First Weeks of November

Adrian

He has fun games that make him happy like 'throw things that someone gives me as far as I can', and one daddy played last night called 'try to bite the daddy's finger off before he can get away'. He had a pretty delighted giggle when Chris offered up his finger as a sacrifice instead of Adrian having to hold on to it, but Daddy was pretty quick and only got a bit a few times. Everyone who sees him when we are out and about falls in love and he smiles and flirts like crazy. He is getting some little bug that is causing buggers that I want to get out of his nose, but he hates me touching it now and gets super mad. All I want to do is help! I'm starting to feel like I'm getting the hang of being a mom of a newborn again because he had a normal schedule most days, but there are other times that I'm not so sure. Luckily since he is a happy boy 90% of the time I think things are pretty good.

Shay

As you heard in the video with Adrian, we were at the dentist this week and that was Shay in the background talking about her school. She likes answering questions about her life and is always extra excited to see her teacher at church. We even hired her teacher's daughter to babysit them when we went to the temple last week and she lost her mind when telling us who her babysitter was. Last Saturday we also went on a family date to BWW and then ice cream which was a fun time even though we need to find a closer favorite wing place because the drive is so long! The girls now ask if are we there yet when we are driving anywhere longer than 10 minutes. I've been trying to teach the girls grown-up things like how to wash their own hair in the bath, make their own lunches for school, poor their own milk and cereal for breakfast, and brush their own hair. When it all first started Shay took pride in doing things on her own, but Claire was resistant and I should have started a long time ago! Shay acts much more independently and is willing to do things on her own, just like me when I was younger. My parents said I used to say "I can do it all by myself" but I don't remember that, I wonder how much the girls will remember. I put sparkles on some food that Shay didn't like to make it 'fairy food' and it worked for the first bite, then she said she still didn't like it, but Claire ate it!

Claire

I'm starting to get a little worried about her test scores and looking for more opportunities to help her sound out words. The homework she brings home makes it seem like she should be much farther in her ability to sound out words and spell by hearing words. I wish I knew how to help her more but life is too busy and she isn't all that interested in it of course. The best system I've set up so far is making sure they both read and do homework before they get to do things they want to every day. Sometimes it is playing over at the neighbors, sometimes it is on the computer, but I'm good at saying "No, you haven't..." when they ask for anything. I opened a hair salon yesterday and gave the girls a little trim, then braided their hair so they could have wavy hair at church. It was fun to play pretend because then I talked with Claire about her life and found out how she sees the world. We did a craft with the fallen leaves from our trees so Chris could take them to work and hang them on his art wall!

Holidays

Life seems a little boring after all the excitement of Halloween, I've put up some lights on the house and even put our old small Christmas tree on the porch as a decoration since we plan on buying a real tree this year. Now we are in a transition between fall and winter with the decorations and I think it looks alright. It was windy the day I put it up so it gave me a lot of problems, and it seems to tip over so I need to fix that. But the girls are excited and want to play with the Christmas decorations instead of letting me use them to decorate! I haven't got all of them out yet but since I keep seeing neighbors put up pretty decorations so I want to do it. We've been planning for the holidays and hopefully can get a good time with family. Chris's job makes it difficult since he is in charge of the clinic and can't take off time on holidays without setting a bad example. We had our first snowfall this morning, it lasted about an hour before it turned into rain, but the girls were excited and took Adrian and Buttercup outside for a few minutes to let them experience it for the first time!