Yes, we are still alive around here, though the blog has been sorely neglected. Since last time we talked, we’ve packed up and moved about 1.5 miles away to our beautiful new house. The house is beautiful, the neighborhood is friendly, we have wonderful friends and family who helped us tremendously, and we are all enjoying being in a bigger space. It was also just as crazy, chaotic and exhausting and I thought it would be. I may never move again. We still have unpacked boxes sitting around (though now they are mostly limited to the office and the garage) and I still haven’t found my extra towels and a bunch of other things I’m just getting used to living without.

I’ll put in some pictures of Clare bopping around the new house – to give you an idea of what the new house looks like. Most of these pictures were taken in our first week here, so ignore the boxes and the laundry basket sitting around.

Moving whining aside, Clare is pretty cute these days. She struggled with the move a little bit so we saw some extra whining, testing and general crankiness. Fortunately the struggle is over and she loves her new house. I planned to set up her room like a reading nook with all of her books and comfy places to sit – I figured she’d love the quiet time in there. Nope. No more quiet time in this house! While Clare regularly played quietly in her room in the condo, in the new house she likes to run, generally shrieking or singing, from one end of the house to the other. I think she likes to be able to stretch her legs. She also likes to look out the windows, point out when the neighbors wind “chines” are chiming, and climb on the kitchen chairs.

I’ll write more about Clare’s latest milestones later, but here are a few pictures from our new front yard. The daffodils are blooming and it finally looks like it might be spring around here.

We are the proud owners of a beautiful new house!! J spent last weekend installing closet organizers and getting the posts in to put up gates in the back yard. This weekend is the big move and we are very excited about it! We love the neighborhood, the house, the kitchen, the yard… I’m in the idealistic dreamy stage where I think everything will be perfect in our new house. That is, once we move in.

Oh the moving… It’s a good thing Clare is always in motion (marching, running, jumping, stomping, climbing, rolling, etc.) because if she sat still to long she might end up wrapped in bubble wrap and put in a box. We are in full-blown packing around here, which somehow means that the house is in a permanent state of mess and clutter. How is it that packing stuff away in boxes seems to increase the amount of stuff? I’ll never know.

Complaining aside, here are some cute Clare stories and pictures – including Grandma T’s visit several weeks ago. The little series below is of Clare and Grandma T playing catch with a pair of Daddy’s socks. Clare is pretty good at the throwing (and has great follow through) but doesn’t quite get the concept of catching yet.

Besides playing catch, Grandma T and Clare did their fair share of reading, playing, and usual activity. It snowed while Teresa was visiting, so they even went to play in the snow a few times. Clare also started saying “Gam-ma T” while Teresa was here.

Some fun new words of Clare’s include “hola!” She doesn’t understand that it means the same thing as hello, but she says “Hola!” over and over. “Hola Mama! Hola Sadie! Hola Daddy!” It’s pretty cute. She’s also continued her pattern of adding a Y to the ends of words, but I think I’ve noticed the pattern that it’s only the things that she loves most. For example, “painty,” “col-y” (color), “milky,” “noody” (noodles – her favorite food), “Wockery” (her toy Wocket), “trucky,” “moony,” etc. She uses the Y when she wants something or is excited by it.

Other favorite foods of the moment (and it will probably change tomorrow) include bananas, tortillas (“dor-dit-ahs”), yogurt (“yog-y”), and juice (“juicy”). Our girl is a good eater, though she’s especially fond of breads and pastas and less inclined towards meat and vegetables. I can usually get her to eat fruit and veggies (she’s partial to carrots, peas and sweet potatoes), but if she’s been a little picky on a certain day then I can always trick her by putting the veggies in a cheese quesadilla or mixing them with pesto and pasta.

Life around here is crazy. Let me repeat – C-R-A-Z-Y. It’s a big mix of good and bad (mostly good) but J and I are each walking around with dazed expressions feeling like we’ve been hit by a bunch of little superballs from all directions. Rather than focus on all of the work stress, family goings-on, packing, trying to navigate mortgages and refinancing (sheesh), I’ll just write some cute Clare stories to go along with Adam’s pictures from January. (Warning: a lot of pictures ahead)

Painting! Clare is showing more and more affinity for art projects. She loves to paint and color. I’ve also started noticing her coloring with more intention. it’s not just broad strokes on paper, but she’ll tell me she’s coloring “cir-cohs” (circles) or the other day she colored the feet in her coloring book. It will be fun to watch this develop. She’s pretty good with identifying colors, particularly blue, yellow (“lellow”), black and green. Sometimes she takes a little creative license though, like last week she told me I had a “lellow owie” and a “boo (blue) owie” (for the record, I don’t).

