course we had to do that!


Claire was quite insistent that we had to carve pumpkins. She saw an Agent Oso episode about a girl wanting to carve a pumpkin, so then she wanted to carve a pumpkin...or two...or three. So the week before Halloween, we bought two pumpkins (a compromise!) and I told her we would carve them on Sunday. Which meant we had to talk about when Sunday was EVERY SINGLE DAY for the rest of the week. Claire was so excited to carve the pumpkins, until we actually started carving. She picked to face patterns out of a pumpkin carving pattern book we had from a previous year, I cut the tops off the pumpkin - which was the first step according to Oso. Then I tried to convince her to help scoop the insides out and she didn't care much for that and told me so was going to go "Watch Football with Daddy". After I got all the insides scooped out, I had her come back up and we decided which face would go on each pumpkin - but according to Oso only adults can actually carve pumpkins, so she went back to watching football and I carved the pumpkins.

Claire's Class Party

Claire's preschool class had a party. All the kiddos were ADORABLE. I'm not posting a picture because...I don't feel like blurry-ing out all the other kids' faces for their privacy. But Claire had fun and was even okay with me leaving her at school when the party was over. They only had about 15-20 minutes left of their day, but I wanted to run to Target without a 4 yr old...and she is used to riding the bus home.

Trick-or-Treat time!

We still had to work at getting Claire to say "Trick Or Treat" and "Thank You". Not because she can't say them, I think she just saw the candy and forgot. We were out for just over an hour and she almost filled her bucket. I took a grocery bag with me and emptied her bucket into my bag a few times so that she didn't get so tired of carrying it. I don't think we actually did as much trick-or-treating this year as we did last year...but this year, I got tired (being pregnant is hard).



Claire decided early on that she wanted to be a giraffe for Halloween. At first my mom was planning to make her one, because we couldn't find one in a store, but then when she was looking for patterns online, she found one on Amazon! Claire was also quite insistent that I needed to be a cow for Halloween. So I bought a cow headband, tail, and nose set at the Halloween store. Then I bought a XL men's white tee-shirt that I decorated with some cow spots (safety pinned on because I didn't get around to doing it until right before going trick-or-treating). I did pin the tail to the back of my shirt, but I didn't wear the cow nose, it was uncomfortable.

Snippets

Also known as, what goes on in Jenni's head...it's kind of random.

I never did decorate for Halloween. Not at all. The closest we've got are the 5 pumpkins sitting on our front step - which no one can even see because of the "mini" pine trees that are planted right in front of our front step. (I hate those "mini" pine trees). I kept seeing neat ideas on Pinterest and on Eighteen25, but I never actually got around to DOING any of them. Now Halloween is in 5 days and I'm just not going to do anything. Except carve pumpkins, but that's only because Claire REALLY REALLY wants to.

We had 6 pumpkins sitting out there this afternoon. Then I brought one in, roasted it, purée-d it and put it in the fridge because I couldn't decide what to do with the purée. But now my house smells like pumpkin...

I didn't actually intend to get 6 pumpkins this year. But Claire's class went to a pumpkin patch and she got a pumpkin. Then Claire & I went to Deanna Rose Farm's Pumpkin Hollow and we both got a pumpkin (it was included in the price to go out there). Then I bought two Jack-o'-lantern pumpkins because Claire wants to carve a silly face and a happy face. Then we went to the Enchanted Forest and I paid $3 for Claire to do all the kid's activities, one of which was paint a pumpkin. And 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 = 6 pumpkins on my front porch, except then I roasted one so now I have 5 pumpkins.

When Claire isn't getting her way she has taken to stomping her foot (just one foot, not a continuous stomping of both feet) and saying "I'm mad" and making a great big frowny face. It is equal parts obnoxious and cute. Obnoxious because she usually does this to me (not my mom, not Justin, only me). But really it is quite cute and at least she is expressing her feelings instead of crying or sitting down or running away. If she would just not stomp the foot I would be fine with it. She also likes to tell me that she is scared of things when she doesn't want to do something. For example, it is shower time, Claire's response, "I'm scared of pipes". It is bed time, Claire's response, "I'm scared of trains" (she can sometimes hear a train in her room at bed time). And this is the child that is truly not scared of anything at all. My favorite is when I tell her to go to the bathroom in the morning, and the bathroom is dark and she tells me she can't because "I'm scared of dark". Then she insists that I can't turn the light on either and if I do she will proceed to turn it off before going to the bathroom.

