8/12/10
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Trip to Michigan
In August we headed up to Michigan to help host a shower for Nathan’s SIL Janice, who was pregnant with triplets, to celebrate summer birthdays and to attend a family wedding. It was a party trip!
The shower:
8/05/10
A day at the lake:
Elisabeth awake in the shade
Cousins building castles
Naptime!
This season’s beach fashion – layering head coverings!
Birthday celebrations that night:
Helping me open presents
8/06/10
During this trip, Elisabeth had acute stranger awareness, which was sad since this was our first trip to Michigan with her. However, she was quite taken with Uncle Matthew and bestowed him with the honor of holding her!
The following day was the wedding but both girls seemed tired and Clara was quite contrary, so we decided that Nathan would attend the wedding and then come home while the rest of his family headed to the reception and we would spend the afternoon filling Clara’s ‘love tank’ since the previous days had been so busy.
We played outside at home and at a park – the weather was perfect! Then we visited one of Nathan’s favorite places from when he was a kid.
8/07/10
Clara seemed much, MUCH more mellow. When we got home she felt warm and I took her temperature. Sure enough, she had a fever of about 102. The poor little one fought a virus the last day of our trip, but seemed to improve upon returning home.
A lovely Saturday
A special breakfast treat from Daddy and…
7/31/10
swimsuit swinging! Who could ask for anything more?!
Vacation Bible School
I was so excited that Clara got to attend VBS this year. Although her class was supposed to be 3 and 4 year olds, there were only two 3 year olds that were registered so the sweet teacher told us that Clara was welcome to come. The main teacher, Mrs. James, is a former preschool teacher and she had plenty of other aides, which was good because there were at least six 2 and 3 year olds in the class each day.
Clara did really well following directions, though all the chaperones noted that she did her own thing most of the time and didn’t seem too interested in group participation, as this final day group picture demonstrates.
One of the highlights for her was following her teacher to the classroom holding onto a rope with her other classmates. She still occasionally will have her dolls hold onto a necklace and tell them to ‘hold the rope.’
7/30/10
I enjoyed the time to get errands done with just Elisabeth, though it was odd not to have my little chatterbox along with me!Saturday, December 11, 2010
Three little pigs
I am not sure that I can summarize our trip any better than this post, but here are some additional pictures of our brief period outdoors and then our stake-out in the air-conditioned Science Museum lobby.
Let me just highlight that, yes, that is a pile of, let’s see, one, two, three, do I see four dirty diapers in the left lower corner?!
7/22/10
The chaos in its full glory – I am pretty sure that the women in the upper right corner are not admiring our children or our bravery in taking four children age 5 months to 2 years on a field trip!
Cookies
7/21/10
Clara’s favorite part of making cookies is tasting everything – each ingredient, the dough, the finished product. I don’t normally like batter, and don’t eat it because I am one of those people who don’t believe in eating raw eggs, but Nana’s peanut butter cookie recipe is the one exception. It doesn’t call for eggs and the batter tastes like peanut butter fudge. We roll the dough into balls, then in granulated sugar, and finally press the balls with a tumbler that has a starburst pattern on the bottom.
A fun Saturday
One thing I failed to mention in my post about our trip to Minnesota was that it convinced me that Clara needed to be toilet trained. On our flight home I took her to the lavatory (why is it only called that on planes?) for a very necessary diaper change that also involved a change of clothes. She felt very insecure on the tiny changing table that folded down and was very upset. Her consternation and protestations were so loud that one of the crew members knocked on the door to make sure that everything was okay. I decided that ready or not, it was time to potty train.
Because all of Clara’s big transitions have gone smoothly when we handled them cold-turkey, I figured that was the way to go. I stocked up on salty snacks, special beverages, homebound activities and made sure that we had meals in the freezer so that I could completely focus on the task at hand.
And focus we did. I set a timer. We had potty time every 30 minutes. I gave stickers, snacks, pep talks, and rewards for anything that sounded like dribble, even if it may have been incidental plumbing noises from our old toilets. I stayed up from 3-5 am with her on Sunday morning as she insisted that she wanted to go potty on the toilet and yet could not. The problem was not having accidents, the problem was that since she did not want to go in her panties, she did not want to go at all. She was stressed, I was stressed, and we gave up after day 3. Which was fine and good because four days after her third birthday she decided that she wanted to be potty trained and not even two weeks later she wasn’t having any accidents and was dry through the night. My mom would say it was pay-back, but you will have to get the details of that story from her!
Before our ‘big-girl’ shopping trip to buy panties.
Look how naïve I look!
7/10/10
Bonus adorable Bitty pictures
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