3 years, 750 ft. later. and some stuff.

when joe and i got married, naturally we stocked up on a few things. a trip to costco landed us a two-pack of plastic wrap, each box holding 750 ft of that clear stuff. and on wednesday last the FIRST roll of wrap ran out. after almost exactly 3 years, four moves, and tons of covered leftovers we got through a single box. talk about a good investment! here's to a fresh, brand-spanking new box, and 3 more years!

to the nurses at the hospital giving me grief because little man lost 10% of his weight overnight: psh. we keep joking about the cow that i am, because caleb well surpassed his birth weight at his two week appointment today. and grew 2 inches. boo ya. he is filling out nicely. still a total dream boat- he sleeps through the night pretty much, and just eats every four hours at night and goes right back to dream land. LOVE him fully and completely.

i'm sure you are sick of hearing about how much i love my doctor, but really, when the man walks in and says "i love when i get to see you guys!" with a huge smile on his face, i can't help but gush. he's just that fantastic.

anyways, baby is a dream, and claire at this point, um, is not. she has hit full on tantrums, and when she is upset she pulls her hair out. she was so upset in the car while we were in traffic that she now has a small spot of missing hair on her head, and scratches all over her face. what to do, what to do. explaining that she will hate her pictures of this age years from now does not do much at this point :) she is usually pretty well behaved though- she is as active as ever, makes friends with everyone, and is learning how to restrain from giving baby too much love. i love watching her face light up when she thinks she is really interacting with caleb, and while her interest in him is turned on and off like a light switch, seeing them together makes my heart swell, makes me sing with joy inside. at the end of the day, claire is still my sweet baby, and i love just watching her grow and learn. these two are gonna be best buds.

i need to mention how blessed we've been these last 2 1/2 weeks to have my mom around. while my recovery has been a breeze (at least compared to last time), its been wonderful to have someone pull dinner together, watch claire and caleb for a bit so i can take a nap or so that joe and i can attend the temple, and to keep us entertained in general. it was pretty clear that she was being pulled in several directions, especially being pulled by things at home, but she has stayed here and helped out so, so much with everything, and we are so grateful! thanks momma!

that's us for the moment. now that i think about it, that plastic wrap thing was kinda metaphorical for us: its a whole new chapter of our lives now- having kids and not just an infant. so weird. cheesy, yeah. whatever- i crack myself up.

one week, three years

conversation at lunch yesterday:

joe: so, you want to get some lunch tomorrow or something?

me: (so confused, we had JUST started eating lunch, he was concerned about lunch tomorrow already?) um, why? whats tomorrow?

joe: our anniversary.....

me: (in complete shock) is it really? (check phone for the date) oh my gosh! i totally forgot!

joe: me too, i just saw the date today and remembered

so that brings us to today. its a good thing we got some time together a few weeks ago, otherwise it would be a pretty pathetic day. happy three years to us! best decision ever.
caleb is alive past a week! he has survived claire (a concern from the beginning, but all fears are only that she loves on him too much) and is getting plenty eat (the cause of some drama at the hospital. a near 10% weight loss got some nurses worried, but it was just because of the biggest bowel movement you've ever seen come out of a 6-hour old infant. trust me, the most disgusting and funniest thing you've ever seen.)
he is the most peaceful, calm, easy to please baby. its all we can do to get a couple hours of awake time from him each day. claire is learning to be soft and gentle, so hard for the crazy monkey. you can tell she is just anxious to have him grow up enough to play with him.

and just for kicks. anyone watch the show "minute to win it"? claire loves it, this was her glued to it. i didn't really enjoy it last night though- they had ten "beauties" competing against each other (because miss universe was coming up). i was first annoyed that one of them had given birth three months before, and here she was shaking her legs in booty shorts for all of america to see. yuck. i was also annoyed at the girl who won. she was obviously a cheerleader, an obnoxious one, and she was so ditsy! and when one of the games came up, another beauty started crying because she thought she would lose (and she did.) it was fun to watch claire get so into though. silly, silly girl.

