Keeping Up With Claire & Growing Up With Griffin: Our Week (a Week Behind)

So here I am blogging about last week almost a whole week late-oh well. I've been busy savoring my last few days at home before I have to return to work. I go back one week from today. But enough about that! Some fun things from last week:

1. Griffin hit 10 weeks old (today he's 11 weeks old-time is flying!)

2. Claire is saying her prayers at bedtime-so proud of her! Its so sweet!

3. I was putting Claire to bed and after we had finished reading a few of her books (she would read every one that she owns before every nap and at every bedtime if we let her), she pointed to the top of her dresser and said, "Dada hide books"! HA-busted!

4. When driving by a golf course with Jeff, he commented that there were a lot of people playing. Claire pointed out all of the "golf tractors" aka golf carts!

5. Just in the past month, we are shocked at how Claire is talking in lots of full sentences and how much she picks up on. Its like something just snapped and now she can say ANYTHING we say and speak in sentences. You can tell what phrases we use often: "be careful" "be nice" "its ok" and she tells us everything having to do with Griffin: "baby crying", "baby's fussy", "its ok buddy", "mommy's coming baby", "baby sleep in carseat", "change diaper", "baby's talking".

6. Claire loves the clean up song she learned at school and thankfully whenever we burst into song, she cleans up!!

7. Claire received some books on manners as a Big Sister gift. They are awesome for all you moms out there for her age up through going to kindergarten or so. Each book focuses on manners in different situations/settings, for example, Manners on the Telephone, Manners at School, Manners on the Playground, etc. The books have given us something to refer back to when Claire herself is on the playground, sees us on the phone, or is going to school. Claire loves them and we do too!

8. Claire knows SO many songs that she likes to sing. Here's a list of some of them: ABCs, Row Your Boat, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, You are my Sunshine, Jesus Loves the Little Children, Jesus Loves Me, Oh Little Playmate, I've Been Working on the Railroad, and If You're Happy and You Know It, plus some cute ones from school about leaves and apples!

9. We figured out that she really likes me to tell her to show Griffin how to do things and this is a good technique for her to do things well and behave! We've done this with her eating her dinner, using her fork and spoon, etc. Genius haha!

10. Its tough having a 2yr old (and yes, I hear it doesn't get better at age 3-yikes). We can tell she is trying to be way more independent, even more than just a month ago. She likes to say, "I did it!" and "Claire do itttttttt!". She tests us now and then, but we know this is normal and healthy as long as she isn't hurting herself or anyone else.

11. This one really makes me laugh. If Claire asks Jeff for something and he doesn't do it pretty quickly, she'll say, "Jeffffff" and ask him again. I wonder where she heard that? :)

12. Griffin is smiling so much and cooing and trying to communicate with us a lot. He is doing really well with grabbing onto all sorts of things, following us when we move, and we've even been incorporating more tummy time in the past week than in the past. Lemme tell you-its hard to do tummy time as much the 2nd time around when you have a 2 year old running around who wants to be as close to the new baby as humanly possible! We've used the boppy pillow to prop him up on his stomach and this has helped him in lifting his head up and he seems to like it more than just laying on the floor.

13. He's still being a good sleeper. We're averaging 7 hours uninterrupted at night. I'm nursing him first thing in the morning and at night right before bed, bottles the rest of the day with me pumping. And by the way-Claire has been very observant when it comes to that-she showed me today that she has been watching me closely when she completely hooked up all of the parts and hoses to the pump, placed it up to my chest, and turned it on. Crazy!

14. I can't leave this on unlucky #13, so for #14, I'll share our Thanksgiving menu, per Claire, with you. We went on a walk tonight and I was trying to introduce the concept of Thanksgiving to her and see what she had learned about it at school. She really got going on our menu so according to her, we are having turkey, green beans, grapes, hot dogs with cheese, goldfish, apples, and cookies (of course, cookies!). Whose coming to our house for Thanksgiving?! :)