Joy

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Snow play? No Way!

On Tuesday, Josh had to drive up to the cabin where we have the youth retreat, to check it out and make sure it was still in good condition and/or not snowed in. We all went because we thought it would be such a fun time for Claire to see snow for the first time and to play in it. We even were able to find her Gap baby snow gloves in her size at Savers the day before. We were sure she would have a great time. In the cabin, ready to give the snow a try. (This cabin is bigger then our house and well furnished with dead animals)
The snow was too deep in most places to walk let alone sled so Josh made a ramp down the back porch steps. She would NOT wear her new snow gloves so we put these little mittens on her to at least help a little.

Not amused - but not crying

We then thought she would like to be pulled on the sled....But that was apparently so terrible that she screamed and cried and threw herself off."This is NOT fun!"
She threw a little tantrum and started freaking out so we thought "maybe she is just tired because she didn't have a nap yet today."

So inside we went and we put her down on a quilt in an upstairs room (I must note that the cabin doesn't have a heater and because there was no sunshine in the cabin - it was colder than it was outside.) We were so impressed with Claire though, she just laid down on the quilt, in middle of the floor and went to sleep - for 2 hours! I went to check on her and she was rolling around and talking to herself on the quilt. What a sweety.

When she was up, we went out to try the snow again but she still hated it. She started crying as soon as we went outside. Then, we decided it was futile so we hiked through the snow back to our car in the cul-de-sac. Claire liked the snow by the car because she could go up and touch it but she didn't have to be "in" it. That's when we got the first smile of the day.


We tried sledding one more time but that was still not fun.
We had to tickle her to get her mind off it.
"Can we go home pleeeeease?"
Aparently, she feels the same way about being cold as I do.
Poor Claire. It was a 3 hours drive so she was a little upset at us for strapping her in a carseat all that time just to torture her in the freezing snow and then drive 3 hours home. She cried most of the way. What a fun snow day!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Taps

Last night, we could tell Claire was getting sick. She went in the nursery during MOPS this week so I am not surprised - but feeling slightly validated in my decision to keep her out of there during the holiday months. (in which she did not get sick) She was really crabby this morning with snot crusted to her face, so we stayed home from church. After breakfast and a good wipe down, she was feeling better and besides her runny nose and occasional cough and sneeze she is acting like her old self.

Bored from being stuck inside all week, we went in the front yard to try out her new and just slightly too big tap shoes. (Linoleum doesn't make a very satisfying tapping sound)
They were $2 at Goodwill and I just couldn't help myself
I think she's a natural!
All done tapping - for now.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Hairblooms

New Hairblooms have been added to the collection!

Perfect for making any outfit special.

They also make great gifts!

Pinks (click photos to enlarge)
Reds
Blues
Greens and YellowBrowns
Patterns
Polka DotsCountry Style

Each clip is $4. Shipping is an addition $1. (per order - not per clip)

To order Hairblooms, you can e-mail me at kdulce@juno.com.




Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Sesame Street

One morning last week I let Claire watch Sesame Street. Her eye was hurting, making her grouchy and I had some things to get done.
As soon as we fast forwarded through the many colorful advertisements preceding the actual show, I went to sweep the kitchen floor. Jimmy Fallon was the guest and he was pretending to be "Wild Nature Survivor Guy" dropped into "the middle of nowhere" (Sesame Street) where he had to survive off nature "all alone". I'm pretty sure that the word 'nature' must have been spoken over a hundred times in the next 10 minutes. Fallon looked for food, he found a tomato plant and exclaimed "Nature provides! Nature gives us what we need!" He looks for water on a plant because it had rained earlier on Sesame Street. "Nature gives us water, it falls from the sky in the form of rain" he explained to Elmo, "Nature will give me everything I need!" Elmo replies, "Elmo never knew nature gave us so much."

Later, after repeating "Nature provides!" a few more times Fallon sees Big Bird. He is shocked for he has never seen such a large bird, "Nature's greatest masterpiece!" he exclaims.

