Of Sickness and Pee

Oh what a day we've had around here. Usually I am in bed by now. It is 11:00 pm (and still daylight, by the way thanks to our crazy-awesome Alaskan daylight) But I am not in bed. Instead, I've spent the last several hours soothing my poor sweet sick Claire. She decided to come down with some sort of weird hacky, barky, coughy, full of fever, no appetite ailment. And it all started Saturday. She has been running a 102 fever for the past few days and the poor thing can't get any sleep because she keeps waking up in hard-to-stop coughing/barking fits. I am guessing we are dealing with croup. But regardless of the cause, my poor baby is quite miserable and I feel so bad for her.

On top of all that, I am just waiting, WAITING for Sarah and I to come down with it next. Why? Well, Claire's coughs come so quickly and randomly (it's like her diaphragm just spasms out of control) that she will often be in mid sentence looking you right in the eye when a giant cough occurs with no warning. I have been sprayed with her cooties more times than I can count in these past 48 hours. And Sarah? Well, try as I might to keep her away from Claire's cootie zone, I found her sucking on the thermometer I had yet to sterilize after taking Claire's temperature. Lovely. So thanks to that germsicle, Sarah and I both no doubt have something ominous brewing within us and are just waiting for the fallout.

Now I am not really sure how Claire got sick. But I do know why. Fevers always have a way of rearing their ugly heads in our house just before big events. Schedule a trip? Bring home a fever. Family coming to visit? Better pull out the thermometer. So of course, this fever has preceded another big event. I chose this week to begin potty training Sarah. It was the perfect week. Gymnastics were finally over. My women's bible study has wrapped up its current session. For the first time in months, we have nothing we HAVE to do this week. So I thought it was the perfect time to start the potty training process. I actually planned to start the training process on Monday, but when Claire's temperature flared up and we couldn't take her to church, I decided that since we'd be stuck at home anyway, we'd start the training a day early.

Sigh.

That sigh deserved to be a paragraph all its own. Day 1 of potty training has been a roller coaster. It started out very, VERY well. But things quickly spiraled downhill.

We did all the typical potty training prep. Once Sarah woke up and had her breakfast, I started the timer to remind me to take her to the potty every 10 minutes just to see if anything would happen. The first three attempts were moderately successful in that she sat happily on the potty while I read her a book. No fussing, happy as a clam Sarah just sat there until I said, "All done!" and then she happily got down and resumed play time.

On attempt 4, she actually went potty a little bit. SCORE!! That provided the opportunity for lots of verbal praise and, of course, some Skittles. Sarah was shocked. Candy? CANDY?! She never even noticed the container of Skittles sitting by the sink until I delved out the first round. She was thrilled. Elated. As was I.

Attempt #5 went just as smoothly. She went potty for Daddy and received yet another skittle. Things were going well. Then I made a fatal mistake. I literally said these words, "This is going so much smoother than when we did this with Claire!". Yes, I did. Really.

Sigh.

That was the turning point. For whatever reason, from that point on, Sarah wanted nothing to do with the potty. When we would say, "Time to go potty!" She would shake her head no and run in the opposite direction. We didn't want to force her just yet. After all, this is just day 1. She is really just supposed to be learning what the potty is all about right now. The last thing we want to do is traumatize her to the point that she won't ever sit on the potty. So we did our best to play it cool. I think we got her on the potty two more times before the end of the day. And both of those times she was unsuccessful at going potty.

I realize that she may not be ready yet, but I am not giving up after only one day. We are giving it this week before we decide whether or not to postpone further training. And if she ends up with Claire's nasty virus, then I expect that to derail training all together. No way am I going to force a baby with a 102 fever to sit on a potty. So time will tell.

I look forward to reporting back in a couple of days that Sarah and I are healthy and that Sarah is fully potty trained. Hey, don't laugh. You gotta think positive, right?

