Clara's Bday Party

We had a little party for Clara's birthday on Saturday.  Luckily the weather was pretty nice so we could be outside for a while. We don't have a very big house so having many people inside for an extended time does not work to well. But we were able to have a few friends and family over to help us celebrate which was nice. Clara has no idea that it is her birthday or her party so the first birthday is mostly for us parents. But, all the kids had fun playing together. Clara did not know what to think when everyone sang to her, she had a 'what in the heck is going on here' look on her face. And she got to have her first cake ever (almost her first sweets ever except she stole a bite of cookie the other day before we could stop her). Everyone was impressed with her eating of the cake. She ate lots of it but created almost no mess. It was impressive.

Eating Cake

The Friends

Here is a little video from the party.

One year old

Seems hard to believe, but today is Clara's 1st birthday. She had a rough start (hard birth, 5 days in NICU, cried the first 3 months) but she has turned into a very happy, silly, active little girl. Here's an update of what she is up to:

• Walking, running, climbing everywhere. She started walking at 10 months and hasn't slowed down.
• Not really talking yet. She will sometimes repeat mama and dada. She "ruffs" for dogs and "mmm" for cows. 
• She is very emotional and quite dramatic. If she is happy then she is all smiles, but when she is upset she is sobbing on the ground.
• She is a mama's girl for sure. If she is tired, hungry, upset, etc. and sees me, she will cry until I pick her up. 
• She still sucks her thumb, mainly when she is tired or upset.
• She's a great sleeper. 10 hours at night and usually a 2 hour nap. 
• Loves to eat! She eats just as much as Esther does. She eats pretty much everything we give her.
• She is still a big girl. She wears 18-24 month clothes. Her 12 month dr. checkup is next week, so we will get her official stats then.

We got Clara a little rocking chair for her 1st birthday (like we did for Esther).

It is hard to believe she went from this

 to this

#1 and #2

A few months ago we tried to potty train Esther. According to all the potty training gurus she met all the "readiness steps".  But even though according to the experts she was ready, she had not decided she was ready.  She is too smart for her own good sometimes and so she would deliberately hold it until naptime or bedtime and then just go in her diaper.  When she couldn't hold it that long she would only have "accidents" when there was no way we could get her to the potty quick.  So, after 4-5 days of that with zero success in going in a toilet, we decided to stop.  Since then she has made some strides in going in a toilet at daycare but still would refuse to go here at home even with our promises of great reward if she pee-pee'd or poo-poo'd in the potty.  We decided that she was one of those kids that just had to decide for herself that she was ready.
Well, yesterday she decided she was ready.  She has been telling us when she needs to go and peeing and pooping in the big commode like crazy.  Even though I am a nurse and deal with pee and poop everyday, this is the most excited I have ever been about it.  It is so crazy that a switch just flipped one day and she decided to do it.
I wish I had a picture of her on the commode to share on here but I don't.  However we did go get some cheap studio pictures done today at the request of my mom so I can share one of those.

Movember

Today is the first day of Movember. During the month of November each year men in the U.S. and in other parts of the world grow mustaches to raise awareness and funds for men's health issues, specifically prostate and testicular cancer initiatives.
I have decided to do it. By "it" I mean grow a mustache during the month of November for testicular and prostate awareness. I am doing it for a few reasons. 1. It seemed like something fun to do and a way to annoy Margo 2. I am a nurse in a urology clinic which deals with prostate and testicular cancer so it fits perfectly.
It also worked out perfectly because of my halloween costume yesterday.  I dressed up for work in some of my best 70's clothes, parted and slicked down my hair, and shaved everything except my mustache. So since Movember started today I just decided to keep it going. I am not good at growing facial hair so I am sure it is not going to be very remarkable in 30 days but we will see.
I joined a team on the official Movember website.  I joined the Mustache Goods and Wears team.  The Mustache Goods and Wears is a store owned by some friends of ours here in Fayetteville. Feel free to check-out my page on the Movember website, us.movember.com/mospace/4603045, and you can rate my mustache and even donate in honor of my mustache. The money goes to men's health organizations like the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Here is my costume yesterday

Here is a closer up so you can see the ugly stache.

Pumpkin Carving

On Saturday we took the girls to a local pumpkin patch to get some pumpkins.  That night after dinner we carved one of them into a jack-o-lantern.

Esther was good at helping to scoop out the guts

Clara just wanted to eat it.

And eat it.

And it was lots of fun playing with the guts in the yard.  Bathtime was soon to follow.

