Claire You're 18 Months Old

As of January 10th 2011, Claire Constance is 18 months old....a year and a half! Holy Moly Batman! I can't believe it but I've enjoyed every moment of it!

Stats:

Claire's appointment isn't until the end of January, so I can't update with the correct height and weight. If I had to guess she would be in the 21 pound range. She still fits comfortably in 12-18 and 18-24 months clothing. She still sports a size 3 shoe. Her hair is getting long; when it's wet (dry it's curly) it's down to the top of her back and can officially be pulled back into a ponytail. But she's really not a fan, so we still opt for the one pony on top of her head (usually a side pony).

Food:

She has her good food days and not so good. Lately, she's been going through a growth spurt. It seems as if she's always hungry.

breakfast - lately all she wants is a granola bar and fruit (sometimes she wants cheesy eggs or peanut butter toast)
lunch - anything, she's really not too picky. She loves and will eat hot dogs, veggies (peas, carrots, green beans), veggie straws, cheese, wheat crackers, any type of fruit, turkey breast, ravioli, homemade chicken salad, pickles, avocado, hummus.
 p.m. snack - gold fish crackers, puffs, veggie straws, Annie's bunnie snack crackers
dinner - she eats what we are eating and does great

She is loving her milk lately! She gets as much milk as she wants but usually we try to give her at least 1 or 2 sippy cups of water a day. Sometimes she will get juice but we still do the 25% juice and 75% water.

She loves ketchup or as she calls it "k-cup". Most of the time she will just suck the ketchup off of whatever it's on but lately she's actually been eating them! Her favorite is french fries with ketchup.


Words:

I would love to sit here and list them all but I've been trying to write them all down lately. Right now I'm at 95 words (most single but many are 2 to 4 word phrases) and she still surprises me with a few new words every day.

She LOVES to sing (but it's definitely in her genes):

"Twinkle, twinkle little star"
"Happy Birthday"
"Patty Cake"
The theme song from "Choo choo soul"
The end song, "Hot dog dance" from "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse"

Actions:

She's a very very active little girl! She's always moving from the time she wakes up to the moment she either naps or goes to bed she's moving. I'm lucky to maybe get her to sit on the couch (mostly in the morning) for maybe 10 minutes.

She's running now! We say, "run run run" and as she's running she yells, "running running"

She loves to give kisses. She'll lean in and pucker up! It's super cute.

Every time she gives hugs (which she loves to do and would give a hug to anyone or anything) she says, "awwww!"

She loves to play "duck duck goose" (I've seen her play "duck duck goose" with our two dogs!), and "ring around the rosie"!

She's climbing on anything and everything. If it's climbable - Claire will climb it. She has no fear.

She loves to jump, do arm crosses, stand on one foot, spin in a circle, stand on her head (and try to do a somersault)

She loves playing with her toys but she also loves non-toys too. She has a very active imagination and you can see it. Her new play kitchen, shopping cart and babies are her favorite! She loves going "night night" with her babies. She could push her babies in her shopping cart around all day! She's becoming a very good mommy!

Claire loves any type of water - bath, pool or hot tub! She's a fish just like her momma! You actually have to spell out "b-a-t-h" now or she will continuously say, "bath" and won't leave us alone until we give her one! If she knows she going swimming - the word "swim" will come out the whole time you are getting her ready to go!

Reading is still something we do all the time in our house - she still loves her books! Wherever she sees letters she'll say, "ABC".

She can count to 3 and she knows the shapes of a star and moon and circle.

In the last couple months she's really taken to the "Disney Jr. Channel". She's in love with "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" (which will be her 2nd birthday theme), "Handy Manny", "Choo-Choo Soul", "Chuggington", "Dora".

She also as a new recent obsession with trains! She loves trains real and fake! We recently took her to a local kids restaurant that as trains all over! She loved it, it will be a new dinner place for us until trains are not cool anymore! 

Sleep:

Great, "knock on wood".  She's been going to bed wonderfully! We have a great bed time routine going: milk/snuggle time with mommy, brush teeth and then bed time. To fall asleep she needs her baby Carlee, bear and her favorite circle blanket! She goes down around 10pm and gets up any where from 8-10am.

She has 1 nap and it really depends on when she wakes up. Usually it's between 1-2pm. They can range anywhere from an hour to two.

Pictures:

Claire an hour old to 8 months old

Claire 9 months to 17 months old

 This morning, the moment she turned 18 months!


Happy 18 month birthday baby girl! We love you!

Complete 180

As long as I can remember Claire always needed me to fall asleep at night. It started with her nursing, she would fall asleep and Eric would put her to bed in her crib. After she no longer was on the boob, she would have her sippy cup of milk while snuggling with me before bed, she would finish her milk and she would just fall asleep. For the last couple weeks she's done a complete 180. She has her milk on my lap and we get our night time snuggles in, she brushes her teeth and then Eric (I'm unable to do this part because if she sees me, it doesn't work) puts her to bed awake, there is no crying or whining. She lays down on her pillow, asks for her "baby Carlee" and her "bear" and then just relaxes. Eric asks if she wants him to sing "row row row your boat"? Usually she says, "yes". One time of the song and she's out. It's truly amazing how kids can do one thing for months and then in an instant can change their ways. I'm so happy because she was unable to be allowed to cry it out because she's like her mom, me where if she crys too long or too hard, she'll puke! So the whole sleep training, cry it out method was able to be kept up on! It shows you that it takes time and that they can learn stuff on their own. It makes me realize even more that she's growing up!

