4 Months!!!

I'm probably the worst blogger ever! It's been 2 weeks or so since I've taken these pics and I'm just now sharing them! :P Sorry everyone! But here are some of Claire's 4 month pics!
Hard to believe how fast she's growing! She weighed about 14 pounds at her 4 month check-up! She's still small for her age, compared to Zoey...guess being 2 weeks early compared to Zoey's 1 week made a big difference! :)
She has the sweetest, best personality ever! Seriously, if I knew all my future babies would be like her, I'd be ok with having a dozen more! She is the happiest baby...hardly ever cries, smiles and laughs and coos constantly! It's so cute to watch her start interacting with Zoey more...and Zoey is taking more interest in her now that Claire is able to interact a bit too! Claire gets the biggest kick out of watching Zoey play! :) Zoey got a new ball last week and was throwing it around the living room, and Claire thought it was hilarious...which Zoey found hilarious...they just egged each other on! I have a feeling that will be something that happens quite frequently in the future...
So enough gabbing, here are the pics!!!

This is my excited face!!!

I'll try to post a few Thanksgiving pics later, if I have time...which will include some pics of my other sweet, adorable girl Zoey! To be honest, I am not enjoying blogging like I thought I would...mostly because my pictures won't upload right. :( Nothing I've tried so far works...some upload facing the right direction and some don't. There's no rhyme or reason. So...if you want to see pictures of my kiddos more often than I've been posting on the blog, you'll have to do one of two things: get Instagram and follow me, or just email me and ask me for some! :) OR, even better, come see us in person!!!!!!!! ;)

3 Months!!!

Can't believe Claire is 3 months old already! Where has the time gone?!??! While I love the newborn stage, I have to say I'm REALLY loving this stage! She is getting stronger so she's over the whole laying around thing...she wants to sit up or stand up and see the world! She loves sitting in her swing...it has these colorful little animal things on it that she loves looking at. She just smiles at them and talks to them...and recently started reaching out to touch them! She also loves laying on her play mat...she's started reaching for all the dangling toys on it too! She is such a good baby...always happy! It is so easy to get an adorable little smile out of her, and she is SO talkative! She makes so many adorable little sounds! And today she gave me her first little giggle...so adorable!!! :) I also recently held her in front of a mirror for the first time...she loved looking at herself! She just smiled and talked to herself for a long time! She loves watching the videos I take of her too...she appreciates an adorable baby too! ;)
I could go on and on, but I'll just be quiet now and let you all take in all her adorableness...

 



 

 

See? I told you...just plain adorable! :) I used that word way too many times, I know...but I can't help it!

Something that is definitely NOT adorable tho' is that all my excitement over my pictures working was apparently too soon...it's not working again. :( It worked for just a few pics and now they're uploading all sideways again. Even tho' when I upload them to the blog, it shows in the preview that they're in the right alignment...it's just when I click "add selected photos" that it posts it in the blog all sideways. I have no idea why it's doing this but it's quite possibly the most annoying thing ever. So I give up for now. I have way more 3 month pics to share once it decides to start working again. :P Ugh.

 

The Rest of Halloween...

So I finally figured out how to get my photos to stay in the right alignment...woohoo! Thanks to Angela for teaching me about Photo Bucket! :) It's kind of a pain...for some reason they upload to Photo Bucket all sideways too, so I have to go through and edit each pic AGAIN before I upload them here one at a time from Photo Bucket. So I hope ya'll appreciate my hard work! teehee ;)

Here are a few more pics from Halloween I wanted to share!



 

Enjoying some of the fruit of her labor...Skittles! :)

 

 

 

Claire's "First Halloween" pics!!! :)

 

She is SUCH a happy, smiley baby!!! :)

 

 

 

 

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

I will post more updates on things and pics later over the weekend or early next week...just wanted to share some pics of my adorable little girls dressed up for Halloween...as kittens! :D Zoey had a blast trick or treating...she was a little shy about going up to people's houses at first, but towards the end, she was happily digging through bowls of candy picking out which pieces she wanted. Claire tagged along, but she was more interested in her thumb than any candy. ;) Only got to hit up 3 blocks in our subdivision before Zoey's legs gave out, and then Mommy's back gave out from carrying her...but her little pumpkin bucket was heavy enough with candy that she was struggling to carry it. And she got enough to make up for the fact that we gave all ours away to the trick or treaters that came to our house! :)

Who needs candy when you have such a delicious thumb?!??!

 

So proud of her "stash" :)

 

Let's see what I got...

 

Couldn't see good enough...let's dump it all out...

 

 Hmmmm, which piece do I want...???

 

 I'll take these...and these...

 

 Here Mom, help me open these!

 

For the life of me, I still cannot figure out why this silly blog uploads all my pictures that are taken in portrait alignment sideways...so this is only a very few of the many pics I took...the ones that were taken landscape. This is disappointing. I may say forget the blog and resort back to Facebook at this rate. :( Anyway, hope you enjoyed these few pics! They were pretty adorable kittens if I do say so myself... :)

Iowa Mayhem

Just got home and unpacked from a trip to Madrid, Iowa to spend the weekend with Nate & Stacy Stidolph, Brad & Kalee and Craig and Kenna Bloemker...along with their collective prodigy, Brayden, Cooper, Logan and Addison! We had 8 adults and 6 kids, all 19 months and under...somehow, the adults seemed outnumbered most of the weekend. :) I don't think Nate and Stacy's house will ever be the same. The kiddos sure had fun getting into things and playing with all their toys...but mostly with things that weren't meant to be toys.

Logan's trying to figure out how to climb in

 Cooper is thinking hard about what kind of salad dressing he wants on his pancakes

 

 

Addison and Zoey were the 2 oldest and had fun reliving their baby days in Brayden and Cooper's Bumbo seats. :)

 

 

Say cheese!!!

