One April Shower!

 Claire

I have a feeling Claire is more of a night owl than a morning person because when they both wake up in the morning she is much less friendly with playing and only wants to cuddle and watch cartoons. They both still are pretty cute though and get excited about a lot of other things through out the day. I had planned a picnic potluck in the park this week and Claire overheard and kept asking if we were going today all the way back on Wednesday. Once it was Friday night and I told her it was tomorrow she came and hugged my leg yelling "thank you, thank you, thank you mommy!" She didn't eat any food except a cookie while we were there because she was so excited to play at the park with her friends. Earlier in the week she had her stuffed animals be her friends and lined them up on the couch to watch a movie with her. 

Shay

She is growing up way too fast and I dislike that she isn't my little baby anymore! She wanted the kid mask at church this week and wore it pretty well without complaining because normally it is her sisters. After church it rained and I let them us my old cheep umbrellas to play outside together and I'm so glad I have two. I feel like I have to have two of everything these days because they don't love the idea of sharing anything, and now that Shay is getting too good at tantrum screaming I do my best to avoid it. She is still growing so fast and now starts to sing songs with us, making decisions about playing patty cake and so many other things, and her hair is getting so long too!  I love seeing her grow because she understands so much and tries so hard to use her words to communicate.

    

Picnic

Like mentioned above, I organized a picnic with other couples in my church to meet up and eat at a park. With how much I stress, plan, and think through things it went awesomely and I'm very satisfied with myself. Enough of tooting my own horn, I made a spaghetti bake with hidden carrots and zucchini so the kids would get veggies even though they didn't even try it... There were altogether 5 couples that came but some left before another showed so only 4 at a time but I met 5 new people! I've lived here for 9 months and I'm still meeting new members of our ward. Then I had the opportunity to bring some leftovers to another new friend I hope see more of from my ward who has a son my girls would love to play with. 

Fun in the Sun

 Claire

This week, Claire single handedly used all of the chalk Shay got for her birthday in a mess of water art on the ground and herself. She said she was a monster and put it all over her face and got Shay excited to join once she woke up from her nap. Another fun thing we did outside this week was get the sprinkler going and the girls started trying to run underneath the arch, it definitely feels like summer here. We have a lot of fun outside at the parks we go to, but also in our own backyard, it is truly a blessing to have a little area that is safe for the girls to play. Claire is so creative and sometimes leads Shay into some funny games like spreading her blankets and pillows out as cat beds that the stuffed animals and them can lay on.  I can understand most of the things she is telling me these days but had one today that I could not figure out and no matter what context she gave me I'm still baffled. Hopefully as we continue to learn letters, sounds, and words she will have less of a lisp.

Shay

The words this one knows are growing too! Her favorite is NO at full volume whenever she is throwing a tantrum which seems to be too often this week so our 'time outs' have become more often too. She said "right here" one time when I asked her where something went, and there is a funny exchange when daddy is playing throw girls on the couch that is pretty common. He will say 'ready' and she says 'ready' then he says 'set' and she says 'go' so he will throw her. Other than that she likes playing hide and seek with Claire and although she doesn't say the numbers, she makes sounds like she has heard us counting. I just can't believe she is no longer my baby, even though we all still call her Baby Shay. She still gets hypnotized when we find a new interesting show for them to share the iPad with while they get distracted drawing.

April Flowers

 Claire

Whenever we go for walks past flowers she likes to stop and smell the which makes her ready for looking at the flowers we have brought in our house from our front yard. The rose bush that we had nothing to do with and haven't cared for at all is blooming and very pretty! She will randomly go smell them in the middle of the day like she just remembered them being on our kitchen counter, and she was pretty upset when pedals would fall off. As long as we let the pedals stay next to the flowers she now understands that it is normal and okay. This week she randomly asked for blue pancakes and I thought it was way too specific but did it anyway and even put mini chocolate chips in it for them. I still don't know why she asked for something so specific and if it came from a show because a few weeks ago she wanted pancakes too and I let her choose the color. Her favorite breakfast is oatmeal though and that is the majority of what she eats for breakfast.

Shay

Her communication skills are getting so good! She is trying so hard to mimic sounds for numbers when we count for hide and seek, and saying the names for the body parts she knows. Specifically she points out her nose, eyes, ears, mouth, head, and then toes and forgets that the song also has shoulders and knees. Her knowledge of animals and their sounds is also growing and it is fun to play farm house with her and have her try the sounds. As many tantrums as she throws, we've gotten good at telling her to go calm down in her room or just distracting her with something different. There was one time she was mad that I took her pee soaked cloths off and immediately forgot about it when I put her in a pretty dress to show daddy. They both loved getting dressed for church and showing off their dresses by twirling around, it helps most situations when we tell them to go show the other parent something. Oh and she likes being like mommy when she found my hair wrap after I had showered and didn't put it away.

Easter Fun

 Easter

We have some amazing neighbors here in California and got egged, received a primary gift with resurrection eggs, and also got some letters from grandparents. It is nice my girls are young enough they don't expect gifts because I didn't do anything special other than let them play with the eggs we already have. I hid them so they could wake up to find them in the morning and then through out the day we played hide and find at least 10 times in the backyard. Shay didn't always understand why I was taking the eggs back and would get mad at me, but she loved finding them so much. I'm glad for all the wonderful messages I was able to listen to and read about the Atonement and hope that the message can sink in to the girls over the years because they didn't pay attention very well today. 

Claire

We went to 3 different parks this past week and Claire was excited to play with the friends we saw around and was very excited about a new set up. She loves new slides and learning to use the tubes that you can speak through to each other. She also saw someone doing monkey bars and asked for help to try to do it herself and then proceeded to do it 5 times in a row but I think her hands started to hurt. It will now be something she will ask for all the time though and it will be fun to see how fast she can do it on her own when she can reach. As much as I love that she can communicate so well and loves to talk she now thinks she can't do anything on her own and insists on getting my help with everything. 

Shay

I love how much she seems to be learning from her sister and that she has her own attitude for everything especially when she talks to us. She still follows around Claire when she is running around to different things but eventually starts doing her own thing and would rather push people down slides instead of go down herself. I can tell she is getting close to dropping her daily nap but still can't make it all day since she fell asleep at 6pm at the dinner table as I was cooking. It was precious but she didn't get to eat what I was cooking! I don't often carry her on my shoulders anymore but on our way back from the park she was up and holding with a death grip so she wouldn't fall off. She was even nervous about pointing and had to rearrange her grip so she could point at the doggy.  

April

I love the saying "April showers bring May flowers" even though I don't like rain unless I get to watch it through a window. We have really good weather already and I feel like I didn't get a very long spring time since it has already been pretty hot this past week. We have flowers on our rose bush outside and the ones I planted a few weeks ago are growing too, I'm excited for the girls to see them grow because Claire waters them with me. We have already brought out the pool in the backyard for the girls to cool down during the hot day when they want to be playing outside in the sun and wear summer cloths. The modeling picture was from when I helped out my sister in law and it started to sprinkle outside.