Sweetness

I love post-bath time in our house. The girls are all mellow, warm and cuddly. Plus they smell GREAT!! Tonight, the girls wanted to spend their post-bath time watching TV with Daddy on our bed. I snapped a few cute pics of it and thought I'd share. I am going to post several shots because it will display for you the mobile nature of my sweet Sarah. You will see that in all the pictures both Claire and Michael are pretty much in the same pose. They were both engrossed in the show. Sarah on the other hand . . . . well, she wanted to watch the show, but her method of "watching" has always needed to involve some sort of motion. Love her!

 I love this sweetness. It reminds me of this sweet picture when Daddy only had one little girl to snuggle:

Boy do we feel doubly blessed now!

Claire's Cut

So posts about my sweet Claire's hair are becoming regular on here. You may remember this one which actually has links to several other posts about her hair. In re-reading that post, I saw a phrase at the bottom that made me laugh. I said, "I am really looking forward to the day when all her locks are long enough to accomplish the basic pony tail. Oh won't that day be nice?" Well, folks, that day came. And it was nice . . . . for me. I could sweep her hair back into a pony tail and it would make the cutest little ringlets. I loved it. However, when her hair was left down, it would friz out and stand on end. I would comb it down all nice and neat and I kid you not that within 2 minutes, it would look like she just crawled out of bed. So the pony tail was the perfect solution for me.

The problem? Claire HATED it. With a passion. It got to the point where Claire would see me coming toward her with comb and detangling spray in hand and would say, "No pony tail!" Often I would swallow my pride and accommodate her. After all, it was her hair wasn't it? But I have to be honest and say that there were some days where I forced the pony tail position just so that I wouldn't look like a mother who never combed her child's hair.

While in Houston, I decided to do a little experiment with her hair. One day we were having a playdate at a dear friend's house. I intentionally left Claire's hair down so that my friend could see my predicament. She and I both agreed that as beautiful as Claire is, her hair needed some help. Here are a few pics of my sweet beautiful girl with her hair down.

So I finally decided to cut her hair off short. After all the waiting to get it long enough for a pony tail, I never thought I'd take her back to short. But I am tired of fighting the battle with her. So I took her to my sweet friend, Renee and she did an amazing job. Here are a few shots of the final result:

And a blurry shot of the back of the hair . . . 

I don't know how long we will keep the short, sassy do, but I love it for now. And so does Claire. She is finally getting her wish. No more pony tails!!

Happy Birthday My Precious Claire!!!

Claire turned 4 on Sunday. And Claire was clueless. We didn't tell her that it was her birthday because we already had her big birthday party a week ago when we were in Houston. Originally I planned to make it clear to her that she was just having an early party and that her real birthday wouldn't happen until we were back in Alaska. Then I looked at the calendar. I realized that this year, Claire's birthday fell on Easter Sunday. I couldn't imagine trying to incorporate all the festivities of Resurrection Day with all the festivities of a birthday. So whenever Claire said her birthday was going to happen in Houston, we just went with it. It did make my Mommy's heart ache a bit to know it was her birthday and not be able to make a big deal of it with her on the actual day.

But we had an amazing party filled with lots of friends in Houston. Claire was on cloud nine! I wouldn't trade the joy she had during that party for anything.

Greeting her sweet friend who she hasn't seen in months.

Another sweet friend reunion!

About a month ago, Claire came to me and requested a rainbow cake. She loves Cheer Bear (from the Care Bears) who has a rainbow belly badge. When she asked for a rainbow cake, I knew what I wanted to do. I saw an amazing rainbow cake on another blog and badly wanted to try my hand at making it. But that just wasn't going to happen from our hotel room. So instead, I enlisted the help of my good friend Kristi and she came through BIG TIME!!! She made the outside look like a cloud and even put a Cheer Bear on top.

What an amazing job!!!

Claire even danced a little birthday jig with Chuck.

While we didn't party on the actual day, I can't think of any better way to celebrate my precious 4 year old than surrounded by our dear friends back in Houston. Claire has been missing her friends so much and talking about them almost daily. What a treat to get to spend this precious time with them. 

Happy birthday my sweet and precious Claire. You are such a blessing to us. You make your Mommy and Daddy very proud and we love you more than words can say!!!

