Clara: Seven Months

Clara is seven months old now. She sits up really well, eats solids twice a day, and is starting to get mobile. She's not crawling yet, but she can move around to try to reach anything that looks interesting, and can get herself across the room doing this if she wants to.

She continues to charm the rest of us with her smiles and easy-going personality, and especially her contagious laugh.

She still sleeps in her cradle, which is unheard of for our other kids when they were this age, but she doesn't try to sit up or anything when she wakes up. She just lays there, smiling at the ceiling and blankets and sucking on her fingers until someone realizes she's awake.

Losing a Tooth is Really No Big Deal, According to Brett

Brett lost a tooth at school. He's lost teeth before - this was number four. Still, he didn't even tell me about it. In fact, he didn't even mention that it was loose.

I noticed the hole in his smile when he got home and said, "Brett, you lost another tooth?" (all excited)

He said, "Yeah, Mom. My teacher put it in an envelope for you."

I went in for a closer look and found two more loose teeth!

I remember when Samantha's teeth started to get the tiniest bit loose. She would give us multiple updates throughout the day on each tooth's progressive wiggly-ness. And if anyone tried to give her something hard to bite, like an apple, she would quickly remind us that there was no way she could eat that with her soon-to-be-missing teeth.

Brett seems to pay about as much attention to loosing his teeth as he would to watching wet paint dry on the walls.

At least he was a good sport about letting me take some pictures.

The Missing Cottage Cheese

I mentioned in my last post that Scott and I went out of town on Saturday night.

Well, about 8 minutes before it was time to pick up the babysitter, Samantha and I pulled into the driveway with a van loaded to the roof with groceries and stuff from our shopping trip to Costco and Superstore.

I quickly put the perishables in the fridge, and plopped all the non-perishables in the back room, still in the shopping bags, to unpack later.

While on the highway en route to the concert, I realized the two containers of cottage cheese we had purchased had never made it into the fridge.

I quickly called home and asked Samantha to please go to the back room, look through the unpacked bags, find the cottage cheese, and put it in the fridge.

I listened while she went downstairs, but after several minutes of searching, she said that none of the bags had the cottage cheese.

Scott suggested asking her to check the fridge, in case I lost my mind and had put them away without realizing it (which I had to admit was very likely).

She went up and checked. No cottage cheese.

I then asked her to get the keys, go outside and check the van to see if we forgot to bring one of the bags into the house.

A few minutes later she had found a grocery bag with the cottage cheese, which had been left forgotten in the van.

We hung up and went off to enjoy the concert.

Several hours later, when we returned home, the first thing we saw when we walked into the house was the grocery bag with the cottage cheese sitting on the floor.

Apparently, after all the trouble that went into finding it, Samantha forgot to actually put it inside the fridge. Go figure.

Easter Weekend

We celebrated a fun Easter weekend with friends and family.

Thursday I spent about 5 hours working on some Play On! stuff that I had told Scott I'd get done before the end of the week. Since it wasn't a school night, we went for a family walk to a nearby restaurant for dinner.

We stopped by a video store on the way home and rented Bolt. The kids thought it was pretty good, Scott went to bed partway through it, and I think I enjoyed it the most. It's a fun flick if you're looking for something to entertain the whole family.

Good Friday there was no school of course, and Scott took part of the day off. Our kids played outside with some neighbourhood friends during the day, and then later Samantha invited a friend from school to sleepover. They had fun setting up a "Spa" and invited Scott and me to come visit. They had scented lotion and body spray, back massages, fingernail and toenail painting (Scott opted out of that part) and some relaxing music and magazines.

On Saturday Scott left early in the morning for a huge building clean up he was in charge of at Church. He had over 90 people there and it was a huge success.

While Scott was working hard, the kids and I went out to Delaware for an Easter Egg Hunt with some friends. We ended up staying for lunch and the kids all played in the backyard since it was a beautiful day outside.




Saturday afternoon Samantha and I took on the crowds as we ventured out to Costco and Superstore for some groceries and and a fresh turkey for Easter dinner.

Saturday night we had a babysitter come watch the kids while we drove to Kitchener to see my friend Meaghan Smith in concert, opening for K.D. Lang.

(I managed to snap a couple of pictures before an usher came over to tell me that photos were strictly forbidden in this venue and that if I took one more she would be forced to confiscate my camera. So, it's kind of far away, but this is the best I could do...)


Sunday after church we had Easter dinner with Pat, Bill, Jeff, Lindsey & Tyler. I was so busy cooking, eating, and enjoying the day that I forgot to take a single picture.

Monday morning we went to the London Children's Museum with some friends. We came home and the kids played with friends before our Monday night BBQ. Scott did a great job with the steaks and salmon. We had some friends over along with Jeff & Lindsey again for a fun Family Home Evening.

Thanks to all of you who have called or emailed. We've been so busy these past few weeks that I sometimes forget it's been ages since I've been in touch or had a minute to post something on the blog.

We're still here... Doing fine... Just trying to figure out how to cram everything that has to get done every day into 24 meager hours. Usually we collapse from exhaustion at around 11:30 PM or so, even though we're only about 2/3 of the way down our "To Do" lists.

We still love you all and think of you often from under the piles of laundry and homework and Lego and diapers and hope that you're all doing well and that you had a wonderful Easter!