2 MONTHS! Where does the time go?!

Really...where does it go? They say time goes by fast when you get out of high school...it goes even quicker when you have a kid. Well...let me tell you folks (who don't already know) It goes doubly fast when you have 2 kids. I couldn't imagine having even more. That Dugger mom must be 80 by now!

Claire- is growing like a weed. She fills out her 3 month clothes. I would guess it's not going to be much longer until she is going in to 6 month clothes. 

She also has her dreaded 8 weeks appointment. This will be her first 'shots' appointment. FOUR needles. I even cringe thinking of it! On the brighter side, we get to see how much chunk she has put on in the last month. My guess is 13lb 2 oz. and an inch longer.

Emily- is an AMAZING big sister. Now that the newness of having a baby in the house has worn off she isn't constantly trying to smother her...with bear hugs and sloppy kisses. She can give Claire her pacifier like a pro. She is excellent at grabbing diapers AND throwing them away. She loves to 'help' give Claire a bath by scrubbing her toes for me. And best of all she makes her sister smile. Claire already knows her voice. As soon as Emily walks in to the room and starts talking Claire lights up and looks around for her big sister. Some of the biggest smiles have been when Emily is playing with her. 

Emily is getting impatient though. She wants so bad to be able to do her hair and jump on the trampoline with her. She's got alot of time to go before she can do that and she's already growing impatient.

Here are some pictures of my grub and bug:

No Longer 'Newborn'

Alright! Alright! No one tells you about it, and something about the mothers brain makes you forget...babies need attention! Claire is on the cusp of what I consider to be 'no longer a newborn'. Meaning: She's awake for longer spans of time and needs to be "stimulated". Lucky for me there are alot of lazy parents out there who have made companies like "Fisher-Price" and "Baby Einstein" famous for just this purpose. Unfortunately, the only thing that really entertains Claire is my face. HA! yep, my face is pretty entertaining. Any face close to hers will make her light up and smile big, toothless, dimply smiles. Although I would LOVE to neglect all of my motherly/housewife duties and smile, coo, and make silly noises at my adorable little grub, I simply can't. The toilet must be scrubbed, laundry must be done, and dishes washed (I say this as my awesome husband is in the kitchen drying dishes for me).

So here is my grub doing what I consider her best characteristic SMILING! <3

Baking Brownies

My grandma passed away when I was young (9 or 10...Im sad I don't actually remember how old I was). But one of my fondest memories was always baking with her. It's right up there with making sour kraut (which I'm going to learn to do someday), booting "Shooster" the rooster to Timbuktu when he was trying to flog me (we had some good rotisserie chicken that night...I don't think it was a coincidence) and stealing sugar packets from restaurants for me to eat later. She also taught me how to make crochet chains, a lesson I'm currently building on with some help of my amazingly crafty friend, Meredith (pictures later). Although I didn't get the baking gene from my grandma or she just wasn't around long enough to teach me the basics other than that mixing eggs with my hands is really fun, I decided it was high time to show some love to Emily and have her help me bake some brownies. Grandma would be proud!

Ready to get started

Cracking the eggs (something Grandma Tina 

taught her when making cookies for Santa this Christmas)

She licked her fingers after this. I about had a heart attack! 

We haven't had an signs of salmonella yet...thank GOD!

Dumping in the cheater batter...remember, I am not the greatest baker!

Stealing a taste of the batter

MMMMMMM yummie. (yes, I tried some too :))

and what's better than licking the mixers clean afterwards?!

The brownies turned out great. They were all gone before I even got to take pictures of them. Maybe Emily got the baking gene. I sure hope so!

A day on the Farm

Most of you know by now that I live 8 hours from my parents. I'm not sure what I was thinking. Kids + car ride = crazy mother and cranky kids. With Claire being 5 weeks old and eating every 2-3 hours just makes the whole thing impossible!

To top it off we hitched a ride with Aaron's grandpa (have you taken a good look at the gas prices lately!?!?) so we didn't have the freedom to stop whenever we needed to. For the record, it actually turned out to be just fine. We stopped at Aarons Aunts house which is almost a half way point and stayed the night and then did the rest of the trip the next day, which happened to be during Claire's long nap. She started getting upset about an hour away from my parents and Aaron was able to soothe her with a pacifier until we reached our destination.

I wasn't as lucky. We all know what happens when a baby cries...if not here is Kevin to explain it to you:



P.S. I LOVE The Office.

I didn't take a whole lot of pictures when we were down there but I did go out and capture Emily and my dad together while they took care of the "farm" (that's what Emily calls it).

Grandpa found an egg in the bushes!

I told her an egg was a baby chicken so she held it like a baby.

Feeding Polly some carrots

Daisy or Delilah (I can't tell the difference) being impatient.

