She can pedal!!!

Yesterday Claire wanted to ride her bike. She begged and pleaded, but when she asks for that she means that she wants me to push her. It's a tiny 12" bike so there is some major bending involved, even for a short gal like me. Plus I usually have Maddie in a carrier on my back when we're outside in the front yard in order to keep her from eating bird poo on the sidewalk. This means that Claire's bike rides result in a sore back for me. Yesterday I told her if she wanted to ride then she had to pedal. The poor girl really tried, but her bike is an old one and it's rusty and a bit difficult to pedal. She didn't get to do much riding yesterday.

This morning we went to KinderGym and she hopped right onto a little tricycle and just took off! I guess sometime between yesterday evening and this morning the concept of pedaling clicked for her. She spent the entire hour riding around the perimeter of the gym. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me (what on earth do I carry in that huge diaper bag anyway??? Why was there no digital camera in there???). When it was time to go she was really sad to say goodbye to that trike. She hugged it and kissed it and cried like her heart was broken all the way to the car. Claire's bike is now looking for a new home on Freecycle and we have a new little pink trike on its way from AAFES.com. Hope it gets here quickly.

End-of-Nap-Nap Plus 5

Day 5 with no pacifier and I think we're finally back to normal. Hope I don't jinx it by typing this! Claire has been going to bed really well and hasn't asked for the pacifier. There was one awful night (day 2) and after that she's been doing great. As you can see, she wasn't emotionally scarred at all by the process:



Maddie, on the other hand, has been a little squirrelly. She has discovered that standing up in her crib and looking oh-so-sad makes me feel badly enough for her to get her out. She's either going to have to decide that this game is no longer fun or I'm going to have to get tough. We'll see how it works out.

When Phil gets home Maddie will have to show him her new games she has learned. Besides the standing up in the crib thing, she now does "sooooo big" and she likes to chase/get chased when she's crawling. She's also discovered it's lots of fun to push open her sister's door during Claire's naptime and wake Claire up. I thought she was going to do it in this video, but Maddie got sidetracked by a sippy cup.



OK, OK, I'll admit I really just put that video on there to show off her new big-girl crawl. She hardly ever does her army crawl anymore. If these girls don't stop growing up I'm going to start wanting another baby. HA! Sorry Mom and Dad - we're not quite there yet.

Other than that, we haven't been up to too much this week. We've been hanging out a lot with Sarah because her husband is on the road right now too. I feel really lucky to have such good friends to get together with, especially when Phil's not around.

Good-bye Nap-nap

Our baby has truly grown up. She's been chewing holes in her nap-naps (pacifiers) and we were down to the last one (not including the one I have stashed in case of a serious emergency, but she doesn't know about that one). Claire looked at me today and told me the last one was broken and she needed to throw it away. I think it just didn't taste right because it was rubber instead of silicone like her others were. She insisted it was broken. Anyway, I really tried to talk her out of it and explained how that particular nap-nap was the LAST one and the stores can't sell us any more because they can only sell them to babies. I knew what would happen come nap time and I really didn't want to deal with it. But she was adamant about it and marched the nap-nap over to the trash can herself and threw it away. It was in the trash can in my sewing room, so I actually pulled it out and stashed it, but I figured she'd go hunting for it later. And she did.

At nap time Claire was heartbroken. I'm very proud of my resolve; I gently reminded her that it had gone out with the trash. I just kept thinking that since she had thrown it away that this might be the most gentle way to do it. She needed lots of hugs at nap time and I finally curled up with her (can't recommend sleeping in a toddler bed - it's not comfy.) until she fell asleep. OK, I fell asleep too. :) Maddie woke up from her nap about an hour later and I snuck out of Claire's room to go get her. So far no tears tonight at bedtime, but she's been talking for half and hour in her bed. Cross your fingers that it goes well tonight. Our little baby is such a big girl now.

Strawberry pickin'

We had to say farewell to Phil today for another little "trip". We actually told him goodbye two days ago, but he came home due to technical difficulties and got to stay until this morning. It worked out great because he was around to watch Claire until I got done with Maddie's 9 month well-baby check-up (15lbs, 15oz; 26.5" long -- she's still a peanut). The girls must have sensed that the parental team was weak because they were insane after that! Both of them decided that naps are overrated and whining is fun. By this afternoon I was ready to run away to Mexico. Then I remembered that the strawberry patch was open so we packed our cranky selves up and headed over there instead. It was the best $3.45 I ever spent. Claire was a mess before we even started because there was one perfect strawberry right at her feet when she got out of the car (it must have fallen from a previous picker's load). Apparently the 10-second rule is something more like a 1-day rule at the strawberry patch because Claire ate that one up without batting an eye.





Even Maddie had fun. She tried to pick strawberries but could usually only reach leaves from her position on my back. She kind-of mutilated those poor plants.

I was really impressed with Claire's picking skills, though. She gave me a running commentary of all of the strawberries she came across: "This one too greenie. This one too orange-y. This one yummy. This one yummy mama? This one dirty. Oooo this a Maddie-size one." And so on and so forth. It was really funny. She knew to pick the pretty red ones and to eat the too squishy ones and I honestly couldn't tell which strawberries were hers and which were mine in the box. Hopefully we have enough for me to make some jam.

