"Sube mommy"

Claire and I went to the park today. The entire time she was climbing up anything she was saying "sube" (sue-bay) and when she wanted me to follow her she would say "sube mommy, sube". I kept trying to figure out what she was saying and what it meant. Well, leave it to Dora the Explorer...I found out what sube meant tonight while we watched the show before bed. Sube means climb in spanish. I was very impressed this evening when I realized that Claire knew all along what she was saying at the park and had learned some spanish words from her favorite show. What a smart kiddo we have, one that never ceases to amaze me!

Some fun pictures

                                                             Claire and her mega curls!

                                                               Me and my Mommy!

                                   Helping Daddy plant the garden. We can't wait to see what grows!

                                        Driving to the store with all of the necessary accessories!

                    More painting with my friend Cyrus. This time we kept the paint on our hands and feet!

                                                                    It's hockey time!

                                                                   I love my Daddy!

My sweet angel

Ok...so we have had some trying times over the past week or two with strong personality and pushing buttons. Despite all of that, Claire never ceases to amaze me. Tonight after a bit of a struggle to get her to bed, Claire asked "will you lay with me Mommy?". I crawled into bed next to her and closed my eyes. Soon after, I felt her little hand rubbing my back and my face. Almost like she was saying "I know I push you too far sometimes but I want you to know that I love you no matter what". It was such a special moment that made my heart melt. What a great way to end a crazy busy but fun day. I love my little girl more than words can say!

Valentine's Day party

Our church had a Valentine's day party for the preschoolers last Wednesday. First they got to play a game of walking around on hearts while the music played. When the music stopped, they had to sit on a heart and if the leader rolled their number on the dice, they won a prize. Claire must have been lucky that night because she won 3 times!

The next game they played was standing on a heart and tossing beanbags onto other hearts a distance away. Claire excelled at this also and got 3 of the 4 beanbags onto hearts!

Then we moved on to painting handprints onto the paper in the shape of a heart. We got to take these home in a frame.

The final activity was decorating cookies. Claire had a blast spreading the frosting and putting on sprinkles. I think she liked licking the frosting off her knife best of all!

A cute picture of the kiddos at the end of the party! Everyone had a great time! It was fun watching Claire interacting with other kids and the leaders. I think she is going to love preschool in the fall!

Pushing buttons

I believe we have hit the "terrible twos". Over the past few days Claire has been pushing my buttons to no end. She has started to tell me that she doesn't want something, and when given a choice to make, she won't say anything. I give her warning and inform her of what will happen and she still remains quiet. So, when the time is up, I follow through with what I tell her will happen if she doesn't answer. At that point she goes into extreme meltdown mode which takes many minutes and lots of patience on my part to get through!
Claire also started asking "why" for everything. This seems to have happened overnight. Today was the first day she has hit me hard with "why" for every single thing I say. Patience is key and this too shall pass!
On the bright side, we just finished day 4 of wearing "big girl panties" and have had no accidents in these 4 days! Claire even sleeps in her panties and thankfully, no wet bed so far. I am very proud of how quickly she caught on this time with the potty training. I guess if I would have just waited for her to be ready, I could have bypassed the torture we went through when Mommy thought it was time to get potty trained!

Finger painting turned body painting!

Our friends came to play yesterday. We thought it would be a good idea to have the kiddos do a painting project using their hands and feet. It only took us looking away from the kids for 10 seconds and we turned back around to find both kids painting themselves all over! Good thing we had them down to their underpants for the project and good thing we were using washable paint! Once they had started, all we could do was laugh so we let them have fun and put them in the tub after. It was a very fun playdate for all of us!

Claire has had 2 days of no accidents and has been wearing big girl panties! We are super excited at how well she is doing all of a sudden. We told her that Dora came to talk to us after she went to bed the other night and Dora told us that only big girls could watch her show on television at bedtime. Dora said big girls go potty on the toilet and wear big girl panties. If Claire wanted to watch Dora before bed, she needed to be a big girl  and follow Dora's rules. Since then, Claire has been very successful with using the potty. We hope this continues to work for us!

Claire can only imagine

Attempting to potty train...

We have been trying to get Claire potty trained for the past few days. The first day we tried was when she woke up wanting to wear "big girl panties". So I thought, ok let's try it. We did ok until she started to go potty down her leg. She freaked out and hid under the kitchen table. I figured out if I took her every 1.5-2 hours, she would go and would stay dry between. I then got to thinking, are we really training her or is she going in the potty just because we got lucky and were taking her at the right times? So, since she didn't want to wear "big girl panties" after having potty go down her leg, we have been in pullups ever since. We are still working on getting her to tell us when she has to go instead of us bringing it up. We are not there yet but at least we don't have a struggle with her going #2 on the potty. Hopefully before she is 3, we will be in "big girl panties"!

DUHT spells FISH

:Last night when I was playing with Claire in the tub, we worked on our letters. She put up the letters D-U-H-T and told me that spelled Fish. I tried to tell her that fish starts with the letter F, not D but she was not having it. I believe I have just begun to witness the very strong personality that is developing! I often hear "NO", "stop it" and "I don't have to". Crazy how a small person can have such strong feelings about things! Every day is an adventure and we learn as we go.