Splish Spash, She's Taking a Bath

Here are a couple of G-rated pics from Claire's most recent bath! This girl loves to splash. And she likes to splash whomever is giving her a bath.




And here she is all snuggly in her kitty cat bath towel.

Silly Faces

So when the camera comes out, we don't even see the cheesy fake smiles anymore. Nope. We get silly faces. Enjoy the strangeness of our boys:



Cade in the shower...

Jack already out of the shower...

Cade still in the shower...

Happy 8 Months, Claire!

Can't believe that Claire is already 8 months old. Time flies when you're keeping up with 3 kids. Here are some cute pics taken very recently of our favorite little cutie-pie.


I love decorating magazines, and I guess Claire does too. Here she is studying the cover of one, gleaning ideas. That's my girl!



"And what should we do about that light fixture?"


Here are a couple taken while she was in her exersaucer:





And I was able to sneak into her room and get a picture of Claire Bear sleeping like an angel. She is so sweet, I just want to eat her! (and it looks like we've got yet another thumb-sucker on our hands!)

Meet Mr. Mucus

This guy

has invaded our house. First Claire. Then Jack. Now me. And possibly Cade next. Grrrr!

Mater

The boys are Cars crazy. In case you don't have toddler/pre-school boys in your house, that's a movie by Pixar that came out 2 years ago. There's an old rusty tow truck in the movie named Mater.

Scott took the boys (along with our friend Michael & his son Nathan) to a hot rod car show this past weekend. And there was a real Mater there! With the eyes and the tooth! Here's a quick shot of Mater...

Crud

Claire and Jack have had "the crud" for the last few days. Fevers of 102 degrees and green slime oozing from their noses. The green slime is congealed inside their heads, making it difficult for them to breathe through their noses. Which is unfortunately since they are both thumb suckers! Today they just have low fevers, so hopefully they're pulling through it and will be better tomorrow.

On another note, here is Jack after he's tackled a pb&j sandwich. It's a face only everyone can love.



And Cade was sporting his best pouting face since Jack was sitting in his chair. He absolutely refused to eat his lunch until Jack was done and got down from the table. Only then did Cade get into Jack's old seat and finally began to eat his lunch. Wonder where he gets his stubborness? (that was a rhetorical question, thank you very much!)

Claire's Vitals

We (me and the boys) took Claire to the doc this morning for her 6-month check-up (if you're counting, yes, she's almost 8 months old. we're a little behind).

height: 28.5" (92%)
weight: 18 lbs 14oz (75%)
eyes: two
ears: two
nose: cute as a button

The Writing is on the Wall

The good news? Cade can write his name very well. Capital "C" and lowercase "a d e". It's very good. We're so proud of his writing ability!

The bad news? Cade wrote his name perfectly... with a dry erase marker... on the carpet.... on the wall... on the grout... on the filing cabinet.

We were baffled. Cade has never tried to write on anything inside the house except what he is supposed to write on.

We had our friends, the Starlings, over for dinner when Cade did his graffiti. They were in awe over our calm reaction; we told them that we couldn't get too upset about it because they (the Starlings) would be witnesses. Scott & I have decided that Cade's punishment will be no TV or movies for a week. While this punishment is as much punishment to me as it is to Cade (Cade watches some shows while Jack & Claire take a nap; this allows me some downtime or time to get some other things done), I think taking away his shows will have a big impact on him.

We don't have any pictures to show of this incident as we started cleaning it up right away and thought about pictures after we were done cleaning. Yes, dry erase marker is very hard to clean. Yes, there are still pink/red and green/blue patches visible on our carpet. Yes, there are pink/red and green/blue stains on our grout. Yes, this means we absolutely most positively need hardwood floors throughout the house.

Another Way to Look at Things

I just had a conversation with Cade about baby showers. I was telling him that some friends of ours were coming over to the house tonight because the wife was throwing a baby shower for one of her friends, and she was kicking her husband and two smallest kids out of the house. And so the three of them were going to take refuge at our house for the evening.

