11 Months

I can't believe that in only one more month, our sweet Clare Bear will be one!  The past 11 months have flown by and it seems like just yesterday but also forever ago that this little cutie came in to our lives!  This past month was nice as we settled in to our new life in Arizona.  Clare got her first three teeth (one on the bottom and her two vampire teeth on top) and she looks like she has three more about to come through.  She is still mostly crawling though she pulls herself up and cruises around on everything she can find.  She doesn't really seem interested in standing on her own yet and she tends to do an awkward walk when I hold her fingers that seems to say "Mom, please don't make me slow down to do this when crawling is so fast!"

At the start of September, we had a visit from my mom (she came out for my cousin's wedding) and, as always, the kids had a really great time playing with her!  Clare seems to go to her with ease and Grayson just thinks she is awesome.  She also gave us some much needed time to go out without the kids in tow and that was awesome.

The kids also got to spend a lot more time with Julian's parents since we are finally living close enough to get together on a regular basis!  I'm so excited for my kids that they will get to spend a lot of time with their grandparents because I was very close to my grandparents growing up and I feel like that is a very special relationship.  We hated only being able to see family a few times a year when we lived in Oklahoma so it has already been a huge blessing to be back in Arizona.

The kids and I started going to a new gym out here and though at first Grayson didn't understand why Erick and Dalton (two of his favorite friends from Oklahoma) weren't there, both kids seem to enjoy it now.  This has helped them to be more social and has given me some much needed time to work on myself.  I am so glad that we found a gym that has a really good daycare program.  I loved the workers at the YMCA in Enid and I was worried that I wouldn't find something as good here but so far it seems like a good fit.

Clare is currently trying very hard to catch up to her brother and they have started "playing" with each other more than they used to.  By playing, I mean that Grayson likes to tackle Clare and she usually thinks it is so fun.  Sometimes she will start to cry but mostly she really seems to love it!

Clare also discovered that she could climb onto Grayson's little trampoline and use the bar to stand on it which seems to be one of her favorite things to do.  She is also obsessed with the stairs and she is very sneaky about silently going over to them and making it half way up before we get to her.

We are really looking forward to making more memories and soaking up our baby girl's last month of her first year in the coming weeks!
At 11 months Clare:
-weighs about 20 lbs.  She was 19 lbs 7 ozs at a doctor's appointment two weeks ago.
-is inches tall.
-eats a ton of different foods but she can be very particular about what she will eat on a given day.  She consistently loves berries of all kinds, grapes, apples, any kind of mac n cheese, chicken nuggets (homemade or from a package), sweet potato nuggets, broccoli nuggets, and yogurt.
-has 3 teeth- her two vampire teeth on top and one of her bottom teeth.
-loves to "sing" along with me and she also likes to dance to any music.
-really likes being read to though she will still steal the books sometimes to chew on.  Her current favorite book is "Brown Bear, Brown Bear."
-says "mama", "dada", and "baba" (for ball) seeming to know what they mean but her other sounds just seem to be testing her vocal chords.
-laughs at me when I tell her no.  It's still cute but I have a feeling that pretty soon I won't find it funny anymore.
-thinks her brother is the best!  Clare is always interested in Grayson and what he is doing.  If she is in a bad mood, I can take her over by him and she almost always cheers up.  They are pretty darling together though sometimes G doesn't understand when he is being too rough.  He has had his fair share of timeouts for being too rough.

10 Months!

Clare Elise is now 10 months old!  This past month has been very eventful.  We started out the month in Utah visiting my family and then we drove down to Arizona where we worked to get our new house prepared for Julian and all of our stuff to get here.  Once he arrived, we had to get everything unpacked and now we are working to get settled in to a new place.

We had such a great time visiting my family in Utah!  The kids loved having their Aunt, Uncles and Grandparents around to play with them every day and they also enjoyed the visits from my grandma who came from Wyoming several times while we were there.  I don't know too many people who could spend an entire month with their family at my age without having some tension or wanting to leave but that wasn't the case for me.  I am so grateful for such a good relationship with my family!

We had a great month of July with them but I was eager to get to our new house (we bought it sight unseen  with help from Julian's mom and a realtor.  A huge thank you goes out to Tanya for helping us out so much with the moving process!)  A month was a very long time away from Julian so even though we had a great trip to Utah, I was very ready to reunite our little family.  My mom drove down with the kids and me and they did about as well as could be expected with 11 hours of driving.  We stayed in a hotel for almost a week because our house was empty so I spent my days painting while my mom helped out a ton with the kids and then once Julian arrived she flew back to Utah.  I don't know how I would have made it through this move without her help!

The last two weeks were spent trying to get everything unpacked with a toddler who wanted to be in the middle of everything and a baby who seemed to be extra clingy with me.  We have all of the boxes unpacked and the furniture is all where it goes but we still have some decorating and some future renovations to do.  We are so grateful to everyone both in Enid (especially Jared and Frasier for helping to load the truck) and Phoenix (everyone who helped us with projects before the furniture arrived and also everyone who helped us unpack) for making this move go about as well as we could have hoped for!

We have been going out in our new pool every evening for a swim and it is so fun to watch the kiddos because they are both huge fans of the water!  We made a pool a requirement on our list of must haves because we knew that we wanted our kids to be able to spend a lot of time outside, even in the Arizona summers.  We don't regret it one bit!  The kids are having a great time settling in and they really love their new play room (and mommy loves it too since it keeps most of the toys out of sight!)  We are so excited to begin this next chapter in our lives back in Arizona and we are very hopeful that we won't be moving again anytime soon!!

