Why I haven't posted aka Wordless Wednesday!

I’m a Big Kid Now

So we are in the depths of toddlerhood now. It’s really amazing watching your tiny little baby transform into a “real person” right before your eyes. Often it makes a mom want to cry for a bit but the look of accomplishment on your child’s face when they start to realize that they’ve just learned something new is always worth it. Our 2 latest things for Claire have been adventures of beginning potty training and finally being allowed to face forward in the car seat. Here are some pictures of both.

First, a few from “potty training weekend” where we went bottomless in an attempt to let her make the connection between what she feels before and her announcements after she “pee-pees” and “poo-poos”. Unfortunately, Mommy and Daddy were too distracted by other things so not much got accomplished. We’ll try again later.



Next, we finally reached 20 lbs so we finally met the state of Georgia requirements for turning a car seat forward facing. Here’s the before:

Here’s Mommy working on the install (notice the head on the console between the front seats!):

And the after:

Someone is very happy, and it’s not just Mommy!

And finally, some Daddy time pics. Since Jeremy has been gone 5 days a week the last 6 weeks, Claire has been going through some major withdrawal. Daddy is not allowed out of her site most of the time once he’s home so if Daddy wants to mow the yard…..


Yes, she is attempting to lay her head down to sleep on him! LOL! There's actually a pic of me doing the exact same thing to my dad at this age too so I'll have to see if I can get Mom to scan it for me so I can add it to the blog for comparison. =)

Dare-devil

So my 18 mo old has proven herself to be quite the daredevil of late. Here is a cute video of her doing the “big kid” slide at Kanga Zoom. I was actually surprised that she could even physically do it, much less that she was willing to do it without me going up with her much less that she would just take off across the place when my back was turned and start doing it without me even knowing she had started off. Crazy kid!

O-possum!!!!

So a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find that my garage had an uninvited guest……

… for those of you not native to North America or who have always been a city-dweller, YES!!, that’s an opossum! I am using my zoom lens to its fullest capability so no, I’m not really that close to a cornered, wild animal. I tried to shoo him out of the garage with a shovel but he would not go! So like any self-respecting suburbanite woman with no husband at home….I called Animal Control and took pictures so people would believe me!!

Corn!!! Mmmm, good!

Over this summer, Claire has learned to eat corn (one of her favorite veggies) while still on the cob. It’s been a really funny site to see, so of course, we’ve taken some pictures.

First try: 4th of July picnic at Stone Mtn

2nd try: Early Sept night when the weather finally cooled off enough to eat out on the front porch

Changes

So I mentioned before that there were some changes happening at Jeremy’s job. Well the changes ended up affecting Claire and I a lot more than I thought it would so I haven’t had a chance to post what happened. So the scoop is that Jeremy has moved from the PLM group at IBM to the Maximo group. Maximo is an asset management software tool. Some of you are thinking, ok so he’s just going to be consulting on a different software, what’s the big deal? Well the big deal is that everyone has assets and a lot of people need help managing them so it’s a software package that can be used by a lot more companies in a lot more industries than just manufacturing like PLM. So the big deal is: there is much greater potential for J to land a client in Atlanta and not have to be traveling out of state 4 days a week. And that is a change that we have been waiting FOUR years for already. So J just finished a 6 week training program to learn the new software and is now out on a 2 week shadowing assignment. Training was in DC and it was 5 days a week so it made for a very short weekend time, a frazzled mommy and a cranky kid. We are all happy to have Daddy back on his normal 4 day work week so we get him home for 3 days for more family/Daddy time. We’ll keep you posted on when he gets his new assignment. There is a slight possibility of getting Southern Co in Atlanta, so do keep us in your prayers.

A-B-C-D ....Duck!

So Claire is finally starting to learn singing. She usually sings along to her own tune in her own language that she has yet to teach us but occaisionally we'll be able to tell that she's trying to repeat something she's heard before. So for you to totally understand the funny part of this story, I have to give you a little background.

