Claire-a-Roni....The Latest

Our little monkey is getting so old!!!!

Beats her forehead on the floor when she’s frustrated or upset, which is apparently "normal?" (fortunately, she’s only done this on CARPET!) *Update: She has. On the tile. ONCE. I caught her. Too bad I didn't get it on VIDEO!!

LOVES peas. She won’t eat all of the Lucky Charms we put on her tray (I mean…Lucky Charms?? We would NEVER feed her those!) but she’ll eat ALL of the peas on her tray—frozen still or cooked. What a nut!

Likes wearing headphones and listening to music! (Celine Dion…we’re indoctrinating her with her mommy’s favorite) I should probably add that she actually may prefer putting the plug in and pulling it out of the headphone jack of the iPod. That's probably the REAL entertainment.

Has a new "signature smile" she likes to use when she first sees me pull out the camera.

Loves soap/lotion pumps and I find her many times SUCKING on the tip of the pump! GROSS! I'm surprised she hasn't been poisoned yet!

Says “eye,” and blows kisses! (OK, well the last couple of weeks, she's STOPPED talking (in our language at least) pretty much. Pediatrician had said that once she starts equating the words with the meanings, she may stop talking until she can understand the connection) She can also say "fishies" and "teddy bear" but definitely doesn't perform when asked...

LOVES milk. Chugs it before naptime and bedtime.

Jabbers on in her own language constantly

LOVES climbing onto chairs. The other day, I was sitting on the glider in her room, and she climbed onto it, and started pushing ME off!!! The little turkey!

LOVES teddy bears. Any kind. Here she is at Walmart thoroughly enjoying herself :)

We have this white planter that doesn't have a plant in it anymore (It died. But Costco told me it wasn't my fault when I returned it because MANY other people had returned it too...) and Claire LOVES climbing into it, and will cry if she gets stuck. It's pretty funny.

Finally, I have a good clip of her saying "what the doggie" says :)

Have I mentioned she likes the tub? :)

Jordan, and our friend, Jonathan, were very pleased with themselves after strapping Claire in the turtle-pillow pet... sometimes I wonder about them...

Another Vegas Visit!

So Michelle had her baby, little Dahlin, and Jordan, Claire, and I HAD to go and see him. (Becca, I love you and Jared too, and will be coming soon!)

So, for the trip down, we left at like 2am, because Jordan was still on his graveyard schedule, and that way, Claire would sleep the whole time! (but as you can see, she woke up...but not until St. George at least!)

"Driving the car" at the gas station in St. George. LOVE this picture!

The reason for the trip...my little Sydney!!! (OK, one of them :)

The first night we got there, we we adults went to PF Chang's to celebrate our friend, Marci's birthday! She's awesome :) Here I am with Michellie!

And here are the men.

Um. Tried "The Great Wall of Chocolate" for the first time. YUM-O!!! Costco's American Chocolate Cake is better, but this one has the rasberry sauce stuff that makes it almost as good :) Did I mention PF Chang's is my favorite restaurant?

And what did we DO in Vegas? Well, we didn't visit the strip ONCE. Not once. Which isn't too surprising since we've lived there, and really the only thing cool to visit on the strip that's not over 100 bucks a ticket is the Bellagio Conservatory. But we didn't go this time. We just had fun hanging out!

Here's Michelle with her new little Bundle of Joy, Dahlin!! What a cutie! Claire loved him too, even though at one point she pulled a curling iron out of a drawer in the bathroom and almost decked him with it in the HEAD! Don't worry. I'm an EXCELLENT mother (3% of the time at least!) and caught her before Dahlin was harmed!

And, of course, we did MANY crafts :)

Crafty Michelle! (check out the CUTE felt shoes she made for Dahlin!! With the wooden buttons on them!

My other sister, Heather's and my present to Michelle were these letters!

Didn't they turn out SO CUTE???

Michelle and I made a pincushion for her too :)

AND we made necktie onesies!! SO CUTE! These I actually made for my sister Heather's new baby boy that will be coming in March. We also made a hooter hider for Michelle (I don't have a pic though!)

And what did Jordan do while we "crafted?" What he does best:


NERD Stuff. JK :) He and Andrew worked, the whole week, on a new media center thingie for Andrew and Michelle, that will replace their cable and DVR, but still be able to record shows, etc. Anyway, that's what he did!


Gavin, looking especially "sweet"...like Dr. Jekyll....Mr. Hyde comes out inevitably though, haha!

Sydney and her friend Jade and Jade's little sister, Violet. What cuties!!

And Michelle opened my eyes to new possibilities with Claire's hair!



