Clare's 1 Month Wellness

We had Clare's 1 month wellness visit on January 29 - her 1 month birthday to the date! She had a great check up.

It gets cold waiting for the doc!

She has plugged eye ducts on both eyes, but nothing terrible. I remember William had one plugged eye duct that sometimes would cause his eye to be closed shut. Both of Clare's eyes get goopy, but don't close shut. So we rub with a washcloth inside her eye along her nose at bath time to help open up those tear ducts. Nothing to do unless she continued to have them beyond her first birthday. 

And the poor thing has survived the month of illness at our home. Matt had the worst cold for weeks - starting a few days before her birth day. We had the stomach bug as well. I was worried she would catch it, but the doctor said to keep nursing and even if she did catch it then it wouldn't be nearly as bad as we had it. Sure enough, she didn't catch a thing! It was pretty much torture having the stomach bug and taking care of a newborn though. She couldn't have been better and thankfully fell into deep sleeps after each feeding, which let me rest. Matt had to stay home (he had it as well) and take rests with the other two. Quite the adventure. 

The rest of her visit was great. No other questions I can recall. Here are the stats!

Weight: 8 lbs 14 oz / 40%

Height: 21.75" / 79%

Next visit is 2 months! 

3.5... Closer to 4 now

Another draft that has been sitting around for ages... William's 3.5 almost 4 post. I didn't get much down, but posted a few photos and a couple bullet points on what he's up to nowadays. Here it is!

William is 3.5 now and sometimes I think he's going on 7 or 8! He can act like such a big boy.

LOVES ice cream

Kind big brother (most of the time)

Curious

Loves Disney

CRACKS me up! Loves a good face painting

Loves the beach

William's self portrait

Off to school with his sister

Hard worker

• Plays with his cars still and loves LEGOs. He's very creative and loves making all sort of things like spaceships, castles or cars. 
• Into pirates, dragons, dinosaurs, cars.
• Still loves his Peter Rabbit and green blanket.
• Goes to bed around 8/8:30pm, but runs in and out constantly wanting to tell us "one more thing" or trying to negotiate another book reading.
• A story teller - likes to make up long and rambling stories with whatever theme he's currently into, such as pirates or dinosaurs.
• Very observant and notices new things instantly. 
• Loves art and crafts. He pays a lot of attention to details. 
• Loves his friends and wants to make plans to see friends all the time. He's great at making new friends and has no problem walking up to a new kid on the playground to see if he/she might want to play.
• A whole new understanding of things... will ask questions like why I have a hole in my ear and how did it get there, or he saw a woman with one arm and asked why she only had one arm.
• His memory is incredible. He'll talk about events from over a year ago. He remembers what we did over the 4th of July or where we sat for the Winter Park Holiday Parade back in 2014!

Describing him is so much more complex now! When they're 1, 2, or turning 3 even, it's much more easy to list "what's new." It's no longer simple milestones like speaking in a full sentence or counting to 5. It's amazing how much they grow month to month. And we continue... moving into writing, reading, math, sports, and so on. He's getting so big...

More Christmas Spirit

The amount of posts I have in draft mode... is overwhelming... This post goes back to Christmas and I want to make sure I include what I can because I don't want to forget any of this goodness! I believe I already posted about Christmas (several times!), but here are some more fun times we had over the holiday season. 

Ornaments for the year! Buddy the Elf dropped them off this year. William got a Batman ornament and Grace got a bunny ballerina. William loves superheroes and Grace started her first activity this year - ballet, so both seemed like a perfect fit for the year. William was pumped for his Batman ornament and Grace was probably as excited about William's ornament as well. The ballet bunny wasn't nearly as thrilling as Batman! Ha! 

Ornaments for 2015

We did some Christmas cookie decorating. We made the dough, cut out the shapes and decorated the next evening. William as usual pays close attention to the decorating and really looks forward to eating the finished product. Grace as usual sucked down the tube of icing and wasn't interested in decorating. It was more fun to decorate her face. 

Pre-icing gone wild

Matt's very creative moose haha!

William the baker

William had a Christmas party at school and every classmate brought in a stocking stuffer. William's stuffing stocker was this awesome build-a-snowman kit. It was adorable! We made one at home after the party. It's foamy and can be rebuilt over and over again. Great find!

Can you build a snowman??

Baldwin's holiday parade gets better and better every year. We arrived a little early to setup with our wagon and chairs. One of the side streets had all kinds of games and rides. I was pretty exhausted at this point of the pregnancy, so I wasn't too keen on walking to each setup. Next year we will make sure to get there even earlier to play all the games. Santa made his appearance at the very end and the kids had a wonderful time.

Our corner at the Baldwin holiday parade

Probably my favorite and the kids favorite activity this Christmas season (after Santa photos, of course) was the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer musical at the Orlando Rep. It was very cute. It was their first live "show" and both kids did great. They were very entertained by the reindeer prancing around and the abominable snowman. 

First show for both of them

Ready for Rudolph

One holiday fail was the Alfond Inn storybook event. I thought for sure when you mention "storybook" that it would be small child appropriate. They meant ADULT storybook time... a man read Charles Dickens and was dressed era appropriate. It was pretty funny and as expected the kids were totally confused. We hightailed it out and went to Shake Shack instead. They made the best of it, grabbing cookies and twirling in circles much to the dismay of other people actually interested in the adult storybook time. The event had stuck in William's mind because only a month ago (March) when we drove past the Alfond, William asked me if I remembered that man with the hat reading the Christmas story... it does sink in!

Ring around the rosey

Gingerbread cookies were a win though!

I think that wraps up all of Christmas 2015!