I learned from last year's experience and had a change of clothes for Claire so she didn't have to ride home in her skivvies this year. She munched on strawberries while I gave her a "wipe bath" in the back of the wagon and then got into her clean clothes. Everyone (including me!) was in a much better mood when we got home.

The Painted Lady and The Performer

Yesterday was a big day for Claire. She'd gone two whole days without (hardly) biting her nails and now it was time for her big reward. Check out her pretty nails:

Yep, that's pink sparkle nail polish. Don't ask my why I actually had that in my collection of nail polishes, but it was there and she picked it (quelle surprise). Claire ran around like a mad woman to "help them dry". She's so proud of those crazy sparkly nails!

Meanwhile, Maddie has been perfecting her piano act. I'm not sure what the song is, but she sings and plays it with a lot of heart:

Happy Father's Day!

Here's wishing all of those dad's out there a very happy Father's Day, especially our dads. We sure do wish we could be there to thank you in person for being great dads (and papas/grampys!). Hope you're enjoying your day.

Phil is doing a very dad-like thing today: watching golf on TV (hmmm... I'll bet my dad is doing the same thing!). There's an airshow going on but it's a bit chilly and cloudy so we didn't get motivated to go. We can actually see some of the aerobatic shows from our house and that seems to satisfy Claire.

We surprised Phil with some special photos of the girls for Father's Day. They turned out pretty cute. We borrowed Claire's outfit from a friend, but Claire had so much fun wearing it that we may need to buy her one of her own.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhklahoma

...where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. (If you don't know what I'm talking about you can go brush up on your musical trivia here.

Anyway, the point is we're 95% sure we're going here. It could be two weeks from now; it could be June/July of next year; it could be any time in between. This is the part of our lifestyle that drives me batty. We don't know when we'll move. We don't know when we will know. Just thought we'd keep you all informed -- or, at least, as informed as we are. :)

The inside/out dance

Phil calls this Claire's inside/out dance (Maddie's inside and Claire is out). Claire always wants to go play in the backyard, but more times than not she ends up coming back to the door to entertain Maddie. Here's an example of the shows she puts on:




Claire remembers the songs they sing at KinderGym better than I do. She might just have a future on Broadway. Or in a vaudeville act!

Balloons Anyone?

These girls are definitely cut from the same cloth...you decide who is who:






And this one is just for funny:

Movie Problems

If you were having problems with seeing movies from our album online earlier, it should all be fixed. The site that we put our pictures and movies on was doing some upgrading and the movies wouldn't play. It's working now, so enjoy the movies we've already posted!

We've still got lots of visitors

We confirmed there's at least two of these little beasties, too. They were fighting over the water yesterday. Here's a couple of shots from just this morning (better camera, better pics!). We get multiple visits in the morning and at dinner, makes mealtime entertaining for everyone.

I got a new wife!

Claire wondered what happened to Katie's teeth! Congratulation Katie!

Evidence of Daddy in the house

Phil got back in yesterday evening right before the girls went to bed. By this morning you could definitely tell he was home just by looking around the house. This is what the kitchen looked like by 7:15am (it was nice and clean last night):

And a fort had been built in Claire's room by 9am:

Claire has been asking for Daddy Hugs all morning and when I tried to substitute for him I was told, "NO! Daddy do." Hmpf. I wonder if that "Daddy do" thing will work for laundry, meals, naptime, and bedtime too. I'm thinking he'll only get special requests for the fun stuff.

Fun day

You know Maddie has the hang of this whole "eating" thing when she can even pretend to eat! Her big sister was helping her practice yesterday (click the triangle below to play the video):


Now before you feel too bad for the starving baby who has to eat pretend food, rest assured that she had just finished lunch. A great big lunch of rice cereal, sweet peas, and bananas. No babies were starved in the making of that video.

It's so funny to watch them play together. Of course, they don't always play well together, but they do really seem to like each other. As soon as Maddie gets more mobile they'll have a great time chasing each other.

My Aunt Mary came by yesterday to see us too. Claire instantly adopted her as her new book-reader-extraordinaire and her kid-entertaining skills had me trying to convince her to move in. She was wonderful with the girls and they adored her. It sure was nice to see some family this week.

Daddy's home

When Claire woke up from her nap yesterday she sure was surprised to find her daddy here! As I type this, she has him reading ALL of her books to her. They've made their way through four already. This morning he filled up her swimming pool and somehow got talked into letting her outside in her clothes (in her 2nd outfit of the day at 10am because her first outfit got wet when they were filling up the pool) to play in the yard. Supposedly she "knew" she was supposed to stay out of the pool. To her credit, she didn't actually get in the pool, but she used her bucket to pour water all over the place, including all over herself. So we were on outfit #3 by 11am. But she's having fun and getting some good Daddy Time so I guess the extra laundry is worth it.

Maddie was happy to see Phil too. She squealed and crawled/wiggled right over to him when he walked in the door. She's been a happy, giggly baby ever since Phil came home, showering him with coos and smiles. Makes it a bit difficult to convince him that they're both CRAZY when he's gone.

Claire and Daddy are now on book #7. Ha ha ha. I think there is a margarita in my future.