Pigtails!! I still have a problem with lopsidedness...I guess I'll keep trying (and have Jordan hold her down while I do her hair!! She's a mover!)

And then, it was inevitably time to come home :( Bittersweet. The bitter part is not hanging out the with Keslers every day! And sweet is...well, Claire did not seem to want to SLEEP while in Vegas!! She would wake up at like 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning every day and NOT want to go back to sleep!! So weird. But she has reverted back to her previous schedule since we've been home, fortunately!

And here she is on the way home. Jordan installed a temporary solution for a TV and a harddrive hooked to it, loaded up with Baby Einstein. BEST thing EVER. See how excited she is to watch it? We borrowed my sister-in-law's carseat for the trip and Claire HATED HATED HATED it. Finally, when she wanted to go to sleep on the drive home, we had to put her in her old one (just the smaller carseat she's growing out of) and she went to sleep right away! But mostly was great because of Baby Einstein. What a great invention.

Keslers, we already miss you guys!!! LOVE YOU!!!

Who needs chicken nuggets when there's ranch?

Yep, as you can see, all of the nuggets mommy so carefully broke apart so as to make it easier for her little monkey to eat, were UNTOUCHED as Claire went to town on the Ranch. Guess I shouldn't have given her the "dippy."

What a ham:

Crafts, Crafts, Crafts

Recently, I've been kind of obsessed with making crafts. Here are the latest ones I've made:

Magnetic recipe card holder/note holder thingie...some people put "RECIPES" on the block down below the metal board, but I'm just not into vinyl unfortunately, and I also want to use it for other things. (This is the craft we're gonna make at the cabin, girls!)

Quilted shoes. This picture does NOT do them justice. These are for my friend Natalie, and her baby, Siena, that will be born in July. Yes, that's a while from now, and I was supposed to not show these to her, but I did anyway... They are SUPER easy and you can do them in a variety of different fabrics, etc.

Pincushion. THIS one is hard. Well, it's not hard if you can sew, actually. I did just fine with the piecing together of the fabrics until I had to sew the side strip to the circular top and bottom pieces!! Fortunately, Megan was there to help, and after unpicking it like 3 times, using a million pins, I was advised NOT to pin it and that was WAY easier. Anyway, I'll probably make more and perfect them bc let's be honest: look closely and you'll see how many mistakes I made!! (I made this out of the leftover fabric from Claire's quilt)

Anyway, next project? Ready?

"Baby Booties" by Heather Bailey. It's a free pattern you can get on her website AND you can see an online gallery of the booties tons of people all over the world have made with this pattern on Flickr!

Ok and these girl ones are to die for, aren't they??

I definitely can't stop doing crafts. It's a disease...

Upon trying this recipe, you will NEVER make Bisquick waffles again!!! (unless you're crazy, of course)

Are you sick of hard-as-rock, way too dense waffles? I can just never seem to get them right, and I've tried a lot of different recipes. Well, I don't have to try ANY more. I found a SUPER EASY, delicious one, that is light and fluffy and has that great chewy texture...you know what I'm talking about--that spring when you pull off a piece. Man, I have such an incredible vocabulary. I should really be a food critic...

Anyway, here it is: And it only took me 4+ years to discover it was in the Essential Mormon Cookbook by Julie Badger Jensen, RIGHT under my nose (well, right in my cupboard all these years...)

Best Waffles Ever.

2 eggs

2 cups buttermilk

2 cups flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/3 cup butter, melted

In a bowl, beat eggs. Add buttermilk, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and melted butter and beat until smooth. (I mixed it really well--you don't have to worry about "overmixing" with these!)

Cook like you normally do! They were wonderful even though I used that powdered buttermilk stuff too! Yield: makes about 4 cups of batter or about 4-8 waffles, depending on the size of your waffle iron. Mine is really big, and I halved the recipe so it made about 2 waffles.

PS. The other recipes in this cookbook are amazing too...

Weaning = No Fun.

Today I dropped her last feeding (the nighttime one) and it's really depressing. I know this may sound cheesy or weird to those of you who don't/haven't nursed a baby, but I love nursing her and feeling that closeness and that bond. But apart from that, the WORST is the feeling that she is now growing up, and soon she won't need me anymore.

That is my fear. I'm having a hard time thinking about how she will grow up, leave home, not talk to me every day, not give me a hug every day, not depend on me anymore. I don't want her to be a teenager one day and maybe not like me all the time, or care about me. I don't know if any of you feel or felt that way about your children, but I find myself having this same fear all the time. Am I crazy?

And dropping breastfeeding is yet another part of letting her grow up.

OK, I think I'll go cry now...

All I have to say is...

There is a God. And he is against the Obama healthcare reform plan.