Clara Walking

Well, Clara started taking steps on her own the past couple weeks.  She is getting better and better every day. She turns 10 months old in a few days so she is a couple months ahead of when Esther started taking steps.  We will try to put up a better blog post in a few days but for now I thought I would just put of a video of her taking some steps a few days ago.  It is not easy getting a video of it because she gets distracted easily by the camera.

Family Day

In adopted families, the day you adopted your child is a special day. Different people have different names for it: Home Day, Forever Family Day, Gotcha Day. We decided to just call it Family Day and make it special day for the whole family to celebrate.
Two years ago today, we drove to Little Rock after getting a surprise call the night before, and met Esther for the first time and brought her home with us. It was amazing and crazy how it all went down. In less than 24 hours we went from hoping to become a family someday to being a family with a 6 week old. You can read the story of that day here. Now in less than 2 years we are a family of 4.
Esther was an amazing gift and we are so thankful to have her as our daughter. We can not imagine life without her. It is fun/amazing/challenging/hard/crazy/awesome being her parents. She is growing up fast and learning so much every day. But I think we learn just as much about ourselves as she does about growing up.
One of the hardest things is knowing how to talk to her about adoption. She is still a little young to understand so it is not a really big deal yet. Even though she is too young to understand, we still make it a part of her life from the beginning. We have children books that involve adoption (A Mother for Choco) that we read to her.  It is really hard to get through them without crying every time.
Here are some pictures.

This is the day we brought Esther home. 

Esther loves taking care of her baby doll.

And taking care of her sister.

Last night we took the girls to the fair and Esther got to ride the carousel for the first time. 

And she rode the little roller coaster with mama. 

Clara - 8 Months

Clara turned 8 months on the 6th. (We are a little late getting this out because it seems we block out everything except Olympics these days)  It is hard to believe Clara is 8 months, time has flown by.  It does not seem like she is that old.  I keep thinking that she is doing new things really early but then I realize that she is older than I am thinking she is.  She is growing up fast.  She crawls everywhere and pulls up to standing on everything.  She is also taking some steps while holding on to things. And she is in to everything.  We have had to put the baby gates back up (to Esther's dismay).  She is happy most of the time and a lot of fun. She makes the best faces and smiles constantly.  She is definitely more emotional than Esther was.  She gets hurt more often and gets her feelings hurt more easily.  She is a great sleeper, she sleeps 10 hours at night without waking up and hardly ever cries when we put her down for a nap or for bedtime. She is eating more baby foods and starting to feed herself some little puffs and yogurt bites.

Here is a video of Clara from this morning.  This is her first thing in the morning, right after waking up.  She is displaying some of her funny faces and her all around happiness.  This is how she is almost every morning when you go in to get her.

 

2 years old!

It is hard to believe, but Esther is 2 years old today. Time has flown by, but it is hard to even remember our lives without her. She is such a blessing to our lives and we are so thankful God brought her to us. She was such a easy and happy baby and she has turned into smart, funny, ornery two year old. I won't lie, things are not always rosy (her being a toddler and all), but overall she is a terrific kid. 

We had a good day celebrating her bday today. Josh asked her what she wanted for breakfast this morning and she asked for eggs and a waffle with peanut butter. She got a cupcake for snack, which she loved. She also "blew out the lights (candles)" while we sang happy birthday. We asked her what she wanted to do today, and she said "go to Sam's". So Josh took her to Sam's Club this afternoon. She is easy to please! We ended up singing happy birthday at her request several more times.

Things Esther is doing these days: 

• Talking up a storm. She talks in full sentences and picks up new words daily. She repeats everything we say.
• Loves to help--unload the dishwasher, help with laundry, pick up, put away groceries, etc.
• Loves Clara (most of the time). She asks for her first thing every morning and likes to play with her.
• Loves being outside--riding her tricycle, helping Josh in the garden, walking through the pasture, giving the dogs treats, blowing bubbles
• Still loves books. We read dozens of books everyday. She is starting to memorize several of her books, so she turn the pages and will "read" them to us. She likes to tell us "be careful with the pages"
• She knows all of her letters, numbers, colors, shapes, and animals. She says her ABCs and counts (to 20) mostly correct. We are working with her on counting objects, and she is picking up on that.
• She has started singing more. Current favorites are ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, Jesus Loves Me, and today-Happy Birthday.

She really is a lot of fun and she keeps us on our toes. Of course she comes with the normal two year old challenges though! We love her so much and are thankful she made us a family. We are looking forward to many more amazing years with her.

Here are some pictures of Esther throughout the past two years.

Here she is eating her birthday cupcake today.

Old Woman

Margo turned 30 today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Look who's.......crawling?

