Whatcha talking about baby?

It’s official… Claire is a talker!  In just the last two weeks she has suddenly started saying so many things, or at least trying to say words here and there.  Here’s a list of words she can say:

• Woof 
• Baa
• No
• Yay (i.e. cheering)
• Moo (more like just an M sound)
• Meow (more like just an M sound)
• Neigh (more like just an N sound)
• Pop (as in bubbles popping)
• Nose (more like "no")
• Mama
• Daddy
• Oh no (when something goes wrong... it's super cute)
• Owl
• Hello/hi
• Bye
• Moon
• Ball

March 2013 (i.e. a post that only a grandparent would love)

I'm just giving up on updating things from last time I wrote.  Giving up.  And I would probably give up on this blog entirely, except that I really like the idea of it and, more importantly, I keep feeling bad about not sending more pictures and videos to our family who we don't see very often.  I want them to see and know Claire as she grows up.  So, thus, the blog is continuing to chug along.  Here are some updates for what Claire has been up to this month.  Basically, this will be a lot of straight-up pictures.  So a post that only a grandparent will enjoy. 

Claire doesn't always like sitting in carts anymore, but she sure makes shopping more exciting. 

You can only kind tell from this picture, but Claire skinned her knee on the first day she wore shorts this year.  She then re-skinned the same knee twice over the next two days.  It's actually still a little red. 

 

Claire's favorite place to hang out during the move (i.e. after everything in the cupboard had already been boxed up)

Claire has started trying to imitate us, which I take as the ultimate form of flattery.

Claire actually really loves tv.  Whenever she sees the remote, she tries to motion us to turn it on and gets excited about a "show."  On moving day, this was actually super helpful, but we're trying to limit on regular days. 

My sleepy cuties on moving day!!  (sorry, this one is out of order, but I can't figure out how to fix it)

Moving Day

Moving Day

Claire absolutely loves her crib lately.  When she wakes up, she usually wakes up happy and does not want to get out of her crib.  She will give you her stuffed toys and want you to give them back, and then she requests to have other toys put into her crib.  It can take 20-30 minutes before she is willing to get out of the crib. 

We bought this little side table and kiddie chairs at IKEA and Claire gets such a kick out of sitting at a table her size and eating snacks. 

We brought the car seat inside for some reason and Claire loved playing around with it. 

One morning I was playing with a diaper and her toys (trying to help her focus and let me change her diaper) and she wanted me to put it on her teddy bear.  She continued to carry him around all day and couldn't get enough of him.  After the diaper came off, she hasn't been as into him. 

Claire and her diapered bear eating lunch (she insisted he be right next to her and insisted on giving him some food - you can see a little something on the chair in front of him). 

We have a little patio at our apartment where Claire can get outside and play.

Family Photo

Claire also loves playing around with her stroller inside (often making me push her around and/or pushing her toys around).

She has found a new use for bowls recently.

 

Claire loves pushing her toys around in her little toy stroller (thanks Mom!).  Her biggest regret though is that she can't fit into it.  I think I've finally stopped her from trying to step into all the time. 

Claire sure loves herself, just like we love her!

Please notice the cutest smile of Claire checking herself out... and please notice her crazy bed hair.  Love it!

Randomness

Mark and I were called to be in the nursery in our new ward, which so far has been quite the adventure.  It's a little weird for us because Claire is still only 9 months old (just barely 3 days ago!), so she's only really halfway to being in nursery for reals, but she has to go with us starting now.  We are so lucky that she is a fairly easy baby because we can occasionally put her down and she will entertain herself and/or just watch the other kids.  It's just when the other bigger kids get excited about her and get to close and/or step on her, or when she tries to play with a toy that isn't safe for her.  It makes the calling a bit stressful.  There were multiple times today when I was trying to calm down a screaming child while still holding and/or playing with Claire.  She will have lots of socializing opportunities and will be very used to nursery by the time she's really supposed to be in there. 