At 10 months Clare is:
-about 18 lbs.  She eats like a champion but she is also constantly on the move so her weight hasn't gone up too much.
-has alternated between getting up 1-2 times per night.  It's not quite where I want it to be but she has been having more good nights than bad lately.
-pulls herself up on furniture and "cruises" around.  She will push off and stand for a few seconds but then she gets nervous and reaches for something to hold on to.  She is also a very quick crawler now.
-figured out how to go up the stairs less than a week after we moved in to our new house.  Our Oklahoma house didn't have any stairs and I really appreciated that with two little ones.
-is always searching for her brother and trying to "play" with him, which usually consists of her clawing at his face.  They are going to be trouble for me when they get older!
-loves the pool!  Especially blowing bubbles and sitting on the top step.  She is definitely a water baby!
-loves books!  She will sit with a book and open the pages and examine them for several minutes at a time.
-likes to eat almost everything.  She refuses any green vegetables but other than that she will eat most anything.  She especially likes grapes, berries of all kinds, mac n cheese, yogurt bites, and crackers.

We are so grateful for our sweet awesome girl!

9 Months

Sweet Baby Clare is now 9 months old!  This darling baby girl is showing so much personality and she is definitely on the move!  We had a pretty crazy month with a trip to Iowa, Father's Day, the first half of our move to Arizona, and driving to my parents house in Utah where we stayed for the rest of the month.

We did a quick Father's Day celebration (Julian was in turnaround so he had to work the whole day and every day around it) where we made a few crafts for Daddy and then we took him a smoothie at work after church.  Both of my kids adore their awesome daddy and they are truly blessed to have him for their father!  I am so grateful to him for the example that he is to our children and also for how hard he works so that I am able to stay home with our children.  I know how fortunate all three of us are to have him!

Unfortunately, on the day that Clare hit the 8 month mark, Julian's Uncle Herm passed away.  We were very sad to hear that news and we decided to pack up and head to Iowa for a very quick trip so that we could attend his funeral and support Julian's extended family.  I'm very sad that it took a funeral to get us there but it was really nice to finally meet a lot of Julian's aunts, uncles and cousins.  Herm was a Lutheran Pastor and a great man and he will be missed but it helps to know that he has returned to his Saviour.  We drove the 8 hours to Storm Lake, Iowa on a Wednesday and fortunately the kids did better than I expected them to.  Grayson was really quite good and Clare didn't cry too much.  We had to stop more than we would have without kids but overall I was happy with how they did.  Our kids had a great time playing with Julian's cousin's children and I truly enjoyed some great conversations.  Clare really enjoyed playing with the two other babies, one who was 6 weeks older than her and one that is 6 weeks younger than her.  They all climbed all over each other and shared some toys.  Julian's parents had flown out from Phoenix so the kids had a great time seeing them too!  That Friday we drove back to Enid and then I immediately got to packing.

The week following the funeral was pretty crazy because I was trying to pack up as much of our stuff as I could since we are moving to Phoenix.  Julian will be doing the actual move but the kids and I left about a month before him so that we could spend some time with my family.  Julian is doing turnaround right now which means he is working 7 days a week with long hours every day so I wanted to go somewhere where I would have a lot of help with the two little ones.  Since we are trying to sell our house in Enid, I couldn't pack most of the decor but I wanted to get as much of the other stuff taken care of as possible so that Julian would mostly be left with loading boxes into the truck instead of having to pack them.  We are so excited to move to Phoenix and be close to family and friends again!  Oklahoma was very good to us this last year and we are so grateful to the awesome friends that we made!  We will miss the people but I am so excited for our kids to grow up near family.  Also, I'm really excited not to have winter :)

My mom was kind enough to fly out to Oklahoma City and then turn around and fly right back to Utah with Clare so that Clare wouldn't have to do the 16 hour drive with me.  They hit a big snag when they got stuck in Dallas overnight but they made it to Utah the next morning.  My brother David had also flown out with my mom and he drove with Grayson and I to Cheyenne the first day and then on to Utah the next day.  We had so much fun spending the rest of Clare's 9th month in Utah with my family!

We started off by celebrating the 4th of July and Clare was able to meet her great grandmother, whom she is named after.  We enjoyed the holiday with family but we definitely missed Julian!  Both kids have really enjoyed bonding with their grandparents and my siblings.  My sister Courtney was particularly good at what I referred to as "Aunt Courtney naps" where she would get Clare to fall asleep without being attached to me.  Clare has always been a very picky sleeper and she definitely prefers to only sleep on me during the day so it was really nice to get a break while she napped on my sister!

We took the kids to the farm at Thanksgiving Point and Clare really enjoyed seeing all of the animals!  Grayson had a great time though he really wanted to go in to the restricted areas and he did not like waiting in line for his pony ride.  It is so much fun as a parent to watch my children having so much fun experiencing new things!

We also took a trip to the aquarium and Clare really loved that!  She put her hands on the glass to try to touch the fish as they swam by and then she would clap her little hands in excitement.  It was so darn cute!  She particularly liked the jellyfish and the penguins.  Grayson also loved it and he kept running up to each display and yelling "I like it!" I am so excited to be back in a big city where there are so many different opportunities for the kids to experience more things!

At 9 months old Clare is:
-about 17 lbs.  She is growing like a little weed!
-wears size 6-9 or 6-12 depending on the brand.  She has a darling little chubby belly and rolls and rolls on her arms and thighs though she is starting to thin out a bit now that she is crawling so much.
-pulling herself up on tables and couches and anything else she can reach.
-eats a ton of different foods.  She does all solids now, just cut into small enough pieces.  She loves fruits, especially berries, sweet potatoes, mac n cheese, bread, cheerios, really anything she can get her hands on.
-claps her hands when she gets excited.  It is darling!
-has decided that the shelf at the end of my parents kitchen island is her favorite thing to crawl on.  She loves playing with the coasters and the Restoration Hardware catologues that are on it.