delish

he is soooo yummy..... dream baby. and sorry, he's all mine. more of these pics taken by lindsay to come!

back it up

a few shots of the days before baby time.... we had a few last minute fun things!

on sunday my mom and i took claire for a walk around rock canyon park, where i proceeded to push claire in the stroller up a massive, rocky hill. didn't help at all. but claire had fun at the play ground and discovering a cute little bunny that she got real close to.

little miss gets more and more daring every time we get to the pool. while not the nicest pool in the world, its been a saving grace for us this summer- its heated to the perfect temp most of the time, and its usually empty during the times we go. and yes, that would be claire jumping over daddy into the pool. NO FEAR!

oh yes, and this was me the last few days. an old man at church came up to me and actually asked if i had swallowed a basketball. yes sir, i did. (i love that guy, i know he was teasing :)

claire misses her papa! she really did have a good time, and we are so grateful that rick was able to be here and help out with claire. he did so well with her, and she can't wait to see him again!
and this lovely greeting- claire kissing her second cousin poppy good-bye. we spent some time with just a few aunts, cousins and kids two days before caleb arrived- so fun! we don't get a chance to see each other often, so getting together was a treat!
just a few pics for anyone who couldn't be around :) we love you and wish you could be here!

home again

finally made it home this afternoon. claire is still trying to figure out who the little guy is, and is doing her best to keep the attention focused on her. she has tried to climb in his little rocker with him, steals the bear she picked out for him, and hangs out in his car seat. she is mostly really sweet with him though, and will blow lots of kisses.

caleb so far has been a dream. he loves his sleep, and puts up with just about anything with hardly a fuss. and he smells so, so good. mmmmm the smell of a newborn!

Caleb Has Arrived!!!

Just a few pics of Caleb and family. Sorry no pictures of Lindsay, she took most of these, but there will be more to come. Caleb was born at 6:19 PM weighing 8 lbs 10 oz. He was 20 in long and came out with a high pitched squeal of a cry. Mom and baby are both doing great and he really likes to sleep so far. He has some good dark brown hair and his daddy's nose. Claire is most excited to have a baby brother and could not stop giving him loves and kisses. Hopefully that will continue... but i'll be honest... i doubt it will happen.

he's a graduate!

claire had to be in all the pictures.... ah, well. she's just as proud of him as i am! graduation was yesterday and today, and we are so happy that he is finally done! i think its still hitting him, and it might take a while to fully comprehend. to celebrate he's currently taking a well-deserved nap, (it was an early morning!) but we'll be doing more later. the big present for him is getting to have a son, which will happen no later than this monday! his other present was his dad flying out for graduation, and its been so fun to have him around. claire's got her papa wrapped around her finger, and totally loves having another person to jump on. its been a CRAZY few weeks for both sides of our families, even more so than we could have imagined, but we are so happy to have joe's dad here and my mom flying out tomorrow to help us out.

speaking of families- joe's sister laura had her baby girl early tuesday morning! as much as we all thought it would be fun to have cousin-twins, an early out from zoe was welcome i'm sure. many congrats to the bell family!

welp, here's to hoping this baby comes soon....

2 beefs.

beef #1. is there a reason christmas and halloween stuff is already out on display at costco? i'll just be enjoying my summer still, thanks.

beef #2. nevermind. i had some negative thoughts to share, but i just want people to be happy. can't we all be happy? here's a list of things that make me happy. claire makes me happy. joe makes me happy. the gospel makes me happy. service, family, temples, and beautiful testimonies make me happy. pizza, chocolate, and getting letters from my missionary brother also make me happy. really bad things followed by things that are 1,000's of times better make me joyful and give me hope. weddings, pretty flowers, and babies fill me with warm fuzzies. making a check-list a mile long and getting them all done makes me feel accomplished. a hot bath or a pedicure relax me. oprah's haircut make me want to chop mine all off for a thrill.