We still can't quite believe that Claire is already 9 months old.  Her life just seems to be flying by!  She's now been outside my belly and hanging out with us for longer than she was inside my belly.  It has come up so much faster than I would have thought.  There are hard, long days occasionally (and sometimes hard/long weeks), but all in all it just flies by.  I think back on some of her little phases that seemed to last an eternity at the time, but have now completely passed.  Of course, we're always dealing with some new phase, so we can't relax quite yet.  Right now she is having some troubles with sleeping.  For the most part she used to be so good at sleeping and not crying during the middle of the night, at least not more than a 5-second "put the binky back in" cry.  Over the last week or so she has started waking up for long stretches in the middle of the night. 

We have had lots of visitors recently, including Randy/Sandy and crew, Brett/Becky and crew, and my parents.  Our last set of visitors just left, so we're getting used to a quiet house again.  We loved having each of them and have enjoyed being able to have lots of mini family reunions. 

Pros and Cons of Yorba Linda so far...

Pros

• Family close by that we get to see regularly
• Family who come visit us (a total of 3 families in a months time)
• Swimming pool
• Backyard (grass nearby instead of a long walk away)
• Dog and cat (Claire loves them... almost too much!  She chases after them laughing)
• Laundry in the house (instead of the coin-op apartment complex laundry)
• Stater Bros grocery store
• Lots of new rooms and areas where Claire can explore and we can spread out
• New ward seems to have lots of young couples like us
• Hearing Disneyland fireworks every night
• Game Show Network!!

Cons

• Dog and cat hair
• Large house means lots more cleaning than before!
• Serious ongoing concerns about the dog getting out of the backyard
• Leaving our old ward and our many friends we had made

I have realized something about myself over the past several years.  The heat and I are not friends.  Not the Miami Heat team (although I feel no real love for them either), but the overwhelming heat of a crazy hot day.  I hate feeling sweaty all over with no hopes of reprieve anytime soon.  It makes me want to lay down on the ground and just give up.  That becomes harder when you have a baby who needs/wants you to hold her.  I love Claire dearly, but oh my gosh it is so gross to feed Claire while we are both sweaty all over.  Also, I apparently can't lay down on the ground when I should be up and packing all our belongings.  I keep pushing it off because I'm too hot, but I can't keep using that excuse anymore. 

As I'm reading this back, I realize how sad this sounds.  Seriously, we are living in the 21st century (that's the century we're in now, right?)... all houses should have A/C!!

We have been packing up our lives this week, which is such a crazy feeling.  A lot of our stuff is just going into storage for about a year, so as I go through our house I try to separate our things into "won't need for at least a year" and "will need within a year."  I know I'm not supposed to be attached to worldly possessions, but there are several things I'm going to miss.  A lot of our pictures and decorations that I've had such fun gathering and putting around the house.  Having bookshelves full of my well-read (and some not-so-well-read) books.  I will just be that much more excited when I get to unpack these things in a year when we move into our own place again.  It will be like one massive Christmas, or like finding something you had lost, or finding something you had forgotten you ever owned.  Packing is coming along though, but I'm running out of things I can pack now and won't need in the next two weeks before we actually move.  Although... as I start thinking more, there will be plenty to keep me busy. 

We've also started saying our goodbyes, which is always sad and weird.  We've had to say goodbye to some of our friends already.  And then on Saturday we said goodbyes to some "things."  We made our last trip to Icing on the Cake in downtown Los Gatos, for some of the bestest cupcakes ever in such a sweet little downtown area.  We went to one of our favorite Thai places around here, Amarin Thai (or, more accurately, Mark got take-out).  And we also made our (hopefully) last trip to the local Firestone.  Turns out that big noise I heard driving to work on Thursday morning and the subsequent thumping noise I kept hearing on Thursday... and then promptly forgot about when I got back home... yeah, turns out it was a NAIL in my tire.  Yeah, no big deal, just driving around with a huge NAIL in my tire.  We didn't drive the car all day Friday and I didn't remember until Saturday morning as Claire and I drove to our Safeway five minutes away and heard the sound again.  I parked and got out to see if I could find anything and noticed the tire looked a little flat.  I immediately freaked out, got back in the car, cancelled our plans for a fun-filled day at the park with friends, and sat at home worrying about it until Mark got home a few hours later.  We drove it over to Firestone where the nice man pointed out the huge nail we hadn't bothered to look closely enough for.  We sure will miss that Firestone... among other things. 

