Thinking of October

 Claire

Her love of all colors continues and she asks me to make rainbows out of her Duplo blocks all the time and then doesn't let anyone play with it so it doesn't break. It only lasts so long though and I have to remember how I made it previous times...it changes a lot. There are a few things that she is good at sharing but a lot of times she tries to keep all the toys to her self and in a basket so she can hide them away from her friend. Half of the cars are his so I don't know why she is so possessive over them when they are his favorite toys! They play well outside together, but they ALWAYS get wet so it now is moving to closer to lunch since the mornings are a little chilly these days. The other fun thing for them is bubbles and pretending to fall on the slippery floor, but I had to start putting a towel down because they actually fall sometimes too.

Shay

Shay is so interested in learning and always wants to draw or practice letters! I know she is going to be my smarty pants and hopefully that will push her sister forward in a good way and not be competitive. Shay is already trying to sound out words and write letters as I'm trying to teach Claire those skills and has always seemed to be learning what Claire is currently on. Now that Claire had a hair cut and Shay hasn't they seem like they could be twins with Shay just not having the tall genes. They are both potty trained (only accidents every once in a while for Shay), they weigh basically the same, they eat mostly the same amount (not enough in my opinion), now they are learning the same things. They definitely have different personalities since Shay is still in her terrible twos and Claire can speak fuller sentences an reason better. 

Date

The girls had a blast with our adopted nana who came to play with them while Chris and I went out on a dinner date. Shay took it so well when we left and I think has grown out of crying when we leave, unless she is cranky and hasn't napped of course. I was told they had some singing time and drew some wonderful pictures out on our backyard sidewalk they we saw when we got home. There were lots of hearts and Claire drew our family in her potato looking way of a head and arms and legs but no body. Chris and I used a gift card from the pictures we won last week to go on our date and the market-cafe was super confusing and strange when ordering, but had good food.

Halloween

We have been saving up milk jugs for the past month or two in preparation for crafting decorations for October and Halloween season. Chris spent most of his working on a cut out skeleton, modeling the face after Jack skeleton and then painting it black so when we put lights inside it would look awesome. I did some smaller easy projects and drew faces on some of them to look like ghosts and pumpkins because I had blue and orange lights to fill them with. Then we filled them with dirt so they wouldn't blow away and lined them up on our porch. Our project together was the spider and web for the corner of our house! The spider was made out of two jugs, some pipe insulator, and black tape with a place for tea lights to create eyes that light up. Claire and Shay were great helpers when we were using the hair dryer to remove labels from the jugs by running them to me then back to dad when they were done. They painted some pictures when dad was painting the skeleton and helped me find rocks for the ghosts and pumpkins. Over the next week I'll get the rest of the inside Halloween decorations out and be ready for October to start!

Settling September

Claire

It has started to get cool enough in the mornings that the girls bring out their blankets and cuddle up for our morning cartoons. I am usually making breakfast, like my mini ones, or doing dishes because I'm most productive in the morning so they each cocoon themselves in their blankies until I call for them to come eat. On Saturday, we had a cleaning day and Claire was a big helper by cleaning up all the toys and picking up the things off the floor so I could sweep and mop. Then they were both excited to help clean the car as a family activity since I was tired to seeing it so messy while working out every morning! She loves making rainbows when we color and uses sidewalk chalk for outside, pens or crayons for paper and even did it on the Gospel Kids app during church.

Shay

Whenever we color it is because Shay has asked to because she asks ALL the time. She is the reason all of my crayons are missing the paper on them too because of reasons I guess.  We inherited some new cloths that gave us a lot of new PJs for Shay to wear and she likes to wear the fishy ones even when it isn't bed time. Her effort was good but they were upside down, half inside out, and probably backwards so they wouldn't go all the way on her legs. She kept looking at me and going "grr" because her other leg would go through the hole all the way. She loves just saying my name to get my reaction instead of wanting anything then will giggle when I look her then say it more. Its the best when she yells in through the halls of the church into our class because she has to go potty...right?

Pictures

I will have pictures hopefully next week to share because I won a prize to get professional pictures taken! I was a dunce and didn't take any of my own while we were all dressed up or while we were getting ready. I spent all of Friday doing our nails, hair, and my make up done so that right when our friend went home we could drive to the studio. Claire is ready to be a supermodel and followed the photographers directions really well during pictures, while Shay had one cheese face that was what you see above at the table. Hopefully we got a few ones and afterwards we ate at Subway and plan to use the gift card I won along with the pictures to a restaurant next week for a date.

Ready for Fall

 Claire

This week we have seen our friend less than normal, but almost every day and Claire keeps asking to go to her friends house on the days he doesn't come over. I think she likes when he brings his toys here and they can steal them by baiting him with our toys because he likes our cars. At least it is a form or sharing and they all have fun driving around the house or in Claire's case flying his helicopter (in the video). We used our curlers overnight to have curly hair for church and the result right after taking them out was so funny Chris got some pictures. I was able to tame the curls and make them look less crazy for church, I think it still looked cute after loosening them, but I'm still experimenting and will be using the bigger ones next time. This week as been really hot and we've been trying to get out to play when it is cool, but we don't get much except what is in our backyard. 

Shay

My little bundle of attitude here is learning her own form of stubborn and folds her arms and gets mad at me when I don't give her what she wants. I bought a new kind of cereal that is more colorful and fun than the past ones we have had so now she asks for it at every meal! Of course I have to tell her no and she gets all annoyed that I won't let her have it, and if she hasn't had a nap that day and it is past 3 she gets sooooo terrible. Darn this 2 years of age! She has broken the habit of sticking her tongue out or hitting so I'm good with her being upset with me in her own growling way. There is still a huge attachment to me when I'm trying to leave for a meeting or something and she will start getting her shoes if she sees me getting ready to leave. I hear from Chris how heart broken she is about being left behind and it breaks my heart too! I wish there were more places we could go together instead of just church. Today I was trying to go for a walk around the neighborhood and they looked at me like "how could you leave us again" so we went together and they held hands and we walked for a good 30 minutes.

Starting September

 Claire

The day after Nana left Claire went to the guest room and asked where she was then we were cuddling and she said "I miss Nana" and I just realize she didn't stay long enough! She is becoming a better leader when we have our friend over every day and showing some sharing skills to Shay. She is trying to tell them what to do and when they are done with a game and she isn't she gets super emotional about it so I'm trying to explain that she can't make other people do things. They did have a fight over who gets to have their friend because they both wanted to play a game with him at the same time. She likes her high heels we wear from church and made some Lego high heels to walk around the couch the other day which was so funny. We were able to do a painting day on Saturday because I found something I wanted to paint on Pinterest and had all the material already.

Shay

She is becoming very possessive over some of the toys that we have when their friend is over and doesn't like him to play with them. I'm trying to come up with the best way to teach her how to share and not be so rude while they are all playing.  Chris started sticking his tongue out at our house guest as a fun joke and it would make him laugh but now Shay is starting to stick her tongue out at me with attitude when she doesn't want to do what I say. She has such a bratty attitude about it and I'm sure my mom would just laugh at me if she was still here and say she was just like me. I did a bad job taking pictures this week because we didn't do much compared to when Nana was here but we tried flying a kite today at the park but there was no wind. Although it's getting cooler over all it was a little hot today and says it is going to be hot tomorrow too for labor day.