Celebrating Earth Day

Grace and I celebrated Earth Day last week at her school. We took part in planting flowers and trees on the playground. The little kids were so cute planting and watering. You would never guess little ones could do so much for our earth.

Claire is 6 Months Old!!

Life with 2 has not settled down any as you can tell from my lack of blogging lately. Grocery store, laundry, doctor appts, etc have all kept me running these past few weeks.

Claire is such a sweet, cuddly baby. Claire Bear is the perfect nickname for her. We went to the doctor this morning and she was 17 pounds 6 oz (80% - she's leaned out since her 4 month appt), 27 inches long (90%), and her head was 44.25 cm (also 90%).

She's eating solids twice a day and we are going to work on sneaking in lunch pretty soon. She's eating cereal, bananas, pears, apples, peaches, prunes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and green peas.

She is finally rolling from tummy to back and back to tummy. This took longer than I expected probably because of her extra rolls.

She's sleeping about 11 hours a night with a good morning nap and a not-so-good afternoon nap. Afternoon naps are hard because I pick Grace up at 3. I'm sure the naps will switch when Grace is home for the summer and she'll end up taking a better afternoon nap than morning.

No teeth yet, but as you can see from the picture below, she's drooling quite a bit. They are coming!


She loves her big sister and smiles and lights up when Grace is around. When Grace dances for her, she'll let out a huge belly laugh. Grace should have been around while I was taking these pictures to help me get her to smile.

Sleeping Baby

There isn't anything much cuter than a sleeping baby. Especially when she decides to kick her leg up on the bumper.

Easter Weekend Fun

We enjoyed such a nice, long weekend here at home with warm weather.

Grace helped me make carrot cupcakes for our Easter dessert.



We dyed Easter eggs (and fingers!).




We had a visit from the Easter bunny and ate way too much candy. Note for next year: don't put candy in the Easter basket. I do think candy is a vital part of Easter celebrations, but we'll save it for the egg hunt AFTER church.




We hunted eggs several times - at home and church.




We smashed some cascarones. Poor Claire - she'll get her back one day!




All my pictures have been of Grace so far since she's obviously more active. But Claire has been just her sweet laid back self. She is finally sleeping through the night. We've added sweet potatoes to her diet of milk, cereal, and apples. And she's loving every minute of it.

Happy Easter!!

Spring Has Finally Sprung!

Even here in South Texas, this El Nino weather pattern has made us wanting spring to hurry up and get here. This past weekend, it finally did. We enjoyed the fantastic weather with a trip to the botanical gardens. The sunshine, a picnic, and a walk were a perfect way to spend the day.

Grace's favorite part was the butterfly house. The butterflies liked her too!

Blog Hiatus

I managed to take an unintentional blog hiatus the past month. Life with 2 girls has gotten the best of me. We've been a busy family with trips to Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas. Here are some of the highlights...


Claire had a great 4 month check up. She weighed 16 pounds! Grace didn't even weigh 16 pounds at 6 months! Her growth chart percentiles were all 75%+. A big girl!

She started eating cereal too. She is still getting the hang of food on a spoon and soon I'll introduce apples.


I've started weaning Claire a bit early. My goal was 6 months of nursing, but I've added in formula hoping it'll help her sleep better at night. She still likes to nurse every 3 hours ...hence the 16 pounds. I'm hoping the heavier formula plus cereal will help a little. I know with Grace I let her learn to soothe herself back to sleep. This would involve quite a bit of crying during the night. I haven't had the nerve to let Claire do this since I don't want her waking up Grace.

We spent the weekend in Austin a few weeks ago visiting some friends. We all had such a good time. Grace played wonderfully with Gabriella (almost 2 yrs older) and Mia (3 months older).

We went to the Austin Children's Museum where Grace served up some food and learned about air.


Lots of laughs, great food and great company rounded out the weekend.

San Antonio was the next stop where we took Grace to the zoo for the first time. Well, second if you consider the Corpus Christi Zoo (what Steve calls Petco). The big animals were her favorite - the elephant, giraffe, and monkeys.



And she had cotton candy for the first time.


Dallas was our girls week. I did that long, 8 hour drive with the girls by myself. It was worth it in the end. Grace had a blast and it was good to spend so much time with the family.

She rode the carousel at the mall over and over again.



She went to the Wiggly Play Center.


And unexpectedly, got to play in her first snow. I didn't know it was going to be so cold. All she had was a sweater. Nana found her one of my old hats. And we put socks on her hands. She preferred to stay warm and dry inside. Good thing we live in South Texas.