The shoes! She still loves to wear peoples shoes around. I bought her some new shoes last weekend and the delight on her face with her “new shoes!” was priceless. (In the picture above with Clare in the polka-dot vest she is singing the ABCs).

She loves to help with laundry. She’s not always such a help with folding laundry, unless you count moving it from one pile to another helping. However, she’s pretty good at loading the washing machine. In the next house our washer won’t be in the middle of the kitchen (joy joy joy!) so she may get out of practice.

We’ll end with a picture of Clare and her beloved blanky. She loves that thing – so much that I’ve bought 4 of them so that we have two at the house (one is always being washed), one at my parents house and one at nannyshare. Clare also uses a binky for sleeping and we work pretty hard to reinforce that it’s for sleeping only. The blanky, however, has a little more freedom to roam and often comes out for middle of the day snuggling. We’re still fighting the February sniffles (I think Clare has had a runny nose for 4 weeks straight) so blanky has been in demand.

Besides Valentine’s activities of reading books, eating (and cheering for) dinner, and Clare’s favorite hugging/kissing relay between her parents, we’ve been celebrating J’s birthday. On Saturday we dropped the kiddo off with the grandparents and went into wine country with our friends. BC (Before Child), I don’t think I fully appreciated how luxurious a whole day spent just enjoying food, wine and good company was. To top it off (and it didn’t really need topping, the day was so nice) J and I stayed at a very nice winery resort complete with delicious dinner and brunch. Ahhhhh… long bubble baths, a warm fire, good wine, sleeping in, uninterrupted conversations with each other… it seemed like a little slice of heaven.

Sickness aside, Clare is ridiculously fun and verbal these days. Yesterday she told our friend Carrie (Auntie Caw-wee in Clare-speak) that “Mama at work.” Tonight she said (with coaching) “I love Mama” and then immediately said (without coaching) “I love Gee.” She sings all the time – my favorite is her version of “Down by the Bay.” It goes a little something like “Down by Bay! alamala Moose! Mama Say! Down by Bay!” I’ll try to get it on video one of these days because it’s definitely something that I want to save.

Some of Clare’s new words (or word combinations) include her using the word I as in “I sleep,” “I read” or “I drink.” She’s starting to refer to combinations of things with “and” like “O’s and milk” or “Mama and Daddy.” She’s also starting to recognize social roles – as in she’ll point out the mother in a book. Tonight we were reading a book (Down by the Bay by coincidence) and she pointed to the cartoon “mama” in the book and then patted my arm and said “Mama.” She knew the difference between the book Mom and her Mom. Very cool stuff.

A couple of cute stories:

This is a favorite book of mine, and Clare likes it too. She’s started calling it ‘A day.’

Grandma T brought this book on her last visit, in honor of one of Clare’s favorite songs. Clare calls this book “ishy bish” and always says “oh no!” whenever the spider is in peril.

This is a recent favorite that is known as “Zeeb-a book” (Zebra book) It’s a pretty simple, repetitive book and Clare can just about recite it. She also loves to turn each page and say “night night pig” “night night zeeb-a” “night night (hedge) hog” to each of the animals.

I love Eric Carle – and Clare does too. We just got this book and it’s a new favorite. Her favorite part is there is a little squeaker noise maker at the end of the book.

Another Eric Carle! This book has been a favorite for a while. I think that Mom actually hid this book in Hawaii because she was so tired of reading it.

We don’t actually own this book (yet) but it’s Clare favorite book at nannyshare. Adam reports that she requests it every time they sit down to read. I think he’s getting a little tired of it.

Lil’ Miss Feisty is getting more and more verbal every day. Her understanding of language is really incredible. If we ask her a question, something fairly basic and concrete, she generally understands it and responds or acts accordingly. It’s nice that we can give her some verbal direction or ask her to clarify something, but frustrating because when she doesn’t respond then we know that she is ignoring us on purpose. Adam told me a story that the other day they were singing she kept telling him “Bay… bay” and he said “I don’t know what you’re telling me. Can you show me?” Darned if she didn’t remember where her “Down by the Bay” songbook was and bring it to Adam.