Packing, Packing, Packing

The time is here. We are finally headed back to Houston for some much missed sunshine and warmth!! We are so excited to see all our friends and to attend church at "home" again! Claire is more excited than any of us I think. She has really missed all her friends. We have chosen to celebrate her birthday several weeks early so that we can have a party at Chuck-E-Cheese with all her Houston friends. She is pumped beyond pumped. And she isn't afraid to share her enthusiasm with everyone we meet. Seriously. Her Sunday school teacher, the check out girl at the grocery store, the nice neighbor walking her dog and many other random people have heard this same run-on sentence spew forth from Claire's mouth at breakneck speed:

"We are getting ready to get on a plane to fly to Houston so I can have my birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese and eat my rainbow birthday cake with all my friends and my Nana is coming and is going to bring me a Jasmine doll if she can find it!!!!!!"

I almost typed that entire sentence without spaces so that you could experience just how fast she blurts out that entire ramble.

I've had to remind Claire multiple times that we are NOT going to be staying in our old house. She had convinced herself that not only would we be staying in our former home, but that all our stuff was going to magically appear there so that she would be able to sleep in her own bed the entire time we were there. Poor pumpkin. She really misses "home".

So we will be gone for a solid week. I am sure I will return with many grumbling posts about our insane 12 hour flight (Which, by the way starts at midnight. Yep.) And I will hopefully return with several fun pictures of us all enjoying one of the 3 weeks a year that Houston weather is comfortable.

Now I am off to pack some more. As I type this, my To Do list is smacking me in the back of the head and asking me why I am blogging when there are so many things that still need to be accomplished before we leave.

Cheers!!

Techno Tots

Last week I made a commitment that I would significantly reduce the amount of television my children watch each day. Now I must admit, this is a commitment I have made many times in the past and within a few months, we have slowly crept back up to what I consider WAY too much TV.

I think it has gotten worse since we moved here. My excuses for this added TV time are as follows:
1) Claire has dropped her naps and the ONLY way I will EVER get anything done is if I let her watch a movie while Sarah naps.
2) It is stinkin' cold here and the only place that offers indoor entertainment in our town is the playground at McDonalds.
3) We now have a playroom that has it's own cable access. So now the girls can go into the playroom and shut the door while watching TV. This is a tricky one. When they are in there and the house is quiet, I switch into "get things done" mode and the time flies by at warp speed. Before I even think to check, they have often managed to watch at least 3 or 8 shows in a row.

Head hung in shame.

Don't think for a moment that I feel that any of the above excuses are actually excusable. I really don't. Thus the new commitment. This commitment started last Friday. Snicker, snicker. Does anyone really ever stick to new commitments that start on Friday? Well, I did. For one day at least. Friday was great! I think the girls got a total of 2 hours of TV over the entire day. I know that for some of you that is still too much, but for us that is a major accomplishment. We played and played until we couldn't play any longer. I was quite worn out, but the girls were happy as little larks. And I was feeling like Mommy of the year.

Then comes the weekend. I did my best to monitor how much TV they watched, but weekends around here are so relaxed. And it is hard for me to want to play with the girls around the clock when their Daddy is taking a (well deserved) break from work by watching TV in the living room. All I want to do is put on a movie for the girls and go join him. So the weekend was a big flop. Not to mention that the girls' answer to my "less TV" stance was to go in search of alternate forms of technology.

At one point, I found them sitting the hallway with my iphone and Michael's ipod.

Then a bit later, I found them in our office. Sarah now had the ipod and Claire had ditched the phone for the Mobigo. 

It was at this point that I admitted defeat and decided to start my commitment anew on Monday morning. 

And here we are on Monday morning. You know what killed my resolve today? Both girls woke up with fevers and Sarah has a wicked, gross cough. So now we are nursing everyone back to health in the hopes that we are all well for our Houston trip and my resolve for less TV will just have to wait for another day. 