A Look at Our Christmas Through Pictures

Santa ate some of our cookies and drank some of the milk we left him!

Santa did good this year!

Santa left Dora and Elmo stickers in Claire's stocking!

And a microphone!

She got a baby from mommy and daddy!

Claire checking out some of her goodies that everyone got her!

Daddy and his girl Christmas morning 2010

Mommy and Bug Christmas Morning 2010

Santa also stopped by Papa and Nana's house and left a kitchen for her!

A "pillow chump" from Uncle Kyle - it's 10x the size of a regular pillow pet and takes up half her room!

Playing in her new tent and tunnel!

Weebles Playhouse

Nana and her bug!

Papa and his girl!

Checking out her new puppy, skip!

Even after a long day, she decided to vacuum for me!

We had an amazing Christmas this year. Don't get me wrong, Claire's 1st Christmas will always be special and hold a special little piece in my heart but this Christmas was so much fun. Last Christmas she was 5 months old, sat there and tried to eat the wrapping paper and just played with the bows. It's such a change, this year she opened her own presents, she got excited when she say something she really liked and she wanted to play with everything right away. The look of excitement on her face is priceless and I know every single Christmas will be memorable in it's own way! Our traditions that we will carry over to future Christmas's are: reading the book, "The night before Christmas"- I read this book with my dad and brother every Christmas eve night, setting out cookies, milk and a letter for Santa, opening our stocking first. Even a few weeks before Christmas we started a new tradition is to take a name off the"giving tree" at our church. I think it's important for Claire to know the try meaning of Christmas and what giving is all about. I think my grandpa Linos would be proud of him, he was the who taught me a lot! This Christmas was so much fun. I love living close to both of our families so we can split up the day and be able to spend it with both of them. I know Claire loves seeing both sets of grandparents all in one day. This Christmas was filled with delicious breakfast and dinner, family, friends, faith, games and of course a ton of laughs! Can't wait to see what Christmas 2011 as in store for us!

Wordless Wednesday

I Vow...

I saw this on my cousin-in-law's page and I wanted to share it with all of my followers.

I vow:

I vow to never text and drive.
I vow to never take someones life because I'm texting and driving.
I vow to never put my baby girl, Claire in harms way because of a single, "OMG or LOL"

Texting and driving is said to be more dangerous and more serious then drunk driving and that's pretty scary if you think of the millions of teens out there that don't know or don't care about the consequence of a single text while they are driving. I've seen a few videos in the past that changed my whole demeanor about texting and driving - it basically scared the sh*t out of me and put horrible thoughts and vision in my head. I couldn't imagine hurting or scary killing someone I knew or a complete stranger over something so silly, so simple. Still to this day, I see people texting and driving - it's sad but so scary at the same time because it only takes a split second for your life to chage forever!

Have you or do you text and drive? If so, watch this video and put yourself in the shoes of this people. What if you lost someone you loved more then life itself...your brother, sister or even your child or what if someone lost you. Watch this and hopefully you will take a vow, a vow to never text and drive again!

So This Is Christmas....Christmas Eve 2010

Can you believe Christmas 2010 as come and gone?! I can't. It was such a whirlwind of fun, family and some amazing food. Our Christmas started Christmas Eve night, like it has for the last 10 years. We headed over to Eric's Grandma's house to celebrate Christmas with is Dad's extended side of the family. We get to see cousins, we normal don't get to see all too often. We had some great Grandma cooked food, amazing dessert and probably over 20 different types of cookies to choice from. My favorite are the chocolate covered cherry cake cookies...their to die for! After visiting for a little bit, we were ready for the "stocking game". The "stocking game" start 3 years ago. Eric's Grandma decided to stop doing stockings for all of her grand kids(12) and their spouse because it was getting to be a little much. She decided to buy different items and put everything into a storage container and let everyone pick some things. Well for us, it's turned into a game and the storage container went from 1 to 2 to now 4 containers to choice items from. We get a few minutes to check out the containers with only our eyes, no touching/moving items around allowed. Eric's dad figures out an order and then we all pick numbers and the fun starts. This year all 4 containers were on her pool table so we decided we would have to constantly walk around the pool table and when our name was called we would have to find something from where we were around the pool table at that point. Along with that rule, we also only have 3, yes 3 seconds to pick any item. If you take too long, you get the count down. Which makes you even more syntactic and nervous. All in all we did very well - 7 toothpaste, 5 shampoos, 1 condition, 3 dish soaps, 1 hand soap, 5 body wash for men, kitchen towels, lotions, tweezers, lip gloss, socks and some stuff for Claire (Gerber snacks, goldfish etc..) It was a great fun filled evening.

Here are some pictures of our evening:

Our little family on Christmas Eve 2010

Opening one of her gifts early!

Checking out all the goodies!

Claire loved carrying around everyone's bag!

Grandma and her grandkids and great grandkid (minus 8)

Claire carrying around her new baby, Carlee!

One of her favorite things to do at Great Grandma Laura's house - play on the pool table!

To read about our Christmas stay tuned...

Happy New Year

Happy New Years!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and an amazing New Years! We've been very very busy so I will update very soon with pictures and stories of Christmas and such!

Here's too hoping 2011 will be just as amazing as 2009 was!