I then had the question, "I wonder if Cade knows what a baby shower is? He could think it's when a baby takes a shower..." So I asked Cade if he knows what a baby shower is. He kind of gave me a not-so-confident nod. So I started explaining that when a lady is going to have a baby, her friends will shower her with gifts.

And in the next breath, Cade said, "Like Mary."

Me: Mary?
Cade: Yeah, when Mary had baby Jesus.
Me: Ok...
Cade: Yeah, the three wise men came and brought baby Jesus gifts!"

Huh, I'd never thought of that as a baby shower before. Another way to look at things.

Happy Valentine's Day!

My husband is the best husband.

I woke up this morning to Claire already fed and Scott getting the boys started on breakfast. And there were some flowers. And there was some candy.

Scott is on the tail-end of a very busy period at work; he's been leaving for work around 6 or 6:30ish in the morning. But he left for work late this morning (even though he is swamped at work!) to feed Claire and get the boys up for me.

He's so sweet!

No Pics, But an Anecdote

No pics; sorry. My camera is taking a vacation at the Caruthers' house (or more accurately, I accidentally left it there last Friday).

But I do have a funny tale to regale you with.

Several weeks ago, I was getting Claire ready for a bath. So I'm stripping her down in the hall outside the bathroom, and the boys are crowded around making funny noises at her. Cade remarks at how small her diaper is. Then he states that her pee-pee must be really small since she has such a small diaper.

Scott & I inform him that girls don't have pee-pees. Only boys have those. And since Claire is a girl, she doesn't have a pee-pee. The conversation continues as follows:

Cade: Well Mommy has a pee-pee.
Scott: No, Mommy is a girl. She doesn't have a pee-pee.
Cade: Sure she does. Mommy, I want to see your pee-pee the next time you go potty.
Me: [speechless]
Cade: Actually, Mommy, why don't you just show me now.

Thankfully I was just putting Claire into the bath and had a valid excuse why I couldn't drop trou.

Dali & Picasso

The boys wanted to play outside this afternoon after we got home from running errands. Great! Go play!

Cade came into the house with a determined look on his face. He ran to the hall closet, rummaged around, and then ran back outside with something in his hand. I walked to the backdoor to see what he had retrieved: chalk. Ok, that should be pretty harmless.

A few minutes later, I glance out the back windows to see what the boys are up to. And they are effectively painting a mural on our fence!





And Cade took the art around the perimeter of our backyard. They were so proud of their graffiti when they had finished.





Here's my devilish Jack showing what he had been up to. That boy was covered head to toe in all sorts of colors of chalk.

Flock of Seagulls

Claire has a mild case of cradle cap on her head. So after a failed attempt of pouring olive oil on her hair (which took 3+ washing to get out!), I decided to brush those flakes right off of her head. So after 5 or 10 minutes of her screaming and my combing, she was a sight. I couldn't tell if she was crying because of all the combing I did to her (she doesn't particularly like for her hair to be messed with a bunch) or whether she was crying in reaction to the way she looked. A girl has to look good, ya know. WARNING: the follow picture is graphic in nature. It contains lots of snot and lots of tears.



You can't tell very well from the picture, but Claire had a major Flock of Seagulls thing going on. I'd be crying too.

Snug as a Bug in a.... Towel???

The boys have decided that the best way to stay warm right after they get out of the bath is to lay on the floor in their wet towels. We've tried to tell them that, the faster they dry off, the faster they'll be warm. But to no avail, they don't listen to us. I'm guessing this won't be the first time they won't listen to us.




And by the way, Jack is definitely in the Terrible Twos. Thankfully his dive off the deep end happened much later than Cade's (Jack is 2 1/2, and Cade was 18 months). But it's still no fun. Jack has never met an object that he didn't want to hurl across the room. He just likes to throw things. He especially likes to throw things when he's mad. Or hit, or throw himself down in dramatic fashion. His latest display of disapproval to whatever we've told him is to yell "bah bah bah bah!" He's just so darn cute; it's hard to stay mad at him for long.