No Crying

When we brought Claire home from the hospital, Emmett not only got the title of "big brother" but also the official title of "terrible two's".

He's been seeing the naughty chair and his room a little more frequently as his tantrums have picked up in frequency.

He has also been hearing a lot of: "Emmett stop crying" or "No crying" phrases from us on a pretty regular basis. Yesterday Emmett threw a pretty big fit and we put him in his room to calm down. After a few minutes Mike went in there and talked to him until he said sorry and was happy again. Typically the pep talk always includes something along the lines of "You're being naughty, and you need to stop crying before you can come out of your room". Sometimes he gets it right away and will stop the first time, but sometimes we have to leave and repeat the process 2 or 3 more times before he'll stop crying.

Later in the evening after all was said and done and the 2 year old was happy again, we were in the kitchen getting dinner ready and Claire was in the bouncy chair. She was getting fussy and started to cry. Emmett looked at her and said "No crying Claire!" (except instead it sounded like "No crwying Clear!")

Another story happened about a week ago. I was on the computer focused on something probably very non-important. But he came up to me and started saying "Time out chair!" I looked at him when I realized what he was saying and said "Emmett's a good boy, you don't need to go in the time out chair". But then he said in a very serious tone, "tractor crying" and pointed at the time out chair in the dining room. I looked over there and saw that he had placed his little toy tractor in the chair.

Glad he's starting to get it.

Sleeping Beauty

Here are some newborn pictures we took of Claire the week my mom was here. These were done on my mom's new camera she got for Christmas which is awesome (and makes ours look like crap) thanks mom! Enjoy!

2 Weeks

Claire Nicole is now 2 weeks old. We gave her the middle name Nicole after her aunt Krista Nicole. I love having a baby girl. And I love having a smaller baby. I felt like with Emmett I never really got that little newborn since he went straight into 0-3 month clothes instead of into newborn clothes. She's so sweet and a really good baby. I'm feeling a lot better too. The first 10 days after a C-section are the worst part, but every day past that gets easier. My mom has been here since the day before Claire was born and has been a life saver. I'll be sad to see her go this weekend. I seriously couldn't do it without her. One baby is pretty easy, but when you have a toddler too, thats another story. Especially when said toddler has mastered the art of tantrum throwing ever since we brought Claire home, and also tends to wake up at 7:30 in the morning. To have my mom up to feed him breakfast and let me sleep in has saved me. He is very sweet to Claire, but is having a hard time adjusting to Mom and Dad's attention being taken away. He's getting better though and hopefully this will turn a corner soon.

On our way to the hospital: 39 weeks, 4 days.

She loves to stretch her legs out. Which I believe is the reason why I was so much more uncomfortable with this pregnancy than I was with Emmett's.

A tired Dad with a sleeping Claire in his lap, who probably has a stressed out look in this picture because he just got done putting a screaming 2 year old to bed.

We had a lot of fun taking some portraits of Claire. (Which I will post soon!) Here I am trying to warm her up in front of the space heater so she'll fall back to sleep.

Crazy how they ever fit in there?

We tried to take a family pic and got only ONE good one. (Now located on my header) Here is an outtake. Poor Claire's headband is in her eye, and Emmett is trying to escape. Hahaa. I think the look in our eyes tells you we're not sure what we've gotten ourselves into yet!