Imagination!

Claire decided to sit in her car seat, use two golf clubs as drumsticks, and turn her cube into a drum! She's pretty creative!

Cole Update!

Well, I am one week one day away from my due date and as of today it is looking like Cole is wanting to stay put!! (kind of sounds like someone else I know - Claire!) I have not gained any weight over the past couple of weeks bringing my total weight gain to - 12 pounds!!! I have been having contractions off and on - nothing consistent but they are uncomfortable. He is still moving like crazy - although now when he moves it causes a large pyramid like shape on my belly - it's pretty amazing. I have been craving slurpees like crazy - I am thankful that there is a 7 eleven about a minute from our house, I think we are keeping them in business - ha! So for the next week, we are going to be walking a lot, eating spicy foods, fresh pineapple, and praying that God would help move things along. We know that God already knows when and how Cole will make his debut, I am just hoping it is sooner rather than later.

Claire in a box!

We are moving these cubes out of Claire's room and she has decided that because they are hers she needs to be able to sit in them!

Claire's Big Girl Bed!

Claire is going to sleep in her big girl bed for the first time tonight!! We are so excited - her bed is EXACTLY what I wanted for her room. It is a bed that I picked out from Pottery Barn Kids and then showed my dad, who in return made it for her! I LOVE IT! The bedding we have coming is not in yet, so she has her quilt that my grandma (Claire's Dooda) made for her. I will take more pictures when the bedding gets here and we get everything else settled into place. As you can see from the pictures - the bed is unmade because Claire has been in and out of her bed already today :)

Home Sweet Home!!

After 7 days of being gone to Super Summer, Michael is finally home! We missed him so much while he was away, but from the stories we have heard so far - it was a life changing week for many of our teenagers!! I feel so blessed to be apart of his ministry and that I had the privilege to stay at home with our sweet girl and pray for our teens as they were away. I can not wait to hear all of their stories about their week - Super Summer is my favorite week of the summer!!

Here is our group: back row l to r - Michael, Rachel, Brent, Chandler, Anthony, Bailey (we are so thankful that Bailey could go as the other team leader - such a blessing!!)
front row l to r - Bailey, Adaline, Mady, Slaten, Nate

Super Summer takes it's toll on you! You stay up late, get up early, and are in the heat a LOT! Michael tried and tried to stay awake last night, but around 6:30 this is how we found him. Claire was being so cute and taking all of her special toys and putting them with Michael - what a sweet girl!!

The Zoo!

Today we went to the zoo. We have passes to the zoo so I wasn't worried about it being too hot to finish the entire zoo - in fact we went in with the mind set of - we are leaving after 2 hours. As I was talking about the zoo I asked Claire what all she wanted to see and she said elephants - just elephants! The zoo was not crowded at all today, which was a huge blessing. The downside was that it was HOT - the actual temp was only 92 but it we had a high humidity and it just felt oppressive. But, we had fun despite the heat. I have REALLY enjoyed this week and spending quality time with Claire just the two of us.

Claire with the elephants - the heat was starting to take it's toll on her but she still loved watching the elephants!

She sat here and watched this elephant for 10 minutes!

This is always fun for her! This tiger is always pacing in front of the glass when we go and Claire loves to talk to him and laugh at him.

Praise the Lord for the MOLA! It had cool cool ac and it wasn't crowded at all. This little lizard was acting all kinds of crazy and Claire thought he was a hoot.

Fish - any flat fish with a blue tint was Dory today :)

This poor turtle! Claire chased him around his tank for a good 5 minutes.

This one was much easier to watch - he didn't move at all!

NRH2O!

Today I took Claire to the water park by my self for the first time ever. Usually we go with my sweet friend Joy and her girls or Michael comes with us. But, I am trying to cram as much quality fun time into this summer as possible before the baby arrives and both of my water park buddies are at various camps this week - so we braved it alone! I had already decided this morning going into today that we were only staying for a couple of hours. It was supposed to reach 100 very quickly today and I had no one to talk to but my 2 year old so I figured 2 hours was enough - and I was right. We have never been to the water park on a Wednesday and I do believe it is my favorite day to go now! There are no daycares, day camps, or any other groups there on that day, which means that it was not crowded at all. Claire and I had a great time together swimming and splashing - she is getting SO brave and wanting to go under water ALL the time, she even holds her breath now. It makes me a nervous wreck to see her do it, but she always comes up laughing and screaming - "I did it!!!"

Going up the stairs!

Getting situated on the slide. Last year someone had to walk up with her and place her on the slide while someone else would stand at the bottom to catch her!

But not any more! She is miss independent!

My silly girl splashing and jumping around!

