Read all about ME!

Audrey tagged me, and much as I hate to do these things, I'm in uber-procrastination mode, so here goes...

8 things I'm looking forward to:

1. Heaven (just left this one on there from Audrey's!)
   
2. Movies coming out! Harry Potter 6, Whip It!, New Moon
3. Having another baby (BUT no news to tell you on that front, people! Not quite there yet!)
4. Summer--swimming with Claire, laying out by the pool and reading, etc.!
   
5. Beach vacation with friends
6. Claire's birthday party
7. Claire being potty-trained
   
8. Basically everything. I love my life. I can't think of anything I dread. Maybe grading my final papers for Comp 2. Whoops, sorry to end this one on a bad note. Did I mention I love my life?
   

8 things i did yesterday:

1. Taught Comp 2 (Document design Power Point)
2. Wrote a 700-word story on a very cool Tulsa museum exhibit for Oklahoma Today
3. Watched Dancing with the Stars results show--Can't believe Ty has more fans than Julianne (and her boyfriend, whatever his name is ;)
4. Ate shortbread cookies dipped in coffee coffee after dinner (Mine and Claire's new favorite dessert!)
5. Put Claire's mattress in her room, and put her dolly bed beside it. Stayed with her for 45 minutes until she fell asleep, went back at 5:30 this morning when she started crying, and again at 6:30! And then let her come in bed with me when she came in at like 7:30! You gotta start somewhere, right?
   
6. Got on Facebook (when I ran into dead ends on my story!)
7. Told Jay it was okay if he went fishing
8. Fixed him dinner at 9:00 when he hadn't eaten all day!! (I think I would be dead.)
   

8 things I wish i could do: (I tried not to put anything on here that I should be doing, but just don't. Hello! I can turn those wishes into reality!)

1. Play roller derby!
2. Go to a Hollywood movie premiere
3. Get my scuba diving license (SE offers courses every year, but they've been on Wednesday nights for a whole semester every time I've checked!)
4. See Dancing with the Stars live
5. Become an author! (This is not just a wish though; I'm working toward it!)
6. Go snow-skiiing whenever I want
7. See Jay play basketball in high school or college (and have a time travel machine to do it)
8. Use that time travel machine to go to the prom with Zac Efron (now Zac Efron, not year-2000 Zac Efron. I think he would be like 11.)

8 shows i enjoy:
1. Ugly Betty
2. Dancing with the Stars
3. The Office
4. LOST
5. Property Virgins
6. John and Kate Plus 8 (Mostly so I can critique their parenting style and marriage!)
7. The Academy Awards
8. Survivor (some seasons; not this one)

Whoa, I'd kind of like to make another list now! But I can't think of a good one besides your basic fave movies, books, etc. So anyway, I better do something productive.

Whoever wants to do it, do it!

First sno-cone!

It's been so nice out this week that Claire and I got our first sno-cones of the season! Needless to say, Claire loved it. She got tutti-frutti, and she ate/drank almost her entire cup (with the top down, no less)! It was the smallest, $1 size, but still! She peer-pressured me into eating almost all of mine, and I had a bit of a tummy ache afterward. I've been trying to keep her food dye consumption at a minimum since reading all this crazy stuff about Red 40 and dyes in general, but I had to make an exception for a sno cone on that beautiful day!

Come on, summer!

I read a really interesting article last week on the New York Times opinion page about how America can and should raise our collective IQ, and what parents and teachers can do to help. Did you know our collective IQ has risen substantially in the past century? Interesting fact: Half our country's population in 1917 would be considered retarded by today's standards.

Anyway, this article also says that children form a lot of their IQ before age six. This got me thinking that I need to start doing some more structured learning activities with Claire. She'll start going to "Thursday School" one morning a week at the other Church of Christ in the fall, so she needs to be able to sit and focus on an activity, anyway. So I ordered a book from Amazon and checked a few out of the library about Montessori activities for kids aged 2-6. That's our plan for this summer. As you can see, Claire is already getting ready! (She really wanted to "read" this book for some reason; when I told her it was "Mommy's book," she actually ran in the other room with it, like she needed to hide from me to read it!)

Another Claire note: She's started saying "What's that?" and "Who's that?" The questions are starting!

Easter weekend!

We had a great weekend with my family eating, playing, and worshiping together! Whenever our family gets together, I always wish it could go on longer! We did our big lunch and egg hunt in Coleman on Saturday, which worked out perfectly, weather-wise. It was almost 80 degrees and sunny, and Claire actually got little sunburned on her arms (bad mother award, I know!).
















Here's Grant giving Claire a head start on locating eggs. (Hey, the other hunters were seven, nine, eleven, and fourteen!)

















And she's off!


The first three or four eggs she put in her basket, she would shout, "Yay!" after each one.









Jay and Kyle

















Grandmom and Claire with the Ring Pop she loved!



















With Amanda, one of Claire's faves she doesn't get to see often enough!





Egg toss! We played through two dozen (raw!) eggs with four or five pairs. Fun!


And Claire's first visit from the Easter bunny was really fun! After she got all her stuff out, she said, "Happy birthday!" And I said, "No, Happy Easter!" and she said, "Thank you, Easter bunny!"

Good Friday to you!