Clara has been rolling and turning for a couple months now.  The past few weeks she has been rolling with purpose going wherever she wants to get something.  But today she started crawling/scooting/army crawling in a forward direction.  It is not pretty but we think it counts, see if you agree.

Anniversary Trip

If you would have told me that for our 10 year anniversary trip that we would spend 3 days in Memphis,  I would have laughed.  Don't get me wrong,  I don't have a problem with Memphis but it is not where I would have thought we would go for such a big milestone.  After all we have previously been to places like New York City, California,  Mexico, Hawaii.  But it turns out when you have two kids under 2 things are a little different.  We wanted to go somewhere without the kids but we did not want to go too far away from them.  My parents agreed to watch the girls for us and the only big city within a few hours that we had not really "experienced" was Memphis,  so that is where we went.  We had been to and through Memphis plenty of times but never really stayed there and did the Memphis things.  We dropped the kids off at my parents and stayed in Memphis from Thursday to Saturday.  It was weird not having the girls around but it was nice to get away just Margo and I and do whatever we wanted without having to follow their schedule. 

We did several fun things and ate at some good places.  Trying to find good local places to eat is one of our main things to do when we travel,  I always research it a lot. Our first stop once getting to town was to get some barbecue at Central Barbecue which was really good and is consistently rated as the top bbq place in Memphis.  The best thing was their ribs and the fact that they served Schlafly beer which is my favorite brand and we can't get it in Arkansas.  Next we went to Graceland.  It was very interesting to see but pretty ridiculous that it is such a big deal. The coolest thing there was his airplane. And I wish I had all the old furniture. That night we went down to Beale Street and hung out and listened to some music.  We stayed at the Hampton Inn that is a block from Beale so we were really close to everything.
The next day, Friday was our actual anniversary day.  First we went to the National Civil Rights Museum which is housed at the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was shot and killed. This was really really good.  It was our favorite thing we did.  It was a lot better than I was expecting and really impactful.  I would recommend everyone who goes to Memphis to go there.  For lunch we had Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken and let me tell you that was some really good chicken.  After lunch we went and toured Sun Studio which is where a lot of famous musicians got their start and recorded like Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and more.  It was cool to see but the tour was kind of dorky. After that we went and saw a movie at a sweet theater.  That night was our official anniversary dinner.  We went to a fancy restaurant called Restaurant Iris.  This is rated the top restaurant in Memphis and maybe even in Tennessee.  The Chef was named best new chef in 2009 by Food and Wine magazine and is considered one of the best chefs in the south.  The main dish that I had was featured on the Food Network show "Best Thing I Ever Ate" a couple years ago. The restaurant and meal was really really good and I was super full when we left.  Everything was good...appetizer, main dish, dessert, and drinks. With how big of a deal this place is I was hoping that it would be the best meal I had ever had but it was not. However it was definitely in the top 3 I think.  
The next day we went to Mud Island which is on the Mississippi.  There is a park there that has the Mississippi river museum and a scale replica of the Mississippi River, that is what I wanted to see there.  Every 30 inches of the replica equaled a mile of the real Mississippi.  It had running water coming from all the tributaries and showed were all the states, bridges, and major towns were along the river.  It opened up into and acre pond that represented the Gulf of Mexico. It was really cool and I am glad we checked it out. It is those types of things that I really like to check out when we travel and hope to check out with the kids when they get older.  After that we had lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant before heading home since we can not get Dim Sum in NWA. It is always a good sign when you go in an ethnic food restaurant and you are the only caucasians in there.  The food was good and we got to try a couple things we had never had before...chicken feet and beef tripe (cow stomach).  
So that was our trip in a nutshell.  It was fun and good to get away for a few days but it was good to come home and be back with the girls.  


Here we are at Graceland


National Civil Rights Museum


Sun Studio


Mississippi River replica

Wow, 10 Years Ago Today

Just a couple of clueless kids.  Crazy.

RIP

Today is a sad day. If you keep up with the news you know that Andy Griffith died. A lot of kids and people have fictional heros like Superman, Batman, Don Quixote, Rocky Balboa, the list goes on and on. Well Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith's character on the the Andy Griffith Show) has always been one of mine. I watched reruns of that show almost as far back as I can remember. Even today if I come across a channel that has it on I almost always stop. I even own all the black and white seasons on DVD that I go through and watch every so often.  I always looked up to his character on the show and hoped that I could be like him. You probably have heard of the book "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". Well, I have been known to say, All I really need to know about parenting, I learned on the Andy Griffith Show. I always list the Andy Griffith show as one of my top 3 favorite shows of all time. It as truly great.
Here is a clip of one of Margo and I's favorite episodes. This clip is kind of long (8 minutes) but it is worth watching. The first part is really funny and the second part has a great parenting/life message.