I think she looks really grown up in this picture

This picture has a LOT of yellow in it!Such a cute girl! She looks a little pink in these pictures but don't worry, she's not and she tans like her daddy - the girl is about 4 shades darker than me - which is not that hard to do :)

This is her FAVORITE thing to do - "swim like a fish." The water is about 6 inches deep around the park and she will use her hands to "swim" around until she gets where she wants to be.

Here is a short video of Claire sliding down the slide. At the end she screams her famous phrase - "I did it!"

Toy Story 3

Today I took Claire to see her first in theater movie. We saw Toy Story 3 and we both LOVED it! Claire was cracking me up in the beginning - every commercial and preview that she view she would clap and cheer for it.
She got a little restless about half way through the movie, but, pretty much everyone at the theater that early had a toddler and I believe they totally understood - AND she was not near as loud as several other kids!!! I think we will be seeing more movies together.

Happy Father's Day!

Michael,
I love watching you with Claire every single day. You are the best father a little girl could ever hope for. You love her unconditionally and you show her our heavenly Father's love for her daily. We are SO blessed to have you in our lives. I can not wait to see you with a son. I'm excited for you to teach him all the boy things in life :). I know you will be just as amazing of a father to Cole as you are to Claire. We are praying for you this week as you minister to our youth at Super Summer. We miss you SOOOO much and can not wait until Friday when you come home to us.
Love always,
D'Ann and Claire

To our dads,
We thank you for being amazing fathers to us. We love you more than you will know and we are so grateful that God placed us in your care. We hope you had a wonderful Father's Day and that you felt blessed today.
Love,
Michael and D'Ann

Super Claire

For some reason Claire has become VERY attached to her blanket and wants it all the time. Sometimes it is for snuggling under and sometimes it is for play. She has loved having it tied around her neck like a cape. She goes around the house saying - zoom zoom I'm super Claire!

On a side note - she found the 2 flower clips at my moms house the other day and has decided that they need to be apart of her outfits at times!

Cole's room - step two!

Cole's room is coming right along! We brought the dresser home today. Mom and dad found the dresser at a garage sale and then painted it and added new pulls - I wish I had the before pictures to put up on here because the transformation is AMAZING!! It looks exactly how I wanted it to look! Here are some of the new things up in his room - please ignore the fact that the curtains are wrinkled, I will iron them sometime this week when it is not 11 o'clock at night :).

A shelf from Claire's room goes under the cross, however it will not be coming in his room until we put her in her big girl bed - which is next weekend.

The letters on his dresser are actually going above his bed. We are cutting out circles, painting them green and then hanging the letters on them.

The ladder will also not be a permanent fixture in the room :)

Cole's room - step one!

This week my aunt and uncle came over to help Michael paint. My uncle is so amazing that he pretty much did the entire room by himself! All Michael had to do was cut in at the top and do some touch ups! I am SO thankful for my aunt and uncle! My aunt kept Claire and me entertained for the 2 days they were here. When my uncle was finished on the 2nd day he then assembled Cole's bed. Now we are adding the finishing touches and we have to go pick up the dresser from my mom and dad's house! I will post pictures of the finished product sometime this week or weekend! Thank you SO much Bill and Jan!

The top and bottom colors - day one. This made me want some chocolate cake with chocolate frosting!!

Day 2 - add the green stripe!

While Bill was assembling the bed, Claire and Jan had a sword fight with pieces of styrofoam!

Building the bed

Finished product! Because I took this picture on my iPhone the colors are NOT showing their true color. The green is very granny smith apple green and in this picture it looks like mint.

Water Park!

We have been going to the water park a lot this summer! Claire is having so much fun. There is so much more that she can do this year. We also think she is the most stylish babe there!!

Accidents

Michael and I were laughing that the only thing we talk, blog, and update about is potty training - ha! This should be the last one and then we will have some pictures up of Claire! We are a week and one day into potty trained Claire and we have not had an accident in a week!! We are so proud of her she is loving being a big girl and is doing SO great!! We are still putting her in diapers at night, because again, I don't want to change a crib sheet - it's a pain. But, as soon as she starts waking up dry we will start working on night times. Which brings me to the title of this posts - accidents. Over the past few nights we have had a very ROUGH time with Claire sleeping. At one point I was crying at 4 am saying I didn't know if I could handle a 2 year old waking up ALL night long and a newborn waking up ALL night long - it was hard, very hard! But thankfully my husband is amazing and a great detective and figured out what was going on. Last night Claire woke up at 2, crying and would NOT go back to sleep. She was awake and crying until 4:30 - around 4:30 is when I had had enough and Michael took over. With Claire, since she was 6 weeks old and sleeping through the night, when she wakes up we go into her room and pat her on her back, or readjust the covers but 90% of the time we do not pick her up. She self soothes and puts herself back to sleep. This works for us and her and it also allowed her to learn at 6 weeks of age how to self sooth and how to put herself to sleep. Anyways, back to 4:30 - Michael goes into her room stands her up and says "please tell me what is wrong." and she looks at him with her tired eyes and explains she has had an accident and that she is sorry. POOR BABY! Even though she went in her diaper, she could tell she was wet and she did not like it. So Michael takes her out of bed, to the bathroom where she continues to go to the bathroom on the potty, puts a dry diaper on her, and as soon as her head hits the pillow she was out like a light!!! It is 9 o'clock now and she is STILL asleep! Now that we know that this girl is SERIOUS about this potty training business we are going to have to figure something out for night time!!

