Just Another July Week

 Claire

Since I am here with Claire every day I don't notice how amazingly smart she is becoming with communication, learning, and playing. I always encourage her to ask full sentence questions when she wants anything and mostly she is great with it unless she is in an upset state. She is learning new games from what she watches when we have TV time and she is starting to recognize most of the lowercase letters. I've now added trying to match pictures of what letters start with and I need to get more pictures than what is already on the flashcards we have. Her hand writing is still so immature but there is only room for improvement! She can also now draw her family without any help with a mommy, daddy, Claire, and Shay, and animals with their features like ears, legs, tails, etc. I had the random bright idea to make a paper airplane one day and it made them both so happy and Claire kept trying to teach Shay how to throw it properly since I showed her.

Shay

She has recently fallen in love with Frozen and sings "let it go, let it go" to tell me she wants to watch the movie, or at least that song so we can sing and dance together. It is most likely because we have a Frozen puzzle that we do so Claire can practice puzzle solving, even though she only does the faces while I do the rest. There are also several clothing items and some of our underwear that have Frozen, so they pretend to be princesses and Claire knows their names making it easier for Shay to be excited for it too. I feel like Shay is already so smart because she recognizes so many letters as I'm trying to teach Claire, and she understands so much. They both  love to help but Shay is always so insistent that I have to find some way for her to help like finding the right colors for building block birthday cakes. She is pretty good with communication but there are still some barriers when she can't say the word correctly and we have to guess until we hit the jack pot.

Friend

We have a new opportunity starting this week that I'm excited for, and it came about because of some random circumstances. My friend needed help watching her boy for a day while she worked and I was able to bring the girls with me to have a long play date. Now we have arranged that he can come play at our house with the girls for Monday and Tuesday while she is at work and it makes things easier for her and a good opportunity for us. I'm excited for the girls to have a friend over and Claire keeps saying 'yay thank you mommy' when I tell her he is coming to play tomorrow.  We might just be using the AC more to keep us all more comfortable if they will be playing and running around away from the fans I usually have going.

Joyful July

 Claire

We are finding new and fun ways to learn and play these last few weeks. I brought out short pieces of ribbons that the girls could use to make letters and shapes on the table. Claire is getting good with drawing the letters on paper but scribbles too much over her work that you can't tell she is getting it down. She also doesn't like copying the letter I make until that letter is gone which is so funny. I wanted to get a picture of us all matching for church but we ran out of time before and after Shay was sleeping but they both had the same dress, backpacks, and sunglasses on as we walked out the door because I had those things. There is definitely a monkey see monkey do mentality as they copy my actions or each others fun games. Even Claire copies Shay when she finds something and I think it is cute enough for a picture. The biggest exciting thing this week was her talk she gave in primary this week! Chris found a few pictures to show and small sentences she repeated about how Jesus leads her along and it was so precious!

Shay

I can understand so much of what she is saying that I am surprised when the nursery leaders don't know exactly what she wants. She only lasted half the time this week unfortunately even though she seemed to go back after she came out to go to the bathroom and then again when her diaper came half off and she had to tell me. Then the last time she came out she said she didn't want to play anymore and since there was only 10 minutes left I sat with her in the foyer until we went and found Claire. While Chris and I were studying this week she found our headphones and looked really cute I took a picture so Claire had to copy her and get her picture taken.

Date

A wonderful sister in our ward has been adopted as a Nana by Claire and Shay and came to babysit and play with them for a couple hours. Although Shay is still upset when we leave and apparently cried for a few minutes and then was upset for 5-10 minutes more she got over it and was able to play. Chris and I were able to go out to eat and then see a movie together in a nice movie theater with reclining seats. Maybe most movie theaters have those comfy seats now but we haven't seen a movie in a theater in almost 2 years! We watch a lot of movies and shows in the comfort of our home as cuddle dates, but not often out before it is free to see online. We initially only planned to go eat but then when it was over so quick we checked in and got the go ahead to go to a movie, such a blessing. When we got home I had to translate the beautiful song that Claire sang, lets see if you can hear some of her words...

