sleeping...

Apparently, to be a Mathews, you have to be a weird sleeper...There are stories in the family of us getting up in the middle of the night thinking we are in a war and our goal to be safe is to get the dresser on our bed to prepare the "tunnel"...Or I remember waking up hearing someone talking, walked into the bedroom that was pitch black (except for the hall light I turned on) and found one brother sitting on another (who was dead to the world) claiming something about bugs...Another time, I had a sister on her bed sweeping the ceilings free of spiders that 'were everywhere'! A different sister will have full fledged conversations with you and not remember them in the morning...My dad will fight wars in his sleep and over turn the recliner he's sleeping in...

Well...I'm not so active, but I do have the tendency to carry on conversations of what I'm dreaming about...for example:

Last night, I haven't been feeling well---Nick had a head cold last week and he gave it to me this week---so we decided an early bedtime would be nice...We headed to bed at about nine pm...about nine-forty-five, I started laughing (apparently), waking Nick up:

Nick: What's so funny
Me: My bunny is huge
Nick: Your penny is huge?
Me: no no, my bunny...
Nick: your what?
Me: MY BUNNY! He's taking over the cat's responsibilities!
Nick: (having experienced these kinds of dreams before, he knows what to do to me now)
Nick: Yeah, yeah...sure...
(I'm sure other, and funnier things were said, but we don't remember them very well now...)

This is when I usually wake up (because most of my dreams aren't as tame as bunnies acting like cats...We've had full fledged conversations about prom dresses and changing into them, school busses...etc...Nick takes it as far as he can before I wake up). It usually is funny, but MAN, we Mathews are weird!

swimsuit...

Aunt Kimberly sent us this when Claire was born...I couldn't wait until she could fit into it...Apparently there is a tradition of chubby thighs and swimsuits (yes, I mean you Mandee)

this is the 'chubby thigh' picture...I still don't think she has very chubby thighs, she's so little, but it is a tradition, after all...LOL...thanks Kimberly...I LOVE this thing, it's so sweet...



I love this one...I think she's saying "Live long and prosper"...

sitting up...

Put Claire down to grab her coat or something, I'm sure...when I came back, she had her hat on like this!


One of the first days we realized she could hold her self up, Daddy put her up like this and I LOVE this shot...so cute!

A while ago when Claire was learning to sit up, we had a lot of times where I would be putting laundry away or cooking dinner and I would come back to check on her and find her doing this...She doesn't do it anymore, probably because she can hold herself up now for long periods of time...She looks so delicate in these photos...Or that's the closest I could come up with at the moment...LOL

Sock head...

I've always seen funny photos of kids and I couldn't help myself...Not quite in the genre of Tamme's funny pics, but I assume it's because my kid isn't old enough to CREATE the funny pics yet...I'm sure she'll get there all to quickly for my taste...

playing along with paying it forward (wasn't this a movie, once?)...

Pay it Forward






Read closely...this is how it works...

The Rules

1. Be one of the first THREE bloggers to leave a comment on this post, which then entitles you to a handmade item from me.

2. Winners, you must post this challenge on your blog, meaning that you will Pay It Forward, creating a handmade gift for the first THREE bloggers who leave a comment on YOUR post about this giveaway!

3. The gift that you send to your Three Friends can be from any price range and you have 365 days to make/ship your item. This means you should be willing to maintain your blog at least until you receive your gift and have shipped your gifts. And, remember: It’s the Spirit and the Thought That Count!

4. When you receive your gift, please feel free to blog about it, sharing appropriate Linky Love!

If you are not one of the Top Three Commenters on this post, you can still play along. Please take the button and post it on your blog; start your own Pay It Forward chain, and encourage your blogging friends to do the same!

random

This is the cutest coat in the world! You know when there is a cute kid, the last thing that people pay attention to are their clothes, unless the clothes are more adorable than your child...I've only heard that about two things that Claire has worn...Granted, I'm super bias to my own child, but this ADORABLE coat that Marlies found for Claire and a quilt that my sisters-in-law (mandee and savvy) and my mother-in-law (krista) made are the two things that people talk about being so cute before they talk about her...he he he...I'm okay with my kid being so cute!


Sippy cups are so easy! At least for Claire...I've gone to a few appointments lately that have advised not the use of sippy cups...just training her directly on a cup..still haven't decided how I like that, but I'm sure it's fine because for a very long time, there were no sippy cups to feed your child...Plus, she has started to bite on the sippy cup and then when I go to nurse her, she bites on me! I am leaning away from them right now...

cuts and bruises...

I knew they were coming...and they have arrived...beyond the fingernail scratches, Claire has decided that it's so much fun to whack herself in the face! The poor girl has a cut on her lip from such a whacking...I wasn't there when it happened, but it did and all I can think about are the ones that are coming...I don't want to encourage her to 'be tough', but I don't want her to be a mamsy-pamsy, either...hmmm...a thought for another day, I'm sure...

I was just putting her down for a nap when she turned her face toward mine, and in her delirious state, decided that my cheek looked appetizing because she started to suck on it as if it had some nutritional value...I started to laugh, she woke up a bit and was not happy that I had stopped her from finishing her 'meal'...