You Can Never Go Back

We've officially started chores with Claire. She was such a trooper about it at first. Now? Well it's touch and go.  I don't know that I would have started this little chore list quite so soon had it not been for my cheap nature. I'll explain. (was there any doubt?)

Claire received a pillow pet for Christmas. And she loved it. Loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. Fast forward a month or so and you'll find us perusing the aisles in our grocery store. This store has started carrying pillow pet pee wees. These little darlings are about 1/4 the size of the original pillow pets. I knew immediately that Claire would want one. I knew this because ever since she was old enough to hold on to a stuffed animal, she has been obsessed with all things mommy and baby. If she has a stuffed animal, rest assured it has a mommy or baby somewhere in her collection. Sometimes they are similar in nature. For example she has two little stuffed kittens who play mommy and baby to one another. Other times, the combo is more on the odd side. Take her baby giraffe/mommy elephant combo for example.

So back to these pee wees. I knew that Claire was going to want to have the matching baby purple unicorn to go with her "mommy" purple unicorn. It didn't take Claire long to spot them and begging to commence. I took a quick look at the price tag and knew immediately that I wasn't going to be buying one of these things for Claire. They cost $12.99. That is a mere seven dollars less expensive than the original, 4-times larger version. I just couldn't do it. But of course, Claire was insistent. So I recommended that we create a list of jobs for her to do around the house. She could earn some money and save up for this baby pillow pet. Immediately, Claire was on board. She ran over to the pile of pet pee wees and grabbed a baby unicorn. She snuggled it close to her cheek and I heard her sweet voice say, "Don't worry baby. I am going home to work hard and make some money so I can buy you! Your mommy will be so happy to see you when I bring you home!" I must admit, that melted my heart. Too bad for Claire that it didn't even begin to thaw my resolve.

So we created a list of chores.
1) Make your bed.
2) Dress yourself.
3) Bring your night time cup downstairs and put it in the sink.
4) Put your coat, shoes and dirty clothes where they belong.
5) Clean the playroom each night before bed.

Immediately I nerded out and my inner teacher took control. I put all these items on a chart in picture form and taped it to the inside of Claire's bedroom door.

That way, she could see the list every morning and remember what she was supposed to do before coming downstairs.

For weeks I never heard one argument from Claire about her jobs. She was such a happy little worker. She was thrilled that she could make her bed and happy as a lark to dress herself. Every morning, I'd be downstairs reading or working on something and I would look up and see a very  happy Claire be-bopping into the kitchen. She'd be fully clothed and tossing her cup into the sink. She was ready to face the day. It was awesome and I was questioning why I didn't start this sooner.

Each Friday we have a payday of sorts. She earns 3 dollars each week. (one dollar per year of life) 30 cents gets put aside for God, and the rest goes in her piggy bank to save for her precious baby pillow pet.

When the day of purchase finally came, I have never seen this little girl so excited. We headed to the store and made her purchase and she was on cloud nine. 

Mommy and baby now united, Claire suddenly announces that she no longer needs to save money and thus no longer needs to perform her jobs. Sigh. This is where the real work begins I suppose. I find the nicest way possible to explain to her that once you prove that you are capable of doing jobs independently, you really can never go back. Not in our house at least. And that like it or not, her jobs were going to continue. She might as well start to think of the next thing she wanted to save up to buy. 

We had several weeks of a reluctant worker. But she is finally about half way back to where we were before. She will do her jobs without complaining once more, but she no longer does them without being prompted. Oh well. Better than nothing I suppose. 

Her most recent purchase sent her piggy bank balance back to zero. But her love of this little creature has reignited her desire to earn money.  

She has now informed me that she is saving to buy the movie Milo and Otis. I don't even know if that movie is still being sold anywhere. Guess I better start looking online. 

I am happy she is starting to make goals. And I am also happy that she has yet to figure out that the money she earns could possibly buy her candy. That's a battle I am not quite ready to fight. 

Alright, I'd better go do my chores. Too bad I don't get a weekly allowance for mine. Because I know FULL WELL that my money could purchase candy and that knowledge would definitely thaw my resolve in that realm.