anyways. hope that inspires you to think some happier thoughts and forget those negative ones.

she kills me!

she is too cool for school this one. GOSH i love her. (see those tan lines everywhere? we probably swim a little too much!)
she delights in some simple things, but grand things all the same. oh, the coveted sprinkle doughnut! takes me back to saturday mornings growing up; the five of us kids would beg to go across the street to looney's doughnuts for a dozen. sometimes we would have to pool all our change together, and we would each get to choose our very favorite. i always felt bad because almost everyone got to have two, but instead of 14 in a dozen there are only 12, and with 7 people, someone had to sacrifice. i think that it was usually mom! anyways. i seriously love that she loves them!
one-eye winky bean!
so, so sweet.
mouthful! of chips. she LOVES her chips.

i wish everyone could know her like i do. i can tell she just might be kinda nerdy, but in a funny, cool kinda way.

2 memories

we've been having a pretty neat-o storm this afternoon and evening, and while our plans of swimming went out the window, i did enjoy cracking the windows and listening to the rain and thunder. its been one of those mid-western type storms and has left me reminiscing about two things.....

the first is that thunderstorms will forever remind me of our sweet doggie oreo. she HATED thunderstorms, and would wander around the house, un-consolable for hours and hours. they usually happened at night, and any door that got left closed got scratched to death. all the doors in my parent's house have scratches on them from her. the one place that somewhat helped was sometimes in an empty bath tub. poor, poor oreo. (we miss you! we have a picture of you in our house, and even miss claire knows who you are.)

the second, and much happier memory, is of the night before joe and i got married. we had walked around the temple after dinner talking about how we couldn't believe that tomorrow was finally happening. we went our separate ways for the last time that night, and the storm clouds came rolling in. it was making me SO mad because the whole point of getting married in the summer was so that i wouldn't have to deal with rain! it was my ONE request that i really didn't want to budge on. it was lucky i was more concerned about getting married than rain, until the windows were shaking, the power was flickering, and everyone was wide awake because of the racket. most people agreed that they hadn't heard anything like that ever. it continued to rain most of the next day, although it let up enough for pictures, and we were happy and married. looking back its funnier than when it was happening, and makes for a good story, but i honestly wanted to slap most of the people that told me it was good luck to rain on your wedding day. and lots of people told me that. i wanted to snap and say, "betcha it didn't rain on your wedding day!" but some of those people were people that work with my dad, and it probably would have been bad manners.

any who..... lets take a vote- good thing or bad thing when doc says "well, you're not TOO huge..." thanks man. next time, i don't want to hear about the woman you delivered who was measuring bigger than me and had an 11 lbs. 7 oz. baby. joe was 12 lbs., okay? that size baby is fully possible!!! remember last time you thought there was NO WAY claire was bigger than 7.5?

they only grow up once!

i have a daily routine of taking a nap when claire takes a nap. i usually wake up before her, and wait downstairs until i hear her making some kind of noise. many times its banging, opening and closing her closet, jumping, things like that. and sometimes its like today, and i put off going to get her while i listen to her singing one of her silly songs, or talking to her animals. i'll creep up quietly and sit by her door and just listen, tucking away that memory of my sweet, sweet girl. she already has quite the imagination. she makes up dances, to go along with her songs, and will laugh at herself. she is confident, and knows what she wants. she can totally be a little diva. one of my FAVORITE things is letting her take a bath in my bathroom while i get ready, and then letting her play on the counter sans clothes. she gets kinda sassy, trying out different faces and dance moves in the mirror. she'll hold the small mirror on the wall and sing more songs. she'll even pull me into it sometimes. and smile at how pretty we are, mommy and claire. its a perfect moment for us both i think.

and i really hope that she doesn't change. at least not too much. this phase is too much fun.

(okay i can totally do without the destructive, danger-loving side of her. but even then, if i look at it as learning and discovering its not as bad!)