Birthday Party!

On Sunday, we had all the family over for a Birthday Brunch to celebrate Claire turning 2!

Here's Claire waiting for her guests to arrive...

Popa showed up in a funny birthday hat that Claire enjoyed playing with! (We still have it Popa...I guess we'll give it back!)

Mommy and Birthday Girl

Daddy and Birthday girl :-)

I made Sesame Street cupcakes (I copied my friend so I can't take all the credit) - I thought they turned out so cute!

Claire got so many nice gifts from everyone. The shopping cart with food was a big hit (Thanks Sally!) She was - and still is - obsessed with the banana and eggs.

This "kissing Elmo" is from Clay and Patti. She has been playing with him constantly - pushing him around in the shopping cart and having conversations with him. "Here you go Elmo. Back in the cart Elmo. That's a nice Elmo."

Uncle Matt and Aunt Alison gave Claire this Elmo chair. Here she is cautiously testing it out.

In this picture, Claire is riding on her lion from Uncle Andy and Aunt Tara (of course she's got that banana). When we got her to sit on it, she said "it's not workin!" She loves the lion and feeds him the different foods from her shopping cart.

Here she is taking her puppy dog from Uncle Jake for a walk on the piano. I'm not sure why but he always walks on the piano??

She got so many nice things - gift certificates to Inflation Nation and Romp N Roll, lots of fall clothes, a UVA teddy bear, tons of new music (YAY!), a Dressy Bessy, and a new pair of shoes. Thanks so much to everyone!!!

Last, but not least - the cookies I made for "favors." It was my first attempt at decorated sugar cookies. They're not perfect, but they tasted great! This is my new hobby, so I'll be practicing alot before Christmas time :-)

Happy 2nd Birthday!

I can't believe my baby turned 2 today! I have been reminiscing and remembering September 19, 2007 like it was yesterday. I love you Claire!!!

It's almost 10:30pm....time to sneak in and see my girl asleep in