We are finally getting things done around the house for the baby. Maybe he'll actually have a bedroom before he is born...or maybe not. But the process is at least started! Now I just have to decide if we should replace the carpet in all three bedrooms before moving furniture around. But did you know that carpet is kind of expensive?!? But you know, we've got about three more months until the little guy is here. That's plenty of time...right?

26 Weeks

I feel so huge. I look at this picture and I don't think I LOOK so huge, but I feel so huge. And pictures where I am not purposefully standing up straight, oh my goodness, there is so much of me (and the little man)! And then I realize that I still have THREE MORE MONTHS and I just want to crawl in a hole and lay down and not have to get up for 3 months.



My back hurts, my belly is all stretched and tight feeling. Sitting isn't pleasant, standing isn't fun, and laying down is only mildly better. I still have 2 weeks until my next doctor's appointment which is when I get to have the super fun glucose test for gestational diabetes. I'm wondering if that is part of why I feel so crappy today because I had eaten so many carbs between Friday and now. Hopefully I don't have GD, but if I do then I'll manage. Until this weekend I had actually been doing really well at sticking to a low-carb diet. Then I ate a ton of pizza and a hamburger and mac & cheese and more pizza and some ruffles chips and tortillas and tortilla chips - over the course of 4 days, not all in one day, if I ate all of that in one day I would explode.

Tonight, Claire & I were sitting on the couch and she was putting stickers in a book and I felt the baby kicking. I asked, "Claire, do you want to feel your little brother kick?" (she has felt it before, so she knew what I meant). She got up right next to me and put her hand on my belly and I moved it to where he'd been kicking and he kicked her hand! To which she said, "I felt baby brother!" and her eyes got all big and she leaned in real close and said, "Hi Baby!" to my belly. Later, we were sitting at the dining room table and I got couple pictures of her feeling and talking to my belly. At first he wasn't moving much, and she kept looking at the camera because she knows that what I usually want her to do, but then he did eventually do something.



I found this really fun Maternity Halloween shirt of a skeleton with a skeleton baby that goes over your belly. But I can't bring myself to spend $25 on a shirt that I will truly only wear once (or maybe twice).

Parent Teacher Conference

Tonight we had Claire's Parent Teacher Conference. Everyone always says that Claire is so sweet and so happy. And friendly.


We had 5 school people at her PTC - the speech therapist, the occupational therapist, her morning program teacher, her afternoon program teacher and the lady in charge of the morning program. That's a lot of people to listen to talk about your kid. Luckily, they mostly had good things to say.

Obviously her speech skills still need quite a bit of improvement, but she is improving! We also need to work on her pre-writing and writing. She can trace the letters pretty good (which is what I mostly do with her because we have wipe off books that have tracing), but she's not terribly interested in copying (seeing it and writing it on her own) or imitating (seeing me write something and writing it too).

Happy Birthday Claire Bear

In 2009, you were born. 7 lbs, 0.2 oz. We had some crazy days & nights getting used to each other. You had the dairy allergy that we didn't know about until you were a month old. But we survived.



In 2010, you were a year old. I don't remember how much you weighed exactly, but I know it was in the 90th percentile. You weren't quite walking yet, you were cruising, but not letting go of furniture. You didn't start talking when you should and we started getting speech therapy from Infants & Toddler Services this year.



In 2011, you turned two! You weren't just walking everywhere, you were running. Still not talking, but getting better.



In 2012, you turned three! A few weeks before your third birthday you had tubes put in your ears. You also started preschool!

And now...you're FOUR! You've had your ear tubes for over a year (in fact at this point they have fallen out). You're speech is SOOOO much better. We can carry on conversations and you can tell me about things that you did at school. It is still helpful to have a little bit of context to help decipher your speech, but oh so much improvement. You still want to run everywhere and even though it usually seems like nothing scares you, you will sometimes hide behind my leg when we meet new people. You loved the snow, until you got cold. You love LaLaLoopsy's, so at least the next few weeks (hopefully). When I tuck you in at night, you ask for a hug and two kisses (or three or ten), and then tell me to lay down with you. You want someone to sit with you while you eat breakfast, even claiming that the spoon is "too heavy" to feed yourself, although no one is fooled by your antics, they are quite cute. You love your big sister and always want to be right in the middle of whatever she is doing. You don't like it when I tell you that it is bath time, but then once you are in the bath you don't want to get out.



Love this little girl, more and more ever day.

Fall Leaf Fun

This afternoon, I walked in the backyard and found out that one of our trees had dropped its leaves sometime in the past few days. Fallen leaves are probably one of my favorite things about fall and I didn't think we'd get to play in any this year since our lawn company has been mulching them all before we have the opportunity.