To wrap up the segment we home viewers got a mine lecture about how "we are all a part of nature! We eat and breathe and drink and live because of nature. We need nature for our water, our food, our EVERYTHING." Followed by a shameless liberal plug convincing us that if we take care of nature it will take care of us.

It was so eerie. You could literally replace the word 'nature' with 'God' and the statements would then be completely true.

I was a little perturbed but I found it extremely ironic how in the next segment some famous actress came out (I don't know who it was - I don't really like to watch movies and the fact that I knew the other guy was Jimmy Fallon is very impressive) and she explained that nature is anything that "is found outside and is not created by man." Wait a minute, not created by man? So you are admitting that is was created by someone then... right? Hmm..... It seems, therefore, that the 'nature' we were singing praises to early is not a supreme being after all. Shouldn't we be awe of the Creator more than His creation?

After Sesame Street we went for a walk to enjoy God's creation and guess what we found!?

Arizona snow! (aka cotton that blew away when the field was being harvested.)

Yes, we will still watch Sesame Street. Elmo's World is life saver on laundry days.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

That's what HE thinks

It looks like....


someone....


thinks he found a new bed.

Monday, January 11, 2010

It's a Shiner

We new it was inevitable.... we are actually amazed that it didn't happen sooner...
Claire's first black eye.
Last night, after our evening church service, Claire was running around having a great time. She had sat still for more than an hour so she was a little hyper and rightfully so. I was sitting a talking with some friends while Claire was running around acting silly when out of the corner of my eye I saw her trip on her pigeon toes and fly/fall toward a chair, hitting the side of her face on the hard wood. She of course was screaming and when I turned her over her eye was already swelling. We put ice on it right away but that just made her scream harder. She calmed down a little but was still crying as we drove home. I was pretty sure there was no internal damage to her eye but to be on the safe side, Josh asked Anita (nurse) and her husband Mike (EMT) from church to come by our house and look at it. They were so nice and did right away. They said it looked like a flesh wound and were able to tell me that I could actually give her double the amount of ibuprofen that I had been giving her. It was nice to have peace of mind before we put her to bed for the night. We are so thankful that they came.This morning it was swollen shut so the swelling seems to be subsiding quickly. It has gotten progressively darker though as the day goes by.
We went shopping this morning and no one asked what happened. They just looked at her. Luckily, it the CPS comes knocking on our door we have about 15 witnesses that saw it happen:)

Thursday, January 7, 2010

In a Rut

It's nice to be back to our normal schedule. We have plenty of time on our hands now that Christmas is over so trying to fill our day with fun things for Claire is challenging. We pretty much do the same thing everyday so I am trying to come up with different things to do.

She recently found the joy of dancing while wearing her little ballet skirt. She takes her dancing very seriously. Do not ask why there is a potato on the ground. I don't know.
This morning, we drove to Cesar Chavez park to play on the playground. We were the only ones there! I had mentally prepared myself for the fact that there would be other kids playing there so I was really glad. I get irritated very easily with other peoples kids - especially when they ask me questions and run all over the baby slides. We just leave if other people come most of the time.
Claire wanted to play on the big kid equipment.
She is a brave girl!

Having second thoughts....

I eventually pushed her down but she ended up on her side by the time she got to the bottom. She was a little upset but quickly got over it.
She was so excited because we took some rice crispies with us to feed the ducks. (that is all we had) Unfortunately, there weren't any ducks at the time - just these sorry excuses for birds.
We saw geese sitting up on the hill area so we went to check them out. They started running at us honking at the top of there lungs. They were the same height as Claire so she was a little scared. I didn't force her to get too close, I was attacked by a goose on two separate occasions when I was younger. To this day I am afraid of them.
We stood at a safe distance and waved 'hi' and 'bye' to them.

Claire has made the switch from two naps to just one. She now goes down after lunch and will usually sleep 3 hours. I miss two nap times but now she doesn't wake up until 8am instead of 6:30am so that has been quite the luxury.