A couple pics from our church Easter egg hunt this past Sunday, and Claire's first experience hunting eggs against other kids. We've been playing egg hunt in the house and yard for about the past month! But what does she do during the real thing? First egg she gets, she has to open it to get the candy! You can see in the first pic, she's holding half an egg with the candy in it! Whenever I say anything about hunting eggs, she says, "Candy?" Mamaw and Papaw play egg hunt with candy in their eggs, so she knows what it's all about already! This was her first exposure to Smarties, which she LOVED!

So anyone know why we call it Good Friday when it's actually the day we mark for Jesus' DEATH? Shouldn't it be the worst Friday EVER? Of all time? God turned away from Jesus and He bore my sins and yours in the worst death imaginable! But then three days later, he arose, and gave us the victory, hurray! But still, that Friday was definitely an all-time low, I think.

We're looking forward to a great weekend with family, starting with Claire and I shopping with Mom and Ty tomorrow for Easter bunny stuff and some warm-weather play clothes. Yay! Tyler also mentioned something about the Hannah Montana movie, but I'm hoping I can use Claire as an excuse to get out of that one!

I also wanted to write down a few funny things Claire has done lately. She's figuring out where Jay and I go when we're not with her, so this week, when I pulled up to Paul and Diane's house, she said, "Mama, school? Bye-bye!" We hadn't even gotten out of the car! Shows how much she misses me when she's at Mamaw and Papaw's!

Then this evening, she was eating dinner and she pointed to Daddy's chair and said, "Daddy, home?" and I said, "Daddy's still working, he'll be home soon." She said, "Daddy working? Colby?" Colby is a young man (I hate to call him a boy b/c I think he's like 24) who helps Jay sometimes, and Claire has for some reason associated him with Daddy's work. So several times now, she's paired "Daddy work" and "Colby."

And I've also taught her to say "No thank you" instead of the "NO!" she had become so fond of, and she's added that one to her standard negative response. Tonight, I had some girlfriends over, and I told her, "Claire, after you go outside with Daddy, he's going to read you books and you'll go night-night." And she turned around and said, "NO! No thank you, Mama!" All the sweetness of that second response negates the rudeness of the first!

She also requests that we pray quite a bit, which I love! It only took me doing it a few times, usually when we're sitting at the table together, and sometimes if we're laying in bed about to go to sleep. Now she'll say, "Pray?" quite often. Other favorite requests/commands from me are "Annie song?", "Jesus song?", "Beast song?", and "Read books, Mommy. Read it."

DWTS review: Gilles pasos with flying colors; Lawrence and Steve-O fail to impress

Last night's Dancing with the Stars review is now posted on Blogcritics. It even scored a direct link from the home page this time, yay!

Transitions

Claire's had a little cold this week. You can see she doesn't mind taking care of the snot. This was not a staged photo shoot; she just does this if she sees her "medcine" within reach. She'll also get the Vicks Baby Rub I've been putting on her a lot this week and put it on her chest.

I saw Audrey's post on Kerrigan giving up the bottle, and I thought I would post about Claire's progress on giving up her baby stuff. She was having a nighttime and morning bottle up until a couple weeks ago, and now she has neither. Sometimes when she's in bed at night, she'll say, "Meelk?" (She says it kinda funny) But she hardly ever had a bottle in bed; it's just one of her stalling tactics.

Plus, I'm very proud to say that she has slept in her own bed every night for the past week! The only catch is, her bed is on the floor beside our bed! That's right, many of you know that we have been a "co-sleeping family" or "bed-sharing" or however you want to say it. I thought it was fine while I was nursing and working, because I wanted that extra cuddle time with my baby and the extra sleep! So we kept her in our bed. And then from about 15-18 months, after she quit nursing, she was very clingy to me. So we waited. And then, I don't really have an excuse for the past few months. Basically, it wasn't a big deal. But for the past couple months, she's been getting more and more uncomfortable to sleep with, and more difficult to get to go to sleep. One night, after it took me an hour to get her to go to sleep, with her holding onto my neck and waking up every time I shifted to try to leave, I said "Enough!" And I moved her crib mattress into our room. The first night or two, I laid with her until she fell asleep, and then ever since, I've just read her two books like always, and then got up, turned down the lights, turned on her music, and kissed her good night. We had a couple rough nights where she would wake up and want to get in bed with us (and of course those fell during Jay's fishing tournament, when he had to get up super-early the next day), but for the past four or five nights, she's gone to sleep on her own. Jay is the big softie; we had to trade sides of the bed so I could sleep beside Claire. Otherwise, she'd make a peep and he would pull her up into bed. I'm probably going to move her mattress into her room in the next week or so.

As for other baby stuff, she still has her paci, but only for naptime and bedtime.

And we've tried potty-training a little bit, but it's been a no-go. I've put her in panties several times, but she just wets herself, and doesn't have much reaction to it. Everyone told me, "They feel it when they wet in their panties/undies, and they don't want to do it again." Claire just says, "Pee-pee?" like, "What's happening?" And then I try putting her on the potty, and she just smiles at me, like, "This is silly, mama." So now, I've just started saying, "Do you want to wear your panties?" if we're going to be home for a few hours, and she'll say, "No! Diaper!" Seriously, how could wearing your waste be more comfortable than some dry, cotton panties? *Sigh*