So I grabbed a rake and starting making a pile while Claire alternated between "helping" and playing with her playhouse (which was actually more helpful than her help). Then once I had a fairly large pile, I told Claire that she could come play in it!



I am actually amazed at how much she enjoyed the leaves. I know they had real leaves at one of their centers at school last week, but I'm not sure if they had enough to jump in them.



I did eventually get a lawn bag and put some of the leaves in it. Claire told me that she wanted to keep 10 to play with. I think 10 in her world is a lot more than it is in my world since she actually wanted to keep the entire big pile.

Fall Family Pictures

Back on October 20th, I finally did something that I have been trying to organize my family enough to do. We took family pictures. A couple of these pictures are proof that if you hand a teenager a nice camera with a fairly good lens on it, you will actually end up with acceptable pictures. (Any that include me but not Anaya are ones that she took.) Ones that include all of us were taken using the timer or a remote depending on if the remote was working at any given time.

I ended up with a total of 91 pictures after deleting the ones that were completely blurry or otherwise unacceptable. When I use the timer, it takes 5 pictures, so some of those are duplicates. I ended up getting a pretty good picture of all the different groupings that I was hoping for.



Now, while this experience was fine. There are definitely things that I learned to make it easier the next time I decide to do this.

1. Definitely have a list of the poses/groupings that you want. I did do this and it helped so much. Particularly since my husband was NOT really into the idea of family pictures anyways.
2. Plan for longer than you think it will take. By the time we were done, we were out of sun light. I have a beautiful picture of the sunset that I took as we were driving out of the park. I would've liked to try one more pose, but it was just too dark.
3. Scope out the location before hand. This is common sense, but I didn't really do it. I knew that there were multiple shelters are this particular park, but I didn't really know which one we would use (we ended up in my first choice area). And even though I had been there multiple times with Claire & Anaya to play at the park, I hadn't ever really looked at the area with the idea of a photo shoot.
4. If you are including a toddler, possibly have another person along to help corral the toddler so that you can take pictures of just the adults. My husband didn't drive over there with us because he was still getting ready, so I had Claire & Anaya there for the first half. Which means the pictures of just Anaya involved me holding Claire with one hand and the camera with the other. The one of Justin & I is one that Anaya took while holding Claire's hand as she was trying to run away.

These pictures were taken using a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. I actually borrowed it from my co-worker but now I have my own. It is an nice portrait lens. Definitely not the BEST one, but good cost/quality ratio. Particularly since mine is purely for me & my friends & family (I'm not a professional, nor do I want to be).

Happy Halloween

Claire was so excited to go Trick-or-Treating tonight. She dressed up like a Fairy. It is the same costume that she wore to RenFest, although I did buy a new dress & leggings to wear under the fairy skirt & wings.



She pretty much refused to have anything to do with looking at the camera. We walked around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes. While we were talking, I let Claire dictate which direction we went and which houses we went to (as long as their outside lights were on). Then her pumpkin was full enough that I kept having to carry it, so I said that we were done and it was time to take over the candy passing out duties at home.



At one of the houses we went to, there was a BIG guy and he was dressed up like Frankenstein (green skin & all). When Claire saw him through the door, she started backing up into me. I thought we might be done at that point, but then a woman that was at the house opened the door and gave her candy and Claire refused to talk and then we moved on to the next house. As we were leaving I saw Frankenstein go outside and stand in the shadowy part of their driveway to scare other trick-or-treaters. I'm glad he was still inside as we were walking up to the door - that might've freaked us both out!



Claire was quite happy with her bucket full of candy. We ended up dumping it out on the table and her first choice of things to eat was a tootsie pop. She got two pieces tonight and we'll probably continue to let her have a little bit here & there for the next few weeks. We left her school Halloween candy at Grandma's house for her to let her have during the day when she is there.

Pumpkin Hollow

On Saturday morning, when it was somewhere around 40-45 degrees and the sun was NOT shining, Claire & I went to Deanna Rose Farmstead to go to Pumpkin Hollow. Because I am super intelligent, we were the ones running around in sweatshirts instead of coats & hats & gloves. But just because you're cold doesn't mean you can't have a good time!



Claire LOVED the hay bale slide, she went down it at least 20 times. They also had some little games set up that she could play (bean bag toss, (plastic) egg rolling, etc). Since it was cold so we only stayed for about an hour. Then we got our pumpkins and rode the hay wagon back to the farmstead. I did think ahead enough to know that I didn't want to be hauling a purse around with me and just took things that I would need & would fit in my pockets (phone, keys, money, tissues) and my camera (obviously). Which was good because by the time I was walking out of there, I had two pumpkins, a bag of stuff from Children's Mercy (they were a sponsor) and a bag of kettle corn (that was lunch).



