My children are beautiful, intelligent, creative, funny, happy... the list could go on. I love them dearly.
Claire made some beautiful art this week. All on her own, no prompting involved.
Bella is so determined to be big, to do things "my myself". I am glad she is cheerful and gets over things easily or she'd spend all day frustrated with the things she hasn't yet mastered.

When Claire woke up this morning she had sneezed out a snot rocket. What I saw was her leaving her room with some gross goo hanging from her sniffer. So, I prompted a tissue and put my arm around her to hug her, in the process I put my hand in a pile of snot on her pjs. Yuck!! apparently she had sneezed more than I originally saw.

and yet I love them more today than yesterday!

so Bella is sick- again. I guess it doesn't help that I "agreed" (rather was "forced") to take baby J (whom we watch 4 days a week) when he was sick. so she's been having asthma attacks, coughing uncontrollably or wheezing. In the past both the girls have coughed to the point of throwing up phlegm or even stomach contents. So, as Bella was going to bed she had a snack of ritz crackers and started coughing. As we all know when that happens you spit crackers from your mouth as you cough. Well, she hasn't had this experience before and so reacted differently than you or I would. She said "DADDY! DADDY! I THREW UP!". Micah had to convince her that it wasn't throw up.
Today, she called "I go potty mamma". So, I woke up from what was only going to be a 15 minute nap, and went upstairs to wipe a bottom. I got upstairs to find she had awoken baby J with her potty announcement. Then she let me know that her bed was "scratchy". I went in to discover crushed crackers all over her newly changed sheets. I asked her how the mess occured; had she sat on the crackers accidentally, or slept on them forgeting they were there? she showed me with her hands that she had crumbled them. I asked who she thought it was that would clean them up "mommy" was her honest reply. so I got the hand vacuum and had her clean them up. What a scoundrel!!

It has been so long since I've written things down. yikes! Which means that I might forget about the "poo poo" incident at the Steeles. See that's the only thing that I can even thing to write down about the time past without blogging.
Yesterday the girls were playing dolls and Claire did something super cute. She was pretending that she was working the church nursery and she had all the baby dolls out. She laid a blanket on the floor and then decided that she better lay the plastic painting cloth on top the blanket "so the babies don't spit up on the blanket". then she found the party hats in a play box and strapped them on the baby's faces "to catch the spit up". then one of the babies was crying and it was because she had come off the blanket. I told Claire she needed to help the baby because she didn't "want to disobey policy". She told me "that's not the baby's mom's name".

so yesterday when I picked up the girls from dance class their teacher reported to the parents that there had been a problem. Apparently, the kids had been a bit pushy that day. It seemed to all fall on Bella. Claire frequently hugs on Bella when she doesn't want a hug, sometimes Claire doesn't listen when Bella says "no, thanks". Well, that happened yesterday so Bella was tagged as pushing, then a boy in the class who has a crush on Bella did the same thing. He too, wouldn't listen when Bella didn't want him to hug. Then one little girl said that Bella punched her. Well, I was finding some of this hard to believe. My girls don't hit they know it's not acceptable. Occasionally if they are caught up fighting over a toy, they might hit or push, and right away they know they are in big trouble because that is not accepted at home. So to hear that Bella punched someone... I had to dig deeper. Bella did say that the boy was hugging her when she didn't want him to do so. She conitnued to tell me that she didn't punch the girl. though. Finally, she told me "I was flying like a bird". Okay this was making sense now. I can see her flying like a bird without knowing her arms hit someone. I believe her. Mostly because the girls tend to be honest to me, and if they don't want to be honest, they choose to be silent. I can usually tell if they are lying. I also don't think she's clever shes deceptively clever enough to come up with a bird story. It was nice to get to the bottom of things and see that it wasn't really all the teacher thought. If people are continuingly hugging on her when she doesn't want to, then it needs to be stopped before she has to push them off of her- this includes Claire. If they don't listen to her say "no, thanks", what else can she think of to do. I tried to tell her that she'll have to start saying "Help, teacher", instead of pushing. Poor girl, she was defintely far from wanting to wake up from her nap when it was time for dance class, so what a day to be bombarded by people. I talked to Claire and let her know that if she continues to "love" on Bella or mess around during dance, they won't be able to be in the same class. She was quite sad to hear that announcement since she says her favorite part of dance class is getting to stand by Bella.

Yesterday morning the girls were playing and Bella told Claire "that's silly". I don't know what she was commenting on, but what I do know is Claire's reply "silly indeed". Are you kidding me? she's so silly.

Well we have had several really warm days. In fact I'm a little disappointed that we kinda skipped the 70*s and went to mid 80*s. I guess it's better than snow, and we'll probably get some true springlike days sometime soon.
Anyway, of course the ice cream man took advantage of the unusually warm weather. He came around our neighborhood around 2:30. Right smack dab in the middle of nap time. Bella had just fallen asleep and Claire was playing quietly. I had thankfully already awoken from my slumber and came up stairs to see what Claire would do when she heard that infamous music. She saw me peaking and started excitedly exclaiming "the ice cream truck!!". I told her she could trade some of her gold nuggets (points for good character actions) in for ice cream. Of course she would decide that was a great plan. So, we went out to the truck and of course the amount I had given her was the perfect amount for one of those silly gum-ball-eye-characters. Well, I was forward enough to ask the Ice cream man if he could come back next time at more like 3:30 since it was in the middle of nap time. While all this was going on, Bella had peaked out her window and saw us go across the street behind the van. She ran out of her room, out the front door and started crying. The ice cream man apologized and I allowed Bella to get some ice cream, too. So, they only had an hour rest time today when normally it is three hours. Yikes!! After planting flowers and playing outside all morning, and hour is not going to cut it.
I hope they make it through AWANAs tonight.
When we were planting flowers Claire was so disappointed that we were not planting seeds. She must have thought that planting the actual seedlings was cheating. We also planted seeds, so we'll see if they make it.

Claire was waiting for me to finish using the potty, so she could take her turn. then when she was done she looked at me questioningly and asked "do you think there's a little potty inside you for the baby?"
A couple days ago she asked why the baby had to wait so long to come out. I reminded her that the baby was only the size of a bean and if it came out we might lose it. That made perfect sense to her.
this is gonna be a fun 34 weeks.

upping the total count

So I'm only 5.5 weeks preg and our total number of times the girls have asked "when is the baby coming?" is up to 7. Claire asked at lunch today.
Both the girls have been saying "hi baby" each morning. They love watching the videos online that tell you how big the baby is and what is developing now. Claire knows the baby is as big as a seed and in 3.5 weeks will be as big as a grape. she was telling Nana today that the baby loves it when mommy walks around.

Bella asked for a piece of gum when we were out and about 30 seconds after I gave her a piece she said she needed another one. I asked her if she ate the first one and she said "no, I swallowed it".