She's started giving kisses! I told her I wanted to give her a kiss and she turned to my mouth, opened hers and laid a big wet one on me! cutie...

da da

Claire bear has started to say 'da da'...All the books I read (yes, I'm a book mom) tells me that I'm supposed to answer her when she says 'ma ma' or 'da da'...usually it's in a long string of them,like 'da da da da da da da'...but since I started to answer her when she says it, she usually keeps it to 'da da'...
I was taking her out of the bath today, when she was suddenly really tired (right at her naptime)...She hates clothes to go over her head when she's tired, but it's cold here, so she has to suffer through it so I can put her to bed in clothes to help keep her warm...she suddenly cried out, "Da da!" Like she wanted her da da to come rescue her...

Da da, come rescue me from the mean lady that makes me sleepy and puts things over my head when I don't want her to!

I always knew she'd end up being a daddy's girl, I just didn't know it would happen so fast! My good friend, Melissa is prego with her fourth baby and her two oldest started to prefer her hubby at about nine months! I think I've become a second place mom already!

Pretty, pretty prince...

Well, I just uploaded these pics and who could resists sharing a little black-mail for the future! On New Years Eve, my sister-in-law, Amy and her two kids, Emma and Tyler, played Pretty, Pretty Princess with me...Emma got it for Christmas...Guess who won the first time!?

Yeah, that's right, Tyler...He was so excited to play the next round, but I have a feeling it wasn't for the jewelry and more because it was exciting to win! LOL! What a sport! Emma wasn't thrilled with Ty winning, but she wanted to play it over and over as well...


I won the second round, but I put it all on Claire-bear to take the pic...

Emma, Quincey and Claire...I'm so glad that Claire already has cousins! And these cousins already know to be 'soft' with the baby! Quincey was so awesome with her!

I kept trying to get a pic of Quincey and Elle kissing---this was the closest one! Tim and Jill visited just after Christmas and I came to say, "hellu!" Good to see them...Their little Elle is as cute as ever...I now understand that they want to name their next girl (if they have one and no, they aren't prego that I'm aware of) Emmee and call her 'M'...So, they will have an 'L' and an 'M'...I think that's pretty adorable...



Elle-belle!

Johnny Jumper...

Nick has said from the beginning that we need to have a 'johnny jumper' because he used to put his sisters in that all the time and they LOVED it...Well, Nick has proved his point quite well, because my kid LOVES her johnny jumper too...Claire will bounce in it for hours at a time---until she knocks her noggin against the door frame anyway...poop kid...



She had her six month appointment yesterday:
26 inches (75%---which is weird, in my humble opinion because last time we took her to the doctor, she was measured at 27 inches---whatever)
15 lbs and 4 oz (55%)
I never remember the head, but it is in the 55%, so she's doing great and growing like a weed...Dr. Stevens (who I love), was laughing a lot at her because anytime he tried to get her to stand, she would jump up and down as if she were in her johnny jumper..."she'll have really strong thighs," he said...

Right now she's struggling to take her morning nap...why is it that I have to sit here and debate about what I should do!? This mom thing is always so subjective and hard...Hope I figure it out eventually...sigh

Christmas time is here...

Trying to be up to date gets really hard when you aren't around your own computer...sorry this is so late...

We spent Christmas this year with the Sorensen family in Colorado for their second year there...Really sad not to have Daniel opening a giant something or other of an eagle (krista decided in their Oregon home to have Daniel's bedroom decorated in eagles...he protested it often and it became a standing joke that she would occasionally get him an eagle something or other to put in his room)...It was super neat to have a little girl (claire-bear) with us, though...Grandparents adored her, so did aunties Savvy and Mandee and Uncle Greg (which surprised me a bit...he's way laid back about things and it always made me smile to think that he WANTED to hold Claire)



The Sorensens have tons of traditions...some of my favorite:
-A scavenger hunt for EVERYTHING! This is especially fun when Matt or Greg put the hunt together...the clues are way hard and take people forever to figure them out...One year, they sent the girls on a scavenger hunt that took them all over town to different peoples houses and then at the last house they received a piano bench...they were slightly disappointed until the next day when their long sought after grand piano was delivered! What a trickster Matt is...
-Christmas presents take about six hours to open...girls have to try on clothes and we have to play the games we received...This year Greg, NIck and I received an awesome homemade version of "would you rather"...We had to laugh at some of the suggestions that girls came up with...one of my faves was: "would you rather: moo every time something is funny OR quack every time something is sad?" Greg decided that he would rather quack because you do that less often...I decided that I would prefer to moo because then it would make you and everyone else laugh again---kinda like snorting when you laugh...

-Christmas pictures...Grammie and Grampa decided that they needed to have pictures of themselves with Claire...SHE IS SO CUTE!!! I'm not bias at all...Not only did we have professional portraits done, but Krista is of the mindset that we have to have a picture of ever single present...We've mellowed her out this year and now it's a little sparser, but there are still a ton! I didn't even take my camera out most of the time because I knew krista would get plenty! Glad the historian (krista) likes to document these things because I don't even know if I'd remember to TAKE pictures if she didn't...

We had a great christms...we were so glad to spend it with family...Sad to have missed my family, but that will come next year---hopefully...hint hint to tamme and ben!