"Helping"

Actually helping feed the goats

Checking Polly's water

Being my goofball

(note: this is probably what I looked like taking pictures of her)

Picking oranges

"One for me, one for mommy, and one for daddy"

Checking for babies in the fig tree's nest

Picking lemons while battling the thorns

Stuffed all of the fruit up her shirt to carry them inside

Didn't work out so well

<3 LOVE

Strolling off into the sunset after some hard work on the farm.

Is that a baby in that tree? (part 3)

Since Claire was going to be one month old the next day and officially not considered a "newborn" any more I had to get her pictures done that day! I had seen my friend Jill a few days earlier. We started talking about missing the old days working together all the time and decided we should practice our newborn skills...on Claire. We started brainstorming ideas and started to go off on our usual wild tangents of possible things to do. Jill suggested hanging her in a tree. We both laughed. I suggested a cherry tree since they are all in bloom right now. We laughed again and went on talking about something else. 

The next day I called Jill and we planned to meet at her sisters house right down the hill from my house. I said I would bring some cherry tree branches off of one of the trees around our house for props. As I was driving down the hill I passed a cherry tree that had a branch that had broke off but was still alive. I slammed on the breaks and called Aaron to have him grab a saw and come help me. We gave the tree a little trimming up and tossed the branch in the back of the truck. I was so excited. I could see it all coming together. 

I got down to Hollys house and Jill immediately burst in to laughter at my "branch". Holly grabbed one end and hauled it in to her house. I don't know many people who would just toss a tree limb on to their bed and then say they didn't mind because it made the house smell good with all the blossoms. Holly's bedroom was this wonderful color, I'm going to call it rusty salmon, but when the light hit it, it turned into more of a salmon/pink that complimented my cherry branch PERFECTLY. 

Jill and I started shooting away while Claire napped. I should mention here that Claire slept through just about every second of the entire 3 hours. She was the perfect model and hardly made a peep the whole time. Here are a few more pictures of the day:

Love her little lips!

I want to give a special thanks to Holly, Jill and of course, little Ella. I couldn't have done it without the women behind the scenes holding it all together...literally!!!

**Disclaimer: Jill an equal amount of pictures while I held props...Some of these pictures are taken by her and some are taken by me. Either way we wouldn't have come up with the ideas without eachother. :)

Why is Emily's Hair Short? (part 2)

I'm actually not sure if I have posted any real recent pictures of Emily except for at the hospital. If by some chance you were wondering why her hair short well heres the reason:

Yep...that's a big wad of Emily's beautiful long hair in her hands. She found some scissors and started cutting away. I didn't even know that she knew how to use scissors! Oh well. I couldn't glue it back on and it bordered on the line of not needing to have it fixed, but it was high time to take Emily in to get her hair cut professionally. 

Emily's first hair cut:

She was a trooper. After 45 minutes of trying to layer in the copped pieces and make it look decent, Emily was done. I don't blame her!! I would have ants in my pants too!

So just in case you were wondering why on earth we would get rid of her long locks, you now know; Emily did it.

New Things (part 1)

There are so many new things to tell about in the ever changing life of a newborn!!

I spent most of today clearing out all of Claire's newborn clothes and replacing them with 3 month old clothes. Yes, ladies and gentlemen there is nothing newborn about my little girl anymore. She is merely a "baby".

Claire smiles spontaneously. Every once in a while it is when me or Aaron do something funny or entertaining, but most of the time I think she sees something that she likes such as the lights on the roof or a shape on the tv. I can't wait until the day that I KNOW I made her smile.

Claire also holds her head up for short periods of time and can turn it 180 degrees (right? she can look right and slowly turn and look left all while holding her head up on her own). She can also do the same during tummy time. She's SO strong.

Every mom knows that there is a significant amount of focus on poop while their child is in diapers. Yep...I said it. POOP. Can I just say for the record that I'm sick of poop? You're welcome. The purpose of me telling you this is so that I can tell you that Claire is having a growth spirt. How do I know? I am blessed with only one poopy diaper a day. That's a big step up since I have gone through 94x2+50+half of 50= 263 diapers / 38 days of Claire's life. That comes out to .1 less than 7 diapers a day.

I just realized today that Emily is completely fluent in the English language. I know that may sound funny but it's true. I'm not sure when exactly it happened either. She can talk a million complete sentences in a row and barely stop to breathe.

Emily is getting rediculously big and rediculously sassy. I wonder where she gets that from (her father I swear!) For example: Today, I had told her about 10x to go put her toys away. I know it shouldn't take ten times of me telling her before I get upset, but I finally stood up and in a very motherly fashion bent forward a little, put one hand on my hip and thrusted my pointer finger out and firmly said "Get your butt upstairs NOW!" Emilys little eyebrows furrowed up in confusion and said "I didn't know my room was outside mom". In my fury I had not payed much attention to the direction my finger had flung. Leave it to Emily to point it out and make mom feel stupid. Please pray for me :)