The Heat

Claire

We let her bring the bikes, scooter, and shopping carts that normally are outside inside when she cleans up her toys so they can play with them out of the heat. I've made a parking lot with painting tape against the TV wall so they aren't just hanging out all over the living room. Claire has mastered the double shopping cart technique when transporting her toys back to the playroom even though sometimes the parking lot gets forgotten. Our reading time is going well and she likes to have all her stuffed animals read with us too! When the timer is up Claire will immediately yell "yay" in protest of having to whisper for the last hour, you read that right, we are up to an hour of quiet reading time! 

Shay

There were two days this week that Shay didn't take a nap at all! I can't believe how much she is growing and learning trying to gain more independence from baby life. She doesn't complain during our quiet reading time but she often forgets what quiet means and will do a squeal of excitement while reading a book. Potty training is going really well this week and she holds herself and says 'oddy' which is her way of saying potty to tell me. Even Claire tells me when she needs to potty so I don't know when they will grow out of having to announce it to the world (especially in church). I put her in a diaper for church because I would feel terrible if there was an accident, but she insisted we leave sacrament to use the bathroom. It'll only keep getting better and it will be really nice to not need diapers anymore! She is able to find her own entertainment on occasions when Claire is busing doing other things and had fun with flashlight finding.

Temperature

I first wanted to talk about how hot it has been this past week and specifically how bad the last three days have been with the first heatwave of the summer. We had temperatures raise to 112 yesterday and don't look like they will go back under 90s for a while. The power bill would be really bad if we tried running the AC too often so we've been using fans and opening the windows to utilize the breeze as a way of staying cool. We also let the girls hang out in minimal cloths when no one else is coming to visit and we aren't going out. They also tend to get their cloths wet if they are wearing anything because we play in the water in the backyard as entertainment in the mornings before it is too hot and in the evenings when we have shade. Eating cool watermelon, popsicles, and drinking ice cold drinks are other fan favorites in this house and if I don't pre cut the watermelon Chris gets carried away with his slices.

Home for the 4th

 Claire

Being back at home has been fun for her and she is remembering the names of her dogs that she names after the dogs in the show Bluey that we watch all the time. There isn't a person that she doesn't get excited to see when we go to the park or have them come over for dinner because she calls everyone her friend. Then today at church was her first time in primary which I had to get her excited over by saying she gets to have a lesson and teacher instead of playing with toys. We have been practicing quiet time all week by spending 30-45 minutes getting the books out and reading on the couch and only whispering when we talk. I was hoping it would help at church and Claire is able to understand very well now that when it is over she can now yell instead of whisper. The timer is on her iPad and she gets to watch a show when quiet time is over so she goes and checks the clock every once in a while between books. She is also learning what a pinky promise is thanks to Chris and has made several this week about eating eggs or fries, and not sucking on her fingers anymore so she can have pretty nails.

Shay

I think she is learning to be super friendly because she loves saying hi to people even if we are just walking by and they are across the street. As long as mommy and daddy are not the ones leaving she also has a great attitude about saying goodbye to people too and will repeat it over and over until those people actually leave. She seems to be really good at sharing with anyone except Claire and loves showing off that she can pull water into our water guns and spray them out all by herself. I wish I could say she was still Baby Shay, like Claire calls her, but she is starting to communicate so well and is going to the bathroom in the potty like a big girl! The first two days went poorly and she peed through 5 or 6 panties but once I got her to pee in the potty and we showed her how great it is (bribery with peanut M&Ms) she has been really good at telling us. She even got out of nursery where she was wearing a diaper to have me take her to the potty and ended up poopooing for the first time! There was one day this week that she didn't have a nap! Most of the other days she falls asleep on the couch still through.

Parties

We had the two sets of missionaries in our ward over to eat dinner with us on Wednesday night, and they shared a great message about keeping Christ close to our hearts and encouraged us to reread the prophet's talk from this last conference. Our ward hosted a beautiful flag raising ceremony followed by a delicious pancake breakfast Saturday morning that we all had so much fun attending and meeting people. An older couple introduced themselves to us and said they had picked up some toys that wouldn't end up working for their grandson because they were too pink and gave them to Claire and Shay! After spending so much time with family over the weeks before this one I was missing the group dinner parties so I invited friends for last night to have some burgers and hotdogs. We played a fun new game I recently got and had a great night despite not setting off any fireworks because we have young kids. The girls loved showing their friend the toys they have around.