Clara is the funniest little baby these days!! If you smile at her, she'll look at you, then light up with a big smile and hang her little mouth wiiiiiide open! She flaps her arms and buries her head into whoever is holding her - so cute. She's a little stinker at bedtime, but hopefully that's a temporary thing. Most nights, I spend from 8 to 9PM, sometimes after 10:00, trying to get her to sleep, which is challenging when preparing for Halloween and Audrey's birthday! But we'll get there. She seems to be cool with sleeping with a pacifier, although that's about a 50/50 deal. With me around, she seems to want the real deal, still, although she's doing her hunger strikes with Amanda during the days, still. I can't believe a growing baby can go 7 hours on 7 ounces!! She sure makes up for it when I get home!
Clara also rolled over a few nights ago, although she hasn't repeated it since. She was reaching for a toy, on her tummy, and her giant head leaned over to the side, and the weight of it pulled the rest of her over onto her back. She was so surprised to look up at me! and then, of course, she smiled her big fabulous grin.
The Halloween costumes are made, all ready to go for tomorrow night, except for digging up a onesie for Clara to wear. All three of them will be cupcakes!! I'm so excited - the costumes turned out so great and were so fun to make! Emily gets to wear her costume three times - trick-or-treating tomorrow night, Hope's birthday party the next day, and to school on Thursday. I'm glad, because she'll be good and tired of it by then, and we can just put it away and move on to the next thing - Audrey's birthday!!
I'm just about through with a nasty cold that I had for almost 2 weeks. It was the full-on deal: sneezy/tickley nose for 4 days, cold sores and swollen gums, fever, congestion and sinus headache, nasty lingering cough and snorty nose, and worst of all, stupidity!! I don't know when I've ever been knocked so completely stupid before! I couldn't hold a thought, or follow another person's train of thought. I couldn't figure out problems at work, I couldn't handle making dinner at home, I was just absolutely lacking mental capacity. I'm so thankful I don't live that way all the time, because it was SO frustrating!!
The last few weeks have been really testing for me, ever since Travis spent that week in Singapore, and the birthday, and me getting sick. I'm still getting up every night with Clara, and nursing takes a lot of brain energy for some dumb reason. So I guess it's not like there's really that much going on, but it's relentless. So Travis and I took a weekend "off," leaving the kids with Sullivan grandparents and going up to Minneapolis to see some friends who we were close with when we lived up there. It was so stress-free and fun, even though we brought Clara with us! She apparently thinks it's 20 minutes too far, because she screamed the last 20 minutes of the trip in both directions. I suppose it wouldn't be 20 min too far if we hadn't made the trek over to Barnum each time, but it was worth it. Emily had such a great time that she bawled her eyes out as soon as she saw me and Travis walk into the house. (She had made plans, and was afraid she wasn't going to get to do everything on her agenda! but she did, of course.) I felt SO much better after that trip, just relaxed and in much better spirits. I was not sad at all to drive away from my kids, and delighted to return to them, so it was perfect.
I think Audrey is just about done with naptime, and tonight is a momentous occasion because she actually went to sleep without her blanket! I pointed out to her that her blanket was leaving her skin around her lips very pink and chapped, and it was hurting her, so I put chapstick on her and told her that if she had a blanket it would rub it off, and that her lips were so pretty with her chapstick on. So, vanity won out in that one!! Emily was still smacking away at her thumb when I left the room, but Audrey apparently went right to sleep. I think ditching the nap and the blanket at the same time might be a good way to go - she doesn't seek out her blanket during the day to nap, and she's exhausted enough at night to just pass out without it. Of course, now that I've written this, it'll all fall apart. :) but it's a good try, right?
Emily is continuing to love preschool. I get to sign up for conferences this week, to be held the week after. I only get 15 minutes, during which I figure the teacher will say how much she loves Emily's smile and enthusiasm, that she's a wonderful little kid, and how much she likes having her in class. If it's anything else, I'll really be surprised. She sure takes her academics seriously at home! She is drawing letters like crazy, always asking me how to spell things so she can write the words down, one letter at a time. She is writing her own thank-you notes for her birthday presents... maybe at this point I'll have her hand them out at Audrey's party! I've been so busy I haven't had time to sit with her and get things organized and mailed out. But her sentiment is there!
So, for Audrey's party, we're doing the same old family gathering after her birthday, but opening presents on her birthday (Tuesday) and trying to make that day as special as possible, even though I need to be at work that day. I really figured I would take a day off to do birthdays for my kids, and if it had been a normal workday like today, I would have, but it's a planning session for the next 8 weeks and I need to be there. ugh. I also need to get her some birthday presents... Details, right? :) I can't believe it was 3 years ago that I met her. What a charming little thing she is. All chatter and song, just enjoying life and growing as fast as she can.
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