June pictures

My college roommate met us at my mom and dad's house for the day with her two girls. Wow, a lot has changed in the ten years since we graduated! Clara loved having some older girls to play with! Wish we didn't live so far from each other.















We don't have to worry about Miles getting bored.



Clara figured out how to climb out of her crib this month. It had been a particularly horrible day but by 12:30 I had managed to get both kids in bed for nap. I too laid down on the couch for a nap which was long overdue since Miles still gets up numerous times a night. After a while I am awakened by a little voice, "Mommy I'm done going night night." I thought I must be dreaming still because the voice seemed so close by. But when I squeezed open one eye I see her standing right beside the couch. Please no it must be a nightmare because my kids are both upstairs in their cribs where they are contained until I come and get them out. But no, I was awake. I had pretty much convinced myself that Clara loved her crib and would peacefully sleep in there until she was 15. Not the case.

We tried putting rails on the twin bed already in her room but she wasn't interested in sleeping there. She kept telling us to put her back in her bed. So we decided to take one side off the crib and that has worked great. At night we haven't had a single incident of her getting out of bed although naps have been a little more challenging. She has a clock that lights up and has a picture of a bunny going to sleep and a bunny waking up. She has to stay in bed until the bunny wakes up and she has done really well with that once she kind of figured out how it worked. At nap she was a little more inclined to get out of bed the first few days. We went to check on her when she was suppose to be napping and found her like this.



Yeah, that's diaper cream and no it did not come off easily. And yes she smelled like diaper cream for at least two days even after a bath. The same week she climbed out of her crib she started telling me every time she needed to go potty. A mother's dream I know but I am not ready for potty training! I have a 5 month old child that still gets up at a minimum of 3 times a night, generally more than that, so I don't patience or brain power for a big girl bed and potty training in the same week!!! Well Clara stayed dry for two solid days except for twice when we had friends over and I think she just forgot. You've got to be kidding me. So I go to target and buy her some pull ups. We do the pull up thing for two weeks but every day Clara become less and less interested in going potty. It seems the more we push her, the less inclined she is to go on the potty or to tell us she needs to go. So we have taken a break for now on the potty training. I think she could do it but I also think it will be a whole lot easier if I wait until she decides she is ready to do it. I was telling Brian that I think part of her personality is that if she is pushed too hard to do something she kind of shuts down. Brian says he has nooooo idea where she got that from. Kind of funny because I had never really thought about that being one of my personality traits but yeah I definitely do that. Too bad this kid is nothing like her mother...Ha!



My two favorite guys!

The Zoo!!

Clara loved the zoo! I wasn't sure how long she would be interested since her attention span isn't very long but she loved every minute of it. She probably would have stayed at every exhibit longer but we kept telling her there was more to see! We got there right as it opened which worked out great because we were able to stay ahead of the school groups. We stayed till about 1 then headed to the car. Clara barely made it out of the parking lot before she was asleep. We didn't get to see everything but 4 hours was about all this little two year old could handle without a nap. We asked her what her favorite thing was and she said the giraffes.

Too much fun!

I just found a couple of posts that didn't publish successfully so these were a few weeks ago.

We had an awesome weekend which included a trip to the Prairie Ridge Ecostation, the Got to be NC fair and the zoo. We love when daddy takes the day off! Watching Clara ride rides at the fair was so awesome! I think Brian and I enjoyed it more than Clara. Watching those huge smiles and giggles on the rides was priceless. Not to mention her holding her hands in the air and screaming like the big kids on the kiddie coaster. Clara wanted to get her face painted and asked for Daniel Tiger of course. The lady asked if she wanted a pink tiger, Clara responded "no, Daniel  is orange".

After the rides Clara wanted ice cream so we stopped at the ice cream booth and when the two ladies asked Clara about her Tiger face she gave them her very best roar and they ate it up! They asked if she could come inside the trailer and taste the different ice creams so she went in and tasted all the flavors then came out with a gigantic cup of ice cream.

We ate ice cream while we watched fireworks. Clara kept saying no make noise mommy. She liked watching the fireworks but she didn't like how loud they were. Afterward she kept asking where the pink stars went. Too cute.

Miles is 4 Months Old!

At 4 months Miles has just started to nap longer stretches where he usually naps 2 longer naps, about 1.5 hours each then one or two cat naps in the evening. He goes to bed between 7:30PM and 8PM and gets up around 7AM.  I wish I could say he sleeps through the night but that is definitely not the case. He was doing really well at night only getting up once but then he got an awful cold that lasted 2 weeks and kept him up a lot at night. Since then he has been getting up numerous times during the night and having trouble going back to sleep most of the time. Its something we are definitely working on and we hope being a bit more strict with his nap and feeding schedule during the day will help him sleep better at night. With there being two kids it is definitely a lot harder having him on a strict schedule because it pretty much means we stay home most of the day. But that's a lot easier to do now that its summer and we can get out the water table and pool.

Miles is still nursing exclusively every 3-4 hours and absolutely refuses to take a bottle. Last weekend I was sick with a stomach bug so Brian tried 5 different bottles but he wouldn't have anything to do with any of them.

Miles can roll easily from back to front and front to back. And has just the last few days started to like being in the exersaucer. He will stay in there a lot longer if Clara is nearby and he can watch her or she is talking/playing with him. He LOVES Clara and even though she can be a little rough with him sometimes he hardly ever cries at anything she does to him. This week he laughed for the first time when Brian was tickling him. It was soo adorable but he only did it twice and hasn't done it since. I can't wait till I start hearing that little laugh all the time!

At Miles' 4 month appointment he weighed 13 pounds (15%) and was 25.5 inches long (75%). His head was 40.8 cm (15%). I guess the huge height and weight discrepancy is why he has just started wearing size 9 month sleepers and still wears size 3 month shorts.

We love the infectious smile this little boy has and his love for snuggles sure does make his mom happy. I know it won't be long at all until he's running around with his sister so I'm trying to savor every moment of him being little.