1) Several months ago she went to spend a weekend with Grandmother and Grandfather (Jeremy's parents) and they started teaching her Old McDonald. So when she came home, Grandmother prompted her to sing the song for Mommy to which she replied "I-E-I-E-O". Backwards, but close enough. We were all proud.

2) Claire's latest toy obsession is the Leapfrog Alphabet Magnets toy (which btw, i can't find anywhere so if anyone knows where I can get one or has one to sell, let me know!!!). Everytime we go to a playdate at somone's house, she makes a beeline to that person's kitchen to see if their fridge or dishwasher is displaying the covitted toy. If they have it, she'll camp out in the kitchen or pull it off the fridge and carry it everywhere in the house playing the alphabet song over and over and over......

So back to the story.... A week ago, Jeremy was home from work for the week due to being in between projects (more on that later) and we'd gone out at night to run some errands and stuff. We were on the way home in the car but pushing Claire's bed time. She was getting fussy so in an effort to avoid the babby, Jeremy started singing some songs to her. After a while he stopped because she had clamed down. Then a few minutes later we hear what is the alphabet song tune with Claire's best attempt as saying the letters right but not really getting any of them right and in the pauses, Old McDonald. So it sounds a bit like this "A-B-C-D-E-F-G DUCK! H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P DUCK, DUCK! Q-R-S E-I-E-I-O WOOF!" She has continued to grace us with this rendition of the song several more times from the backseat of the car so maybe one day i can get it on videotape. =)

Claire-isms

So I thought I'd post a few Claire-isms for you so you'll be caught up if Claire says something to you one day and you can't figure out what she's saying.

1. A paci is a babby. We don't know where it came from but that's what it's called now and she isn't afraid to scream for them at the top of her lungs. We are in the process of weaning from them so they are only allowed to be used inside her crib. I do keep a spare in the car for emergencies but it's rarely used anymore. Unfortunately she is starting to replace the babby with fingers or "milk-milk" so we are starting to rethink the weaning process.....oh joy!

2. milk-milk is her bottle with milk in it. If you give her milk in any kind of cup, she'll drink it if she's happy, but if she's mad and screaming for milk-milk, she'll just throw it back at you ( I have no idea where she gets this attitude from!? LOL). If you give her the bottle with water in it, she will also throw it back at you. I'd really love to start this weaning process too but Claire is really underweight and this is one of the best ways we can get good fat calories in her. As soon as we can get her back on the chart (even at 3%) we'll start to wean because Momma is sick of washing millions of bottle pieces!

3. May-men is amen, the closing of all her prayers.

4. Moatmeal is oatmeal, something she often wants for breakfast. Apparently we are having trouble with opening vowel sounds.

5. All fowl are "duck" or "bird" but usually duck.

6. Apparently ducks say "duck" not "quack".

7. Apparently chickens say "chicka chicka". She won't usually say the chicken part (ie see #5) but if you ask her what chickens say, she says "chicka chicka".

8. Cats are "meow meows", "kit cats" or "CAT!". You just never know. But they do say "meow, meow".

9. Dogs are "puppies" and they say "woof".

10. Horses are "hawsies" not to be confused with "hussies" so it makes lots of adults do a double-take.

Pee Pee on the Potty!!

Yes, we had our first successful pee pee on the potty this morning. I think Mommy and Daddy were more excited than Clairebeth as we were hopping all around and celebrating and she just keep looking at us like "What did I do that they are so excited about?" We weren't so successful on the poo poo though as that ended up on the bathroom floor when she squatted down to pick up her book to read while sitting on the potty. Oh well, we were still excited for the "accidental" pee in the right spot. Small victories!!

Welcome!

So we've been getting a lot of complaints about clairebeth.com being down for the past month or so, sooooooo we have finally set up a new website so you can keep up with Claire, her parents, and any future siblings (no, no news on that yet....). So welcome to our new blog, Myersland!