She Laughed!

I'm so excited -- Claire laughed tonight while giving her a bath. It was so adorable! I loved hearing it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! And Smiles!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from our girls! Natalie and Claire even held hands for one of the photos:


Emile's co-worker gave Natalie a St. Patrick's Day outfit her mom had made. It was pretty comfy for hanging out in. She spent some time today finger painting. Kinsey learned at Natalie's new class (Winter Wiggles -- art to music class) to mix shaving cream and paint to make a thicker finger paint. It works really well.

Claire was introduced to the exersaucer this week. She was a little overwhelmed the first time but since taking these photos she's started getting really into it. Natalie's always very helpful in showing her how the toys work.

And I finally got Claire's smile on film. It took forever but I'm excited to finally get to share it with everyone. I love it!

And then of course, a sticking-out-her tongue photo:

Emile's cousin Dineke sent Claire a shirt from Holland that she got to wear recently:

Here are some other photos taken recently:

A Mommy and Claire photo:

And the aftermath of the photo:

Claire pulls up her dress a lot and sucks on it and her hands:

Potty Poster

Natalie has been giving a lot of signs that she might be ready to attempt potty training. We're not going to push it but rather just go with the flow and see how she does. I did decide to make a potty poster (which she attempted to help me with for the first few minutes I worked on it) which shows photos of the main steps -- from playing with her toys when she gets the urge to washing her hands when she's done. Last night we tried it out and she loved having the poster there. She would point at pictures of what she was doing (sitting on the potty, using toilet paper). Of course, she didn't actually go on the potty but it was a good first try. We're going to see how it goes with putting her on it after meals/snacks, after waking up and before bed.

Our peanut is getting so big. Look at these cute chunky arms! She constantly has her fingers in her mouth lately.

We had Claire's 3 month photos taken by Emilee Beth Photography (Laura Brett moved to Atlanta). I'm really excited with the sneak peek photos: http://emileebeth.com/blog/?p=852. Our favorite one is with her looking down while sitting the chair. I can't wait to see the rest.

Tea Party

Natalie and I have started having tea parties with her stuffed animals. It's so adorable -- she'll pull down the blanket, grab her box of tea and food items and ask me to open the toy box so she can set out all the animals she wants to "invite". When Claire is up she comes to the tea party as a guest.

We had such beautiful weather this past weekend so Emile decided to wash his car. Natalie wanted to help. She had her own little sponge and even washed her Tike Car.

We also went to Blue Jay park for the first time this year. Natalie is a little daredevil on the slides. I had hoped to walk around with Claire in the Bjorn but she fell asleep on our way there and slept up until about 10 min. before we left.

Some random photos of the girls playing:

Natalie is in the heart of the terrible twos. She's constantly throwing her food so we got some suction cup bowls. Wow...do they make a difference. Dinner time is so much more enjoyable. But she's also so much fun right now. She's learning things so quickly. She points out colors of items all the time (she knows green, blue, pink, red, orange, brown, black and purple -- still working on yellow and white). Emile started pointing out the first letter of a paragraph in her books (the ones where the first letter is bigger than the rest) and she can now identify "O" and "B" pretty well.

Claire is sleeping well in her crib. She has started going down around 8:30 but usually wakes up again at 9:30 and falls back asleep for the night after I nurse her. She doesn't get up again until around 6-7 a.m. It can still be a challenge to get her to stay asleep when I put her in the crib so sometimes going to bed at 8:30 turns into 10 p.m. but she's getting better at self-soothing (she likes to suck on her hands) and I'm getting better at giving her time to do this instead of picking her up right away (I still do if she starts crying though). She smiles and babbles all the time -- I'm just not lucky enough to catch any of this on video or photos. She's also pulling her shirts up to suck on them and drooling a ton.

Claire is 3 months old!

It's crazy to think our little Claire is already 3 months old. It's gone so fast. She doesn't have a doctor's appointment again until she's 4 mo. old so I may have to put her on the scale here at home to see what she's up to. She's definitely filling out. Especially her chubby little cheeks.

Natalie wanted to be a part of the photo action.