A Big Girl bed...already?

Can you believe that this little monkey climbed out of her crib already? At 19 and 3/4 months she scaled that sucker. Jon put her down for a nap(which is not always a desire of Claire's), next thing he knew, he heard drawers being opened and closed..
Darn that kiddo...that meant conversion #1 happened a little earlier then we hoped. AND by the way little Miss Claire just thought it was the neatest thing not to have one whole side of her crib....that is until the lights went out...

The transition from crib to day bed has been okay at best. She was extremely stressed out about it at bedtime, thrashing about and such. It took a little over an hour the first night to get her to bed(which is not like her) . She refused to nap the first week. The problem is that Claire does not like to be rocked to sleep, she just likes to go to bed, no real fuss. She might cry for a few minutes but then goes off to sleep. If we stay in the room she thinks it's playtime, so we kinda have to just put her to bed and walk out. I stuck it out and kept putting her back in her bed. We did end up putting a toddler rail thingy on the bed to give her more security since she's still so young. Then we got a tap light for her room and tried to be consistent. Almost two weeks later she will take a nap and tonight it took her a total of 2 minutes to drift off. Love it. And I love that she can get up by herself go to our room and wake us up with Claire Bear kisses...

Where have we been?

Well....Claire has been catching up on the latest gossip..
Taking the time to help out her Mommy....
Trying on the latest fairy fashions....
Then taking a quick dip in the local pool.....

18 months....

Can you believe that this little angel is already 18 months old...seriously the time is just flying by as if it didn't matter anymore. I wish the wait had gone by this quickly.


At 18 months Claire is a jibbering and jabbering away. Not that we understand what she's trying to say. We understand a word here and there, but it's so cute to listen to her have a conversation with herself and laugh at what she's saying. She's 24 1/2 pounds and has grown 3 inches since her 1st birthday. She's in the 75th percentile....
I just can't believe how much she's grown..she runs around like an energizer bunny, doing exactly what she's not supposed to do. I'm so exhausted and deliriously happy at the same time it's dizzying. She's continuing with her post bath/milk snuggle which is really nice b/c Jon's not up yet, so we're not competing for her.
She's learned a few signs and will use them at times. I haven't been able to get her to learn any signs that are very helpful though.
She has this horrendous habit of putting her hand down her diaper. We tried ignoring it, so as not to "create" a reaction that she looks for...that didn't work. So we tried to reprimand her and tell her not to do it..that just made her do it more....we tried to ignore it again...until the other day when hand went down the diaper and came up with poop on it.....
Not cute!
So we thought that yes it's early, but maybe she's not too comfortable with stool in the diaper...so we bought a potty. The kind you put on the toilet. So we came home, propped her up on her new Dora toilet seat, gave her a magazine and sat on the floor in front of her. She sat there for a bit having fun...we were talking and laughing...then she did it. She pooped on the potty!! Yay!! We are under no delusion that this will happen again anytime soon. We're not going to push it, but we are randomly putting her on the Dora seat.
I can't believe she's talking, running, throwing tantrums, learning new skills, and pooping on a toilet...wasn't it just last week that I was waiting for that call!!??

The beach is officially open!!!

The weather is warm, the sun is out and that can only mean one thing for this family....It's beach weather. Okay so I know we've already been to the beach this season, but the beach is "officially" open. And the water wasn't too bad. Actually a lot warmer then I thought it would be. Not that Claire cared. Once her feet hit the sand, she ran to the water. Yup that's my girl...teeth chattering, but she didn't care....It's beach time!!

40 minutes

I got 40 whole blissful, wonderful loving minutes snuggling with my little angel tonight. She normally doesn't do that(except when she was sick). She's usually running all over the place, not giving us a mere second to sit down.
I've always felt that Claire bonded very well to us..but I've seen such strides in her trust of us over the last several months. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I guess I didn't realize that I would still be seeing measurable moments this long into her being home with us. I mean I knew that it was a process, a process that took time. Maybe it was my naivety. Maybe it was that after such a long struggle to have a family I didn't care what it took or what hurdles we had to go through as a family as long as we had our complete family. I just figured we would handle what ever problems or struggles we/she had and that was it. But truthfully I don't think I really thought that after being home this long I would notice anything that any other non adoptive parent would notice(***by the way she's been with us now longer then she was in the orphanage***) But tonight was one of those moments that seemed pretty significant to me. Aside from the time when she was sick and would cuddle, she really wasn't much of a cuddler. When it's time to go to sleep, she never liked being rocked. She liked her routine..stories, prayer bear, music, crib. And I was okay with that, I figured maybe that was just her. But tonight, so peaceful, she laid on my chest, calm, passive, and we just talked and laid there. Then it hit me..this was a MOMENT. Wow..really she wanted to love on me. So I didn't move and just soaked it all in. Jon got up and I told him what happened and so as I turned around Jon was lying on the couch...what...he was supposed to be getting ready for work...
what are you doing?
I want that..I want her to cuddle with me...
So I tried to lay her on Jon's chest...
Nope she didn't want it.
I picked her up and again she just snuggled into me..that's when I knew for sure. Tonight was my MOMENT...tonight was about Claire and me.....

Is that a bunny on your back

Easter came and went in a flurry of white fur. Claire totally got the looking for eggs gig. She's at that perfect age of putting things in and out of a basket. Her Easter was complete with 4 wardrobe changes and lots of family.

She wasn't afraid of the bunny at her Grandma's church.

And she loved waking up to her basket

Then of course......we have to clean up!!

And the Doctor said....

WAIT...I won't give you any hints as to what we did that might have been pushing it a little bit yesterday...
but doesn't fresh air and sunshine help anything....
So I won't tell you, but she really does like it there...and after being cooped up in the house she really wanted to get outside....

okay, so maybe not, but she didn't "appear" as bad on Sun"day" and her fever for the time was at bay and we had family in from out of town that had never met her(or Jon for that matter) and well maybe we shouldn't have, but we did...

Anyhow, after white sores showed up on all over her tongue last night and the fever revisted, and she was up all night miserable and crying, and wouldn't eat, we headed to the docs first thing this a.m. Poor baby! Once he actually(and quite gently I might add) pried her little mouth open, we saw sores on her tongue and back of her throat..did I say poor baby..

So she has one of two things 1)cold sores from being sick ..OR 2)hand, mouth and foot disease....seriously....I had to look that one up....
So doc gave us some meds in hopes that it's cold sores and if not.....we'll be waiting for the sores on her hands and/or feet...either way I guess we'll motrin her up and wait for it to run it's course....But seriously? She only went to daycare for two days?...and now she can't even go tomorrow.....

Last night I was holding Claire as she was hunkered down on my chest...she was crying and I could just feel her pain...tears welled up in my eyes, b/c there was nothing I could do....I really felt like a parent last night.