All I Want for Christmas...

"All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth, my two front teeth..." I can remember singing that song at my kindergarten Christmas program which was more than twenty-five years ago. Now, my little 1st grader could sing that song this Christmas season. There has been a lot of tooth wiggling at our house and now we have a sweet girl with a toothless smile.

This is Ella wiggling her tooth on the day of James' birthday.

The tooth was just hanging there and she enjoyed making funny faces with her crazy loose tooth. She pulled the tooth out right after church the next day. I think she was tired of hearing people offer to pull it out for her.

Ella's toothless smile!

FOUR already!

On November 7th our sweet little boy turned four years old. Happy Birthday, James!! It hardly seems possible and now more than ever, I feel like the days and weeks just go by way too fast and my babies are growing up before my very own eyes.

We had a party with family and friends on James' real birthday since his birth date fell on a Saturday this year. It was a gorgeous early November day. Instead of sledding this year all the cousins and friends played outside in short sleeves in the sand, on the swing set and in the bounce house. It was a great day full of celebrating our little boy who, of course, chose to have a Cars theme again for his party. Here are some pics from the day...

Our four year old right when he woke up!

By his cupcake cakeJames and his new bike. We actually waited and gave this to him on Sunday. He needs to grow into this bike a bit...Blowing out the candlesHe couldn't wait to take the cars off the cake and play with them.Opening presents surrounded by friends.More cupcakes!!Claranna soaking in some autumn sunshine.Claranna with friends Devin and Jenny.Claranna and Grandma JudyKate enjoying some extra frosting! There was a lot of extra frosting!!!

Here Comes Trouble!

Claranna has found her own special way to be on the go and life is getting busier at our house! She isn't quite crawling the conventional way --she really uses her head! See for yourself...

This video is from early last week and Claranna has been improving on her crawling skills everyday. She does get up on all fours now, but seems to move backward easier than forward. Really it seems like she is too little to be getting around her own already...she's supposed to stay my little baby longer.

Claranna turned seven months old on Thanksgiving. She wasn't feeling the best over the Thanksgiving holiday. We hosted a fun Thanksgiving dinner with Mark's family on Thursday running on very little sleep, thanks to our sweet baby girl. Of course, she had to take a turn for the worse after all the clinics were closed for the holiday. Either Mark or I had to hold Claranna through most of Wednesday and Thursday night. We rotated through each night taking about two hour shifts at a time. Poor Claranna couldn't sleep unless one of us was cuddling her and holding her upright. I took her in to see our doctor bright and early on Friday morning and she was diagnosed with her first ear infection and an upper respiratory infection. She is now on antibiotics and is much happier and doing much better. Though the meds do not seem to be agreeing with her already sensitive tummy, she has no problems taking them. When she sees us with a syringe, she opens her mouth and gets ready to gobble the stuff right up. We think the drugs probably taste a million times better than the new formula (for babies with milk and soy protein allergies) that she is now on full time. That stuff stinks and I am not even brave enough to taste it, though she seems to be tolerating okay.

At seven months old, Claranna can clap, wave, jabber, roll all over the place, army crawl, crawl backwards, and crawl like an inch worm. She loves playing peek-a-boo with her big sister and brother too. She is still quite small for her age and weighs a little over 13.5 pounds. Hopefully we can fatten her up when we are able to introduce a few more solids into her diet in the next couple of weeks. The GI specialist told us to feed her only the rice cereal and the special formula for several weeks to give her tummy a chance to rest and heal. So, we will soon be able to slowly introduce her to some new tastes. I can't wait to see her happy face when she actually gets to eat something tasty!

I've got lots of blogging to catch up on. I hope to make more new posts in the coming days...check back soon!

Ella's getting glasses!

It was only a matter of time... I think all our children are destined to wear glasses. They will take after their dad and their mom. Actually, I think that I can claim most of the credit here. I started wearing glasses in second grade and Mark didn't get his glasses until fifth grade. She was having trouble seeing at school and failed a vision exam with the school nurse, so we made an appointment with an eye doctor. After a thorough eye exam on Monday, Ella got the exciting news that she would be getting glasses. She was and is very excited and she wanted her glasses right then! I explained that we would have to go shopping for glasses and then we would order a pair. She wanted to begin the process right away, so we took our thrilled little girl shopping for glasses on Monday night. I think we helped her pick out a great pair. What do you think?

I'm only kidding! We did have fun trying on glasses and these are obviously not the pair she picked. Stay tuned... We hope they are here soon as someone is anxiously waiting!!

Look who made the newspaper this weekend...

We submitted this photo of Claranna to the open call for Halloween pictures for our local newspaper. Claranna was one of eleven photos out of more than 100 to make the print edition. Of course, that makes us proud parents! To see all the other pics and vote on Claranna as the best photo, if you are so inclined, follow the link. http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=425420

Halloween

How We Scared the Tooth Fairy Away

After last night, we probably won't be winning any "Parent of the Year" awards at our house... Ella pulled out her second front tooth yesterday afternoon and she was so excited. One of her friends told her that the Tooth Fairy leaves double if you lose a tooth on Sunday. This would be the same friend who got $20 when she lost her first tooth... We've since explained to Ella that there are different zones for Tooth Fairies and we clearly don't live in the same zone as her friend. Ella has always been thrilled with whatever the Tooth Fairy has brought her...when the Tooth Fairy remembers to come. Are you beginning to see where the "Parent of the Year" awards are going to come into play?

Last week when Ella lost her first front tooth, she didn't put it under her pillow right away. Instead, she wanted to keep it a few days and she didn't let us know that she decided to put it under her pillow one night. She was pretty disappointed when she woke up and the fairy had not visited. This also happened to be the unfortunate night that Ella was very sick with the flu, so we were able to console her by convincing her that the Tooth Fairy knew she was sick and didn't want to catch her germs. Simple and reasonable! The Tooth Fairy came with a very good gift of a silver dollar and a fifty cent piece once she was feeling better. All was well...until last night.

At bedtime, Ella excitedly put her second top front tooth under her pillow and her very tired mommy knew this, but... All was quiet at our house for a little while. Then, Claranna had a rough night and Mark and I were both up with her countless times. This morning we knew Ella was awake when we heard her exclaim in a rather disappointed voice that the Tooth Fairy didn't come. Uh Oh!!! Being the stellar parents that we are, we took full responsibility and blamed the baby. You see, we carefully explained that Mommy and Daddy must have scared the Tooth Fairy away when we were up with Claranna. Fortunately, Ella seemed to understand. After all, everyone knows the Tooth Fairy can only come when everyone is fast asleep. Here's hoping the Tooth Fairy and the Sleep Fairy make a much needed stop at our house tonight!!

Trying to Stay Healthy...

Said by James when I was trying to get him up from his nap, "I need to go back to sleep because my head has a tummy ache." I think he was just extra sleepy... He still loves his nap time!

Claranna and James had their H1N1 vaccine tonight...let's hope it works. Isabella tested positive for Influenza A on Monday morning and she is still working on recovering. So far, no one else in our house is showing symptoms and I hope we can keep it that way. I've been doing a lot of sterilizing. I guess someone in our house was bound to get the flu as both Ella and James keep coming home with notes from school stating that there are students out ill with "flu like" symptoms in their classrooms.

There is a lot of excitement building in our house. Someone is turning four on Saturday!!! Hope you are all staying healthy!