Getting out of them proved to be a bit tricky...

 

 

They loved the "puppy" too and liked giving each other hugs and kisses. :)

 

Mmmmwaaahhhhh :)

 

 

Claire wasn't really sure what to think about all the chaos...she chilled in a bouncy seat and rock and play most of the weekend, but got LOTS of attention. :)

 

Surrounded by boys already...yikes! Altho' one of them is her cousin...

 

 She didn't seem to mind all the attention :)

 

 

We arrived late Friday night after all the kiddos were in bed, but Saturday was a fun-filled day! We had a delicious pancake breakfast, then the kiddos played together until after lunch. Then we headed to the pumpkin patch to pick out pumpkins. Then on to Nate's parent's where the kiddos got to play some more, and so did some of us parents...on their 500 foot homemade zipline! I somehow convinced myself I needed to go down it (or got convinced by everyone else), so I tried it out! The hardest part was climbing the ladder to get up to the platform, then convincing myself to jump off of it...but it was fun!!! :) Once we could convince our hubby's (well, everyone's but mine, he's not a fan of heights) to pull themselves away from it, we headed back to Nate and Stacy's for another delicious meal of chili and potato soup! This morning was a chaotic morning of getting us all ready and out the door to church...and I'm sure their meeting will never forget us! I think all the kiddos were worn out by that point and weren't too happy about having to sit still for an hour. But all in all it was a fantastic weekend...SO great to see everyone again. Stacy, Kenna, Kalee and I all "grew up" together in Illinois and hung out quite a bit back in the day. So awesome to see them again and to see our kiddos becoming friends too. Already looking forward to next time! And a super big thanks to Nate and Stacy for hosting all our craziness! :)







2 Months...and other stuff!!!

So I know what ya'll are thinking..."It's about time!!!" :) Sorry it's been so long since my last update...things are just a tad busy around here these days! SO much to update you on, I hope I don't forget anything!
Where to start...first of all, it's been convention season. Mom came and picked me and the girls up on Tuesday, September 10th. We went to full time Clever with her that week...Dad came in the evenings after work. Ron and Luella were there as well full time, and Marty came on the weekend. We had lots of toys to keep Zoey entertained, her favorite being STICKERS!!! We also made it to the weekend of Independence last week. Again, my parents and Ron & Luella were there, and so were Brad, Kalee and Logan! Logan has started walking, so look out world...him and Zoey will be causing all kinds of trouble in the near future! :) Anyways, I learned grandmas are a necessity to have around at convention time with 2 kiddos, that's for sure! Here's some pics from convention:

Zoey enjoyed playing in Grandma's cabinets at Clever

 

 

Hanging out in the hotel room Sunday morning of Independence

Logan bein' all gangsta :)

 

 

I took some pics of Claire to mark her 7 week birthday around the 18th...here's a few:

 

 

 Not sure why this one uploaded sideways because it wasn't saved like this, but... :P I couldn't resist taking a pic of my other sweet girl too! :)

 

 

It's so fun to watch Claire changing. Her little personality is really starting to show and she's becoming much more social. She loves being talked to, she'll just smile and coo...SO adorable! :) Just melts this momma's heart!!!

Monday, the 28th, we enjoyed going to the zoo with some good friends: Elizabeth & Ava Blubaugh, Kelley & Grace deBoer, and Kim & Danica Hamon. Claire slept the whole time in the Ergo while Zoey got to roll around in the stroller. She enjoyed feeding the deer, seeing the monkeys and while she was initially scared of the sea lions at the sea lion show, she finally warmed up to them and gave them a round of applause at the end of the show! :)

 

 

 

 

Zoey has also been observing me in how I take care of Claire. It's SO fun to watch her imagination grow as she tries to change her baby's diapers, give it a pacifier, brush it's hair, give it a bottle...even lift up her shirt and try to nurse it. ha! ;)

 

 

 

She's SUCH a good big sister, she says "Uh oh!" when Claire starts to cry and runs over to her, trying to cover her up with a blanket or give her her pacifier. :) So sweet!!!

I'll leave you with a few pics I took of Claire to mark her 2 month bday. I can NOT believe she is 2 months old already...where is the time going?!??! :( Some of them uploaded sideways again, and since I have no idea why it does that as the pics are saved correctly, I have no idea what to do to correct it, so...just enjoy them with your head turned sideways, I guess... :)

Such a happy girl!!! :)

 

For some reason all the ones of the 2 of them together uploaded as portraits instead of landscapes...but they're cute anyway! :)

And all these are sideways too...boo! Anyone have any suggestions on why it's doing that...???







 

We had Claire's 2 month and Zoey's 18 month check-ups yesterday and both girls are growing and healthy! Zoey is about 34.5 inches tall now and weighs almost 27 pounds. Claire is about 12 pounds and only 22.2 inches long...she's the short and fat one. ;) I just love kissing her chubby li'l cheeks and seeing those adorable rolls on her legs! And both of them seem no worse for the wear today after having to get a combined 7 shots between them yesterday. :(

Hopefully I will remember to pack my camera tomorrow as we're going up to Madrid, IA for the weekend to reunite the IL bunch again! Only 1 couple still lives in IL...Craig & Kenna and their daughter Addison who is about 15 months old. We'll be going to Nate and Stacy Stidolph's for the weekend, and they have twin boys, Brayden & Cooper, who are about 11 months old. Brad, Kalee and Logan will be there as well...Logan is just 3 weeks away from turning 1! And we'll be there with Zoey (almost 19 months) and Claire (2 months)...so we'll have lots of amazing photo opps I'm sure! :) Can't wait to see everyone again and let our kiddos play together!!! Hope ya'll have an amazing weekend as well!!!