I would say that Clare is adding a new word a day, but it’s probably more than that. She now points out the “bus… vroom vroom,” said that something was “loud” the other day, points out the “planes” that fly overhead (which is often since we are below the path of life flight helicopters), tells Sadie to “Sit! Stay!” and many others. She also combines words into short statements like “Where go?” “Where Sadie (or Daddy, or G, or Monkey) at?” “Read book” and “Daddy (or Mama, or G) sleeping.” Interestingly, J was gone for a business trip for a few days and the whole time Clare kept saying “Daddy sleeping.” Today in the car I got frustrated with another driver and said “Geez dude! Go go go go go!! You’re pissing me off!” From the back seat I hear a little voice saying “Go go go go go!” She kept it up for several blocks, but I was glad that she had chosen that part of the statement to hold onto. It’s a good reminder that I need to watch my language…

A cute story from today: Our girl loves shoes. Loves ’em! She can put her rain boots on all by herself and regularly does that and stomps around. Today she had them on, with the requisite stomping, and then found a new pair that she hadn’t seen in a while. She took off her boots and brought me the brown shoes to put on. Because, you know, she needed a shoe change mid-day. She then stomped around in the brown shoes until bedtime.

Posts might be a little fewer and farther between these days (sorry Teresa) because we are in the process in buying a new house and moving the Family Mac to a new abode. I’m not exactly sure where we’re going to find the time to pack and move our whole household in our usual crazy schedule, I guess we’ll find the hours somewhere. The good news is that the new house is really lovely, in a wonderful neighborhood, and over twice the size of our existing shoe box. There is even a whole downstairs suite for guests so start reserving your space at the B&B now.

See – even J’s excited!

Clare’ s started to show an interest in stacking blocks – not just knocking down the blocks that I stack. She worked on these blocks for about 20 minutes, very seriously the whole time. It’s fun to watch her understand spatial relationships and also develop the fine motor skills to explore them.

She’s still our little bookworm, and I found her reading a book the other day while sitting on her “bike.” It didn’t look very comfortable to me…

More coloring! At least once every day Clare asks to “cah-worr.” Mostly she likes to play with the different crayons rather than creating a picture. She’s pretty good at identifying the colors yellow and black. She selects a crayon, draws a line with it, asks what color it is (or declares that it’s a color), and then puts the crayon back and gets another one.

We’re also seeing more and more imagination role playing. The picture above is of Clare putting her beloved monkey to sleep. She covered him with her blanky, patted him and whispered “night night.” I almost spontaneously combusted from the cuteness. She cuddles her “babies,” pushes them in the shopping cart, puts them in the high chair, and this morning I saw her trying to put a diaper on her elephant. She also had me give her monkey a horsie ride the other day.

Clare is on a pretty regular routine where she goes down for a nap at noon every day. A few weekends ago we were running errands and weren’t quite home in time for nap. At 12:03 on the dot Clare yells from the back seat “Blanky! Binky! Milk!” It was as if she looked at her watch and knew it was nap time.

Clare has started adding an “y” to a lot of her words. She has quite a vocabulary these days and when she gets comfortable with a word she starts to customize it. Examples include “moon-y,” “boot-y,” “nap-y,” and just about anything else that takes her fancy. It’s pretty funny but it adds another layer of deciphering to figure out exactly what she’s saying. She is starting to string words together and has said “Wow, look at the moon,” “open the door,” and “up the stairs” lately. Some of her favorite words lately are “No! Stop!” She particularly likes to yell this to the dogs, but she’s been known to say it to J and I, her toys when they aren’t doing what she wants, or anything else.

Speaking of stairs, Clare can now walk down them without holding onto anything. This scares the bejesus out of J and I so we watch her pretty closely and remind her to slide down on her tummy. She’s also really getting into climbing, and over the weekend figured out how to climb into her high chair. Yikes…

Ever since Clare saw a real elephant and the lighted elephants at Zoolights she’s been a little bit obsessed with elephants. We bought her a stuffed elephant with a baby and she carries them around everywhere. She also makes the elephant noise (which is kind of like a raspberry) and lifts her arm up over her head. She’s also a little bit obsessed with zebras, so I think a stuffed zebra may be next. I’m also looking forward to a dry weekend soon so hopefully we can go to the zoo again and see the real elephants and zebras.