Quite Possibly the Greatest Toddler Toy Ever

With toddlers you can tell how popular a toy is by how much they cry when you have to stop playing with it. Well, when we stopped playing yesterday (after 30 minutes straight of playing with it) there was lots of crying and gnashing of teeth.  We had seen one of these a while back on a tv show or movie and I thought to myself, we have to get one. It is a ride on "roller coaster" for kids 2-5. They are kind of expensive new but yesterday I happened across one on craigslist for a lot cheaper.  I think I was more excited than anybody about it.
Esther loved it and she learned how to do it all by herself so that is nice. I wish we had a longer paved area so the car could go even further. When she gets older I may set up on the slope of a downhill just to see what happens. Anyway here is a little video of her playing with it last night.

She's a Biggin

We had Clara's 6 month check up at the doctor today.  It went good.  Basically, she is big, really big.  She weighs 21lbs 13oz and was 28.5 inches long.  She is approximately in the 115% for weight and height and 95% for head circumference.  She is the average size of a 12-14 month old.   Otherwise she is doing really good.  She is meeting all of her developmental milestones: rolling, sitting on her own, grabbing stuff, transferring things between hands, etc.  She is also super happy these days and gives really good happy faces.  The nurse and doctor were loving her big smiles.  She is ahead of where Esther was at this age with these developmental skills and she is ahead of where Esther was in eating baby food.
This past weekend we had to move Clara up to a bigger car seat and out of a infant car seat.  We had actually already had to get her out of our infant car seat at 5 months because she had outgrown it's size restrictions.  We borrowed a bigger sized infant seat from a friend but she outgrew that one also.  Ours she outgrew because of weight and the other one she outgrew because she was too long.  As a comparison Esther was 10 months old before she outgrew our smaller infant car seat (double Clara's age).  Anyway,  we had to buy a new set of car seats.  Clara is now in Esther's old convertible car seat.  Here are some comparison pics of when they first started using this seat.  They weighed about the same in these pics but Esther is thicker/wider and Clara is taller.......but Esther is 4 months older!!!!

Here is Esther at 10 months

Clara at 6 months in the same seat.  

And I decided to take a picture of Esther today for a comparison of how much she has grown.  She is almost 23 months old. 

6 months!

I can't believe it, but Clara is 6 months old today! I know it sounds cliche, but it has gone so fast. The first three months were really rough; Clara was not very happy about life! But now she is a very happy, fun baby. A few highlights/milestones:

• She has mastered sitting up in the past week or so. She likes to sit up and look around and play with her toys. 

Sitting up

• She rolls and scoots all over the place.
• Sleeping through the night (usually!). She goes to bed about 8:30 and sleeps until 6:30.
• She LOVES Esther. She would watch her all day long. She loves when Esther talks to her and hugs on her. She loves to grab handfuls of Esther's hair!
• Likes being outside. She likes watching Esther play and watching the dogs and cats. She loves it when the animals come close enough for her to pet/grab their hair.
• She has started sucking her thumb more. She mainly does it when she is tired or hungry.

• Eating cereal and baby food (green & orange veggies) and loving it
• We weighed her at home last week and she was 22 lbs. We go to the doctor next week, so we'll get her official measurements then. She is wearing 9-12 month clothes!

Clara's birthday!

One month old

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

Happy baby!

Cutest Kids Ever? Maybe

Thought I would put up a video and pic until I have time for a real update.

This is Esther blowing bubbles yesterday evening (check out Clara hanging out in the bumbo in the background).  She loves blowing bubbles, so much so that she even pretends blowing bubbles all the time when we are playing inside. Warning:  this is super cute.



I thought maybe the bubble solution tasted good since it did not seem to bother her so I tried it.  It tasted terrible.

And here is a cute pic of Clara while we were outside yesterday.

Return of the Soap Box

It has been a long time since I have posted something on here that was soap boxish.  I used to do it a whole lot more often before we had the kiddos.  And most of you may not care or want to here my thoughts on current topics but I like to do it and it is my blog so I am going to anyway.
Over the past month or so there has been a couple big news stories about parenting, specifically mothering (see it kind of relates to the kids).  The first a few weeks ago was some person saying Mitt Romney's wife never had a real job.  This started the stay at home mom vs working mom debate and which is better.  Then last week, Time Magazine, trying to get someone to actually be interested in their magazine but a shock and awe picture of a 3 year old nursing a mom.  This picture and related article started the debate about attachment parenting, extended breast feeding, etc and which style of mothering is best.
Today, I came across a blog article that summed up my feelings on these issues pretty well so I thought I would pass it along for you all to read if you are interested.   Here is a link to the article,  please click on it and read it.....http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-howerton/mommy-wars_b_1510807.html

Mother's Day

In honor of Mother's Day I thought I (Margo) would write a post. It has been almost a month since an update on the girls. Our days are very busy taking care of two babies, work, church, farm, garden, hanging out with friends, etc. I think we are finally getting the hang of two kids and we are able to get out and do a little more now.

