Little Hottie's First Birthday

I'll just go ahead and spare you all of the sappiness that comes with realizing your baby is now 1...most of you probably know the feeling :)

So let's just move on to Claire and her birthday. She woke up at 1 am with a 104.3 fever (hence the little hottie)...now there's a way to ring in your first birthday, and scare your mommy! After a nice bath, milk and some tylenol, she went back to sleep and slept until 7:30. We had planned to have a party for her that morning which needless to say got canceled! Instead we partied on over to the urgent care clinic where she was diagnosed with an ear infection. She was a trooper through it all and still managed to smile most of the day. We took a little rendezvous to SeaWorld that evening, just the 4 of us, and saw Claire's favorite show, Azul. She loves it -probably because she sounds just like the beluga whales in the show. Maybe that's how she learned, and how she justifies her high pitched screaming :) She slept perfectly through the night the next night and woke up feeling great. Praise God for that.

Some stats/fun notes on our 1 year old:

-She's a little over 21 lbs, hovering around the 50th percentile for most things.

-She been walking for a while now! Bill and I are always amazed at her balance - for such a little thing...

-She says mama, dada, does a lot of other babbling but has no real desire to say any other words yet.

-She's a foodie! She loves to eat (which I am so thankful for and hope it continues). She joyfully ate tilapia and asparagus last night, need I say more?

-She has 7 teeth, 4 less than her sister had at this age!

-We love her and are so blessed to have her in our family!

And a year in pictures:

Way Behind

I enjoy blogging, and I enjoy blogging breaks as can be seen by my most recent blogging hiatus. But here I am - ready to blog again!
And here it is, the middle of May. I cannot believe this month is already more than half over. This also means that our time in San Antonio is half over. Wow. It has been a good 5.5 months here, I feel a lot more settled now than I did a few months ago, and am really enjoying day to day life. We've had a lot of wonderful family moments together, taking the time to do things we wouldn't likely have done back home...at least not as often as we are here. I do look forward to going back to Kentucky, to our friends there, our church there, and can I mention my dishwasher? I really hate this one in the apartment! :) And having a house again will be nice. A lot of things will be nice! Though I have certainly learned that I can get by on a lot less here...like a set of 6 plates/cups/forks/etc., 2 frying pans, I could go on but pretty much minimal everything. Don't get me wrong, we haven't exactly been kicked to the curb living out of a tent or anything... BUT it has been a change going from a house to an apartment.
Onward. The girls are great. Claire seems to be transitioning to 1 nap now which is MUCH earlier than it was with Sophie. However, she makes up for it at night, sleeping over 12 hours! She's walking like a pro. And Sophie...oh Sophie, she is quite the character. Funny at times, thinking she's 25 at times, and a little scoundrel at times. She consistently talks about being married to a specific boy, has babies, her babies have an Auntie, Auntie Claire. Her imagination is quite... umm...imaginative! She told me her kids were 2 years old so I asked her when their birthdays were and she said, "I don't remember." Although it is cute I think we might have to do some reigning in on the imagination as it's obvious she is confusing imaginative play with not telling the truth.

She has a few funny words I have to record here so that I remember down the road. Hamburger is hangabuh, hospital is hostibul, chapstick is chapskick. Love it. She is pretty much done with napping. :( Some days I try to put her down but she just plays in there for a while and that's it! Just earlier today I went to check on the girls during nap time and found Sophie with all of her "kids" lined up on her bed doing self control time. I chuckled.

A couple of weeks ago the girls and I went to Michigan to visit my family. It was a great time. My brother and I went to a Red Wings playoff game. It happened to be the only game in that series that they won, and it was the BEST game. We had so much fun. The girls enjoyed the visit with family too. We even had a little early birthday party for Claire. It was great! Now we look forward to traveling again and heading to see Bill's family on the East Coast

Sophie with cousin Nick

. and the little bear