Madness and Mayhem

Otherwise known as life with a mobile infant and an active preschooler. We all know Clara is capable of mass destruction, and now Anna is adding her personal touch to the daily chaos of our little house:


She also likes to attack the camera at every opportunity:



And here she comes again:

Our Little Chocoholic

This kid has a serious love of chocolate. Her flavor of choice: dark chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate truffle pieces and a ribbon of dark chocolate ganache mixed in. I don't think even I could have eaten the whole thing, and that's saying something.

Text Love

During class today I got a great text from Kristin.

Enjoy.

Insomniacs

It's nearly midnight. Oliver and I are upstairs playing on our laptops instead of sleeping like responsible people would be at this hour. About an hour ago I made my final rounds to check on the kids before I headed to bed, and I left Clara's door open a few inches so that I can hear her more easily if she wakes in the night. Lately Clara has been wanting her door closed "all the way, not almost," when she's in bed, so I always leave it closed until I'm sure she's asleep.

Just a few minutes ago we heard the unmistakable pattering of little feet, a door closing softly, and the sharp click of a lock turning. Oliver went to investigate and by the time he unlocked and opened the door Clara was back in bed. All he heard as he walked back out of the room was, "All the way."

Time for Lipitor?

We have found a new obsession in our family: eggs. For Sunday lunch, Clara had an egg salad sandwich. For Sunday dinner, she only ate the eggs from the dinner of pears, hashbrowns, and eggs. For dinner tonight, what did she ask for?

Eggs.

Messing

Yesterday Clara and I had cleaned up all the toys in preparation for an art project. Before we could get started, I received a phone call from Oliver and spent the next half hour dealing with a problem with his student financial account and throwing a temper tantrum because of it (a whole 'nother story in itself). During this time I'll admit that I wasn't paying super close attention to Clara; I mean, sure, if she had started screaming I would have gone to see what happened, but she was playing pretty quietly so I let her do her thing. Knowing her, there should have been alarm bells ringing in my head.

Once Oliver and I figured out the money problems, I turned around to find this:


"Clara, what are you doing?"
"Making a mess."

Oh. Duh.

While I worked to clean that up, she worked on this instead:


Being able to eat is totally overrated.

Seriously

She tries to eat EVERYTHING.

Does This Mean She'll Be a Vegetarian?

Sigh.

Clara never chewed on stuff as much as this kid does. She crawls around with something hanging out of her mouth all time, kind of like the dog we never wanted.

Oh well.

At least she's cute.

A Good News Day

I took Clara in to see an allergist this morning to follow-up on her food allergies. She has been fine with dairy for more than six months now, but because of the results of her last scratch test two years ago, we still haven't given her peanuts or tree nuts. Today they tested her for both, and the results were good.

We can give her tree nuts (almonds, cashews, pecans, etc)! Absolutely no skin reaction to these.

She did still react to peanuts, but I'm taking it as a positive step since the reaction was no worse than last time, and I'm pretty sure it's a bit better (I don't recall exactly how many millimeters the skin wheal was last time she was tested). She's in a marginal range where we still have to avoid all peanut products but are hopeful that within the next few years she may outgrow it. We'll test her again when she's five and see where we are then.

Off to buy some almond butter!

Jesus Wants Me For a Sunbeam

Clara attended her first Primary class this past Sunday, and I'll admit that I teared up a little as I left her for Sharing Time. When did she get so big?

A little background: in our church children attend a Nursery class for two hours on Sunday once they turn 18 months old. They stay in that class until January 1 the year after they turn three and then they move into Primary. The class for the three-year-olds (as of January 1) is called Sunbeams.

We've been prepping her for the switch from Nursery for several weeks now; she loved Nursery so much that I was afraid she wouldn't take well to leaving the toys, snacks, and play-doh behind. She was a little nervous when we actually went into the Primary room and wanted me to stay with her, but after we met her teachers and she saw that one of her friends is in her class (we have around 11 or 12 Sunbeams this year, so they divided the class in two), she calmed down and waved as I left the room.

When we picked her up at the end of church we asked her teachers how she did. I've been concerned about her age compared to the other kids; after all, she did just turn three two weeks ago and is the youngest Sunbeam in the ward. Well, apparently of the five kids in her class, she was the only one who talked and answered questions. And I'm sure she sang along in her wonderfully tuneless way to all the Primary songs.

I love this kid.

Christmas 2009 Recap

The title says it all...and just a warning, this is major photo overload.

We bought a cheap-o smaller tree this year (since our normal tree is too big for our current small house) and some shatter-proof ornaments for Clara to hang:


Her decorating style involved hanging as many ornaments on one branch as possible. I think this one ended up with eight or nine eventually:


Decorating "gingerbread" (graham cracker) houses:



"What? You won't give me candy or frosting to do a graham cracker house of my own, so go away and let me climb in peace."



Our Christmas Eve tradition: decorating Santa's sugar cookies.





Cute sisters on Christmas Eve:


The big day arrives. To quote Clara: "Santa, Santa, ho, ho, ho!"








We hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!