Potty Training Day 3!

I feel like I can officially say that we are 100% potty trained!!! Claire has now been through day 3 and 4 with out a single accident!! Day 3 started out great. I got a little nervous because we had to travel 40 minutes to Cleburne. But she made the entire trip with out an accident. Then she stayed with my mom and dad for two days and even traveled with them to my aunt and uncles house and didn't have an accident. I am so proud of her! I know there will be days when she has an accident but it is SO good to have one out of diapers before the next one arrives!!!

Potty Training Day 2

Well today was SO much better! Claire had 3 accidents today. One of the accidents was due to a coughing fit that she had and she just couldn't stop coughing long enough to say she needed to go potty. The last 2 accidents she would come up to me upset, telling me she had gone pee pee, and apologizing. She was so upset both times and the first time she was even more upset about getting it on the carpet. Both of those times she was able to stop mid accident and finish when we got her to the potty. She also has started telling us she needs to go instead of waiting on us to ask her, we still do ask a lot because she's 2 and gets very distracted!! The funniest thing she did today was tell me she needed to go to the potty, we ran in there, got situated, and she toots! She looks at me and yells "I did it! I did it!" This happened several times today - but I would rather her do that then have a pooping accident on the floor!!! Tomorrow will be a BIG test when she goes to BB and Gigi's house - we will also be traveling to Cleburne tomorrow, it will be the first trip out of the house for her in 3 days! Wish us luck!!!

Potty Training Day 1

So today we started potty training. I knew it would be hard, but I didn't realize it would be this hard. We woke up this morning and traded in the diaper for some big girl panties and let the fun begin. From 8:30 - 9:00 we were accident free, but she had yet to go in the potty. Then the craziness began - from 9:00 - 11:00 she had 5 accidents!! It felt like every time we put new panties on her she would turn around and have an accident. In the middle of all this I had a doctors appointment and Michael was left on his own with our new potty trainer. When I called him on my way home he sounded a little down - so I swung into Starbucks and bought him his favorite frap! Then he headed to work. I decided that we were going to take a tougher approach - I made her sit on the potty until she went - about 30 minutes. But when she finally did go, a look came across her face that was priceless! She was SO excited! She kept screaming "I did it! I did it!" and giggling like crazy!! After that it was nap time, which I put her back in a diaper - I HATE changing crib sheets, and at 9 months pregnant it is just NOT happening right now. She slept for 3 hours, which allowed my crazy nesting to come out and still gave me time for a nap as well! After her nap she got up, had one accident, in which she came up to me, crying and appologizing like crazy - it broke my heart. After that there were no more accidents for the remainder of the night. She even pooped in the potty, which I hear is hard to get kids to do. Each time she went, she would scream "I did it!" or "woo hoo!!" She is SO proud of herself. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. I am thinking that 6 accidents isn't that bad for day one - AND she had so many successes!!

Cole Update!

I went to the doctor this morning for my 36 week check up! We have 4 weeks or less until Cole makes his grand debut! The doctor said Cole is still measuring a week ahead - so he said next week when I start my weekly visits, we will set a delivery date! I can't believe we are at that point! I had lost 5 pounds in 2 weeks, the nurse seemed a little concerned but the doctor did not think there was anything to worry about. I had gained a total of 15 pounds and now I am back down to 10 pounds!

We are also potty training around here - I will have a post about that tonight after day one is over!

Cole

I think I want to have one of these printed out to put on his door!

Daddy's little girl

When you marry the man of your dreams you always wonder how he will be with your children. I always knew Michael liked kids and wanted kids, but I could never imagine how he would be with our kids. I remember thinking a couple of weeks before Claire was born about how he would be with her. I knew that I had grown to love her as she grew inside of me but I just didn't know how much Michael would love her. I can testify that he loves her more than anything! She has him wrapped around her little finger, and he would do anything and I mean anything for his little girl! These pictures weren't planned or even talked about, it was just a moment that happened while we were talking - and I am SO thankful that Wendy snapped away! I find them a perfect picture of Michael's love for Claire!