I've officially given up on the idea of "catching up" on this blog.  We'll just pretend nothing exciting happened in the last year or so... oh wait, that would be completely inaccurate.  This last year was one of the hardest, most stupendous, life-changing years ever.  Mark and I were lucky enough to become parents to our own darling Claire.  She has changed me in ways that I never even imagined were possible.  I thought I knew how exciting and crazy and difficult having a baby would be, but no sort of preparation could have helped.  Even little things, like getting used to early mornings (okay, okay, I'm not really used to it yet, but dealing with it better than I would have in the past).  And then there's the big changes, like feeling this overwhelming love and concern for another human being, most of it before I even really knew her little personality.  From the first moment they pulled her out (sorry, that's the most graphic I'll get, promise) and held her up for me to see, I felt this overwhelming rush of love and happiness.  I've never felt anything like it before.  Everything was 100% completely perfect with the world, even as all this craziness was going on and doctor's talking about bleeding (okay, that is the most graphic) and taking care of all sorts of stuff, I was holding my little baby and feeling like I had finally found the thing that made me complete.  The thing that I hadn't realized I was missing before until I had it.  This little girl makes life perfect. 

Now, that doesn't mean that Claire-bear hasn't had her difficult moments (props has to go out to Abby, Mark's mom, who came out to help us and for some reason let us talk her into staying up with Claire until about 3 am holding her and watching TV... how did we allow her to do that?  Looking back now, I seriously feel bad about making her do that.  Mark and I both asleep in our comfy bed, while she stayed up late until Mark took his turn and she went back to sleep on our air mattress.  We are so eternally indebted to her.  We will always look back on those first few days with fondness, especially because Abby was there helping us through it all.  And yes, for those who were keeping track, I slept through most of the nights, just waking up long enough to feed her.  I am the luckiest gal ever).  Okay, that was a long "aside" so now I've lost my train of thought.  Currently Mark is watching "Dance Party" in the background while I'm typing this, making it hard to concentrate.  Basically, it's crazy people dressed up and dancing to 80's music in a very bright studio.  Our local KOFY TV station tapes these shows on random Saturdays and invites people to come dance.  Then we get to watch and laugh at crazy people dancing insanely.  We especially love the repeat people who are on every episode.  Anyways, back to our current life...

Claire is now almost 7 months old!  Holy crikey I just realized how close she is to 7 months old.  I've been saying 6 months and haven't even thought 7 months yet.  And now she'll turn 7 months in 6 days!  So, Claire currently:

• Can sit up all by herself!  I was nervous to leave her alone sitting up by herself for awhile, but now she's totally capable!  

• As evidenced by the picture above, Claire smiles like crazy.  She has the sweetest personality.  Also, she has the chubbiest cheeks.  Her sweet personality and chubby cheeks are the two things most people comment on.  I love it!
• Claire laughs!  I was so excited for this one and she still definitely makes us work for a good laugh, but it's so cute.  See video below (sorry, it's kinda sideways.  I am computer/video illiterate apparently).  