Also, the picture of Claire & me was taken using my brand new wireless shutter remote. It's a little obvious in the picture that it is in my hand if you are looking for it, but I think it'll be useful. Better than sitting it somewhere and then having to wait for the timer to go off.

RenFest

Last weekend we went to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. RenFest is one of those things that I lived perfectly happily without for years and years and years. It truly did not even occur to me to go. Until Anaya wanted to go and that was two years ago. So this is our third year going to RenFest and I could still probably live without it, but Anaya likes it and sometimes you do things for the kids that you personally could live without. Plus on scale that weighs the kids enjoyment versus the painfulness to me, this one is definitely more enjoyable for the kids that it is painful for me. (Worlds of Fun is currently more heavily weighted on the painful to me side which is why regardless of how much Anaya has begged we still haven't gone. I'm mostly hopeful that someone else will take her and I won't have to.)



We all had a pretty good time. I was done way before Claire or Anaya were done, but that's probably because I was the one that kept having to pay for everything. And wrangle the toddler. One funny thing did happen while we were there...the children grew tails! Very strange.



And Claire loved the fairy garden. She has all the sudden become interested in TinkerBell & fairies. We've watched TinkerBell movies, we've read TinkerBell books. Now she is saying that she wants to be a Fairy for Halloween instead of Doc McStuffins like we've been talking about.



I probably could've let the kids ride more of the rides. Anaya rode the Crow's Nest by herself and then again with Claire. I was just hesitant to put Claire on them. But oh well, we had fun and spent more money than I meant to, but that's what RenFest is for...right?!?!

Apple Picking

A few weeks ago...back on September 9th...the girls and I went out to an Apple Orchard way far away from here. It seriously took about 45 minutes to get there. And 35 minutes to get to a Starbucks after leaving there. But we had a good time. We picked about a 1/2 bushel of apples. That's why there were so many apple recipes happening last month, because we had a LOT of apples.



I had almost planned to go on a weekend when Anaya wasn't with us, and I'm glad that I didn't for two reasons. 1) Anaya told me that this is one of her favorite fall activities. 2) I wouldn't have picked anywhere close to a 1/2 bushel if I'd been there with just Claire. Evidently having a teenager along can be helpful.



We went to Alldredge Orchards, although I have since found out there is one a little bit closer that I would've liked to try - Cider Hill Family Orchard.

Claire's House

On Saturday, I helped my parent's with their garage sale. I ended up spending more at one of their neighbor's garage sales than I made (from my stuff) at my parent's garage sale. I got this awesome Little Tikes Country Cottage from their neighbor for $20! That's a very good deal it you didn't know.

Claire loves her little house. She goes in. She comes out. She talks on the play phone. She runs around her house. According to the guy that we got it from, we'll probably get around 2 yrs before she out grows it. We'll see. I think she'll have to start ducking to get through the door before too long.



It's sitting on the patio for now because Justin doesn't want me to kill another section of "his" grass. He has really decided that the yard is HIS this year. Luckily, I've already killed a section of grass where my garden was, so I think we're going to pull up the stakes holding the frame around it and put the playhouse there. We'll need to do something about the ground because it's just dirt and weeds right now.

I've also been thinking about giving it a little remodel. I've seen a lot of things online in the past few days (since I got the playhouse) about painting it with spray paint that is made for plastic. Go here to see an example. I think it could be cute...but I haven't convinced myself that it is worth my time & effort.

Where the toddler sleeps...

I went down to check on Claire tonight after I knew she was asleep and her bed was empty. Which lead to searching the room for the sleeping toddler. This is the first time that I've had this joy. In fact, I did it the night before too. Once, back when she was still sleeping in her toddler bed, she was mostly under the bed. Occasionally she'll be laying next to the bed which makes me think she might have fallen out but not really cared. Not recently. Recently if she isn't in her bed she's in her closet (or in front of it).

Before this was Claire's room, we took the closet doors off. With the size of the room it just made more sense not to have doors. We re-installed them in the frame that divided the master bed and bath so that the light from me getting ready for work wouldn't wake up Justin. So Claire's closet is open to her room. We use the bottom part of her closet for her toys and pile of stuffed animals. She likes crawling in her pile of stuffed animals hiding in them.

Tonight though...this is how she was sleeping:


I made Justin come up and move her. I wasn't sure I would be able to get her out from under the table without hurting myself, waking her up or hitting her head on the table.