Esther is almost 22 months old. She talks all the time now and amazes us with all the things she knows. She is very silly and constantly cracks us up with things she says and does. She is very busy and never sits still. She loves to be outside. She goes out with Josh most evenings and plays in the garden, roams the pasture, swings, chases the dogs, digs in the sandbox, etc. She almost always throws a fit when it is time to come inside! She loves to help--unload the dishwasher, help with laundry, throw stuff away, bring us things. They tell us that at school she loves to help her teachers too. She is doing really well with Clara. She is eager to give her toys, talk to her, give her hugs, give her kisses, try to pick her up :), etc. Though we still have to constantly remind her to be gentle with her. Her hugs often turn into tackles and her pats turn into hits; though Clara usually doesn't seem to mind! Whenever Clara cries she will say, "Cla (Clara) sad." then she'll go over to Clara and say, "It's ok, it's ok." It is very sweet.

Esther wearing my shoes and "shopping"

Clara turned 5 months old last week. She is still a big girl. We weighed her last week and she was 21 lbs, making her about the size of a 1 year old! She is wearing 9-12 month clothes, which is nice because she can wear Esther's summer clothes from last year! We had to move her into a bigger carseat, because ours only went to 22 lbs. She has made huge strides in the past month at becoming a much happier baby. She is happy to be in her exersaucer, on her play mat, or just rolling around on the floor. Instead of crying constantly (like the first 3 months!) she now usually only cries if she is tired or hungry. Josh and I have actually been able to eat dinner at the same time, instead of one of us holding a crying baby! She is generally very smiley and talks and screeches all the time. She LOVES her sister. She would be happy to sit and watch Esther all day. She loves it when Esther hugs on her.

Playing in Esther's crib after naptime, you can tell they love each other! 

Clara hanging out in her jumparoo

It is crazy to think that two years ago we were going through fertility treatments and I so desperately wanted to be a mom. We were blessed with Esther just a couple of months later. Last year was my first Mother's Day as a mom to Esther, and I was miraculously pregnant. Our girls are such a blessing and I love being their mom.

Me and my two girls

Update on the Girls

Clara is continuing to be more aware of herself and her surroundings. I can't say that she is making a lot of progress in the being happy area or the sleeping area but she is definitely growing up. She is starting to babble more, laugh some, improving her rolling over, grabbing her feet, and more. We also recently started giving her rice cereal which she is doing really good with. Here are some recent videos of her.

Here is a video of Clara eating solid food for the first time a few days ago.


This is Clara today starting to find her voice, not sure if that is a good thing or not.


Here is a pic of Clara hanging out on a blanket outside while Esther is playing.  The cat decided to hang out with Clara.

Esther has been growing up a lot recently also.  She is getting a lot more verbal.  We can almost have little conversations with her. She is really smart and knows lots of things. She is so much fun to play with. It is not all roses though,  she has lots of tantrums and drama. Basically when she is in a good mood it is awesome but when she is in a bad mood it is not much fun.  But overall she really is great.  It is fun watching her learn new stuff everyday.
Tonight she did something that was killing us it was so funny.  First some back story,  for a long time now she talks about Clara and goes around saying "baby, baby, baby",  so Margo and I when she would do this, would sing the only Justin Bieber we know "baby, baby, baby, ohhh" to her.  We have also taught her how to call the hogs a little.  And we have been having lots of flies in the house recently that I have been killing.  So put all of this together in Esther's mind and this is what happened tonight.  She was walking around the kitchen singing "baby, baby, oh;  baby, baby, oh........(while raising her hands)woooo pig sooie, backs;  wooooo pig sooie, backs; woooo pig sooie, backs......baby, baby, oh"  after about a minute or two of that she saw a fly on the floor and (I kid you not) walked up and really fast, stomped on it and killed it.  It was amazing and totally made my day. I wish I would have got a video of all of this going down. This is the kind of stuff that I love seeing her do and makes me really happy.

Here is a pic of Esther helping me while I cut radishes that I just picked from the garden.  Every time I would drop one in the bowl she was holding, she would say thank you.

I thought this was a good pic of her also from the other day. Who needs toys when you have a basket and dad's shoes.