• Claire is so close to crawling.  She has been able to turn over both ways for a month or two now, so she typically uses that method to get around.  Lately though, she gets up on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth.  Or she'll get up on her hands and her toes, sticking her bum up in the air.  It's hysterical. She can't quite figure out what to do at that point, so she usually collapses and rubs her head into her hands. She will push herself forward a few inches if you leave her alone for several minutes, but you can tell it's a lot of work for her. 
• Just the other day I put Claire in her crib to play with her music while I tried to get something done.  I came back to find that she had pulled herself up onto her toes into an almost standing position.  Apparently we'll have to lower the crib pretty soon.  
• Claire has always loved standing up.  I think she just likes seeing more of the world.  Recently, I tried holding her hands and walking along with her and she actually vaguely walked!  She got the motion, but was definitely not holding herself up and would have fallen hard if I had let go.  My little girl is growing up!
• We started feeding her solid foods just a few days before her 6 month birthday.  We started with rice cereal and she absolutely loves it!  She was needing more food apparently.  We then went to peas (loved), whole wheat cereal (loved), oatmeal cereal (loved), and prunes (yep, you called it... loved).  Our girl loves to eat!  She often gets upset at us for taking too long to get the cereal from the bowl to her mouth.  In fact, I often feed her while she sucks on her binky, to stop her little cries in between bites.  I give her a spoonful, pull it out and stick in the binky, then she sucks on the binky until the spoon is right by her mouth, when she drops the binky and I try to catch it while giving her a spoonful.  It's a fun, sticky process.  
• Claire loves watching other little kids play.  We think she's just very inquisitive.  She also loves watching cars drive by our window.  Oh, and the 30 Rock intro is engrossing to her.  She can't look away.  Sad that we know that, but she really likes it!   

With that, I have now caught you up on the last year or two of our lives.  The goal now is to update more often.  Stay tuned to see how that goes.  :)

Our conversation last night (May 1)...

Mark: When is our wedding anniversary?  I could have sworn it was May 27th.

Me: (thinking it's pretty hysterical) I can't believe you don't remember our anniversary!  We've only been married 3 years.  It's April 25th!

Mark: Wasn't that last week?

Me: Uhh, yeah, I guess it was.

Oops, we both forgot!  

(Of course Mark made it up to me today by surprising me with our favorite yummiest cupcakes from Icing on the Cake!  Now to find time to really celebrate.)

Let's get through 2010!

I'm going to do a really quick recap of the rest of 2010 after September. I just want to capture it all down and then we can possibly get up to the actual present time...

• Mark's brother Tyler came to visit us for a few days because he was going to leave on his mission soon and wanted to get some family time.

• Mark and I babysat Brett and Becky's three boys (i.e. our nephews) for a weekend.
  

• Mark and I set up our tent in the front room, where we slept out and read books and watched movies/tv for the weekend.
  

• We attended a Halloween party that someone threw in our ward, which included bobbing for apples.
  

• Amber came to San Jose with the rest of the BYU Women's Soccer team and we were able to hang out with her and watch the game.
  

• I made my most favorite Halloween decorations. They are made out of wood blocks that are each 10 inches tall. I loved making them and having them up in our house.
  

• We spent Halloween with the Abbotts down in Yorba Linda, which included dressing up for a ward party with all the family, attending Tyler's farewell, and having a family Halloween party that Abby put together. I was finally able to be part of all the Abbott's family traditions, such as the chocolate chip cookie ghost, dunking for apples, wrapping people up as mummies, and the skeleton story.
  

• We spent Thanksgiving in Utah with the Wadsworths, which included playing games, eating a yummy dinner at Grandma's house with the rest of the Bowen family, and spent lots of time hanging out with the family.
  

• Mark completely planned and put together an Adventure Date, complete with building me a fort in our bedroom and letting me find clues to the different activities he had planned. We got yummy See's candies and borrowed an adventure movie (Indiana Jones of course) from the library, followed by a trip to the Egyptian museum the next day.
  

• I put together a Baby It's Cold Outside date, which included looking at Christmas lights, and eating cookies and hot chocolate near the Christmas tree while watching Elf (which features that song).
  

• We celebrated Christmas by decorating our house and then drove down to the Abbotts in Yorba Linda to celebrate for two weeks. We looked at more lights with the family, spent lots of time hanging out with our family (including our cute nieces and nephews, like baby Katelyn who loved pulling her uncle Mark's hair... what a patient guy!), opened presents on Christmas morning, went out to eat, and went on a hike.
  

Sunday, Day 10, Last Day in Hawaii (sigh...)

• Sunday was the only day that we actually set an alarm and woke up early. We went to a 9 am sacrament meeting in the Honolulu Tabernacle building. It is by far the most beautiful church building we had ever seen and was rather large. We ended up only staying through the first talk and then had to head back to our hotel to quickly pack before we needed to check out.
  
• After packing and checking out, we went to Burgers on the Edge for lunch. This was a fast food burger place that we had passed several times a day and always interested us. It was unique because we could fill out our specific order on laminated sheets that we handed to the cashier. Mark loved it because he likes unique things on his hamburger, not the usuals. We were also able to get sweet potato fries with our meal. Yummy.
  
• After lunch we drove up to the North Shore and went back to Waimea Bay. We ended up having to pay for parking across the street because it was so crowded. When we got down to the beach, the waves were absolutely huge. The lifeguards were warning everyone not to get into the water, but many people were regardless. After sitting on the beach and reading, Mark decided that he wanted to go in and swim around. I was a little nervous, but knew he was a good swimmer. I went down closer to the edge of the waves while he went in, just to keep an eye on him. I started taking pictures with our disposable camera (thus the weird quality), when a wave came up higher than usual and knocked me down, which knocked Mark's sunglasses that I had just tucked into my swimsuit to fall off and get quickly taken away. Before I could even think, the glasses were already gone and the next wave was coming in. I kept looking out for them, but we never found them again. I believe a porpoise is out there sporting sunglasses somewhere. Either way, I felt awful about it, but at least it was the end of our trip. See how huge the waves were below...
  

• We had to finish off our Hawaii vacation with one more trip to Giovanni's Shrimp Shack and then to Matsumoto's for shaved ice and ten packs of Hichew's (these yummy fruit candies that Mark used to get in Taiwan).
  

• We had to fill up our car in Hale'iwa and there was a light sprinkling of rain. During our stop at the gas station, we were wowed to see two full gorgeous rainbows that filled the sky. Absolutely breathtaking. They were big enough that I couldn't get the full rainbows in one picture, just in halves.
  
• We then ended our Hawaii adventure by sitting on Hale'iwa Beach as the sun went down. The scenery was beautiful and the sound of the waves so soothing. We talked about our adventures and were able to reminisce. What a spectacular way to wrap up Hawaii for us.
  

• After the sun went down, we changed out of our swim clothes in the public bathrooms and then had to rearrange our packing in the dark parking lot. We left Hale'iwa around 7 pm and drove straight to the airport. Below is our last picture we took in Hawaii, where we camped out in the airport courtyard amid the lush vegetation and enjoyed the solitude of Hawaii. We just weren't quite ready to be in the airport among the hustle and bustle of normal life yet. One thing I have learned is that Mark and I absolutely love vacationing together. He is my best friend and makes every situation more fun.
  

• Well, after that we got on the airplane around 10 pm and flew home through the night. Turns out that may not have been the best idea ever though, as much as I don't regret anything to do with Hawaii. I just couldn't for the life of me get to sleep. I would go back and forth between trying to watch the new "Karate Kid" movie and then trying desperately to sleep. Basically I had a mental/emotional breakdown at some point and was in tears because I couldn't fall asleep. Mark made me switch to the window seat in the hopes that I would be able to get more comfortable, despite my continued crying and protestations. I was a serious grump.
  
• We arrived in San Francisco around 6:15 am, with very very little sleep and trying not to be too grumpy (Mark much better at this than me). We had to walk around the airport for a long time trying to find our shuttle. Once we were finally picked up, we started the long, grueling journey back. We literally didn't get home until 9 am, partly because we were traveling during traffic times, but mostly because our shuttle driver was absolutely terrible. I was getting the biggest headache ever and was getting more and more grumpy. He was the type of driver who would go super fast and then slam on his brakes. Seriously terrible.
• After we got home, we jumped in bed and slept for about three hours. We then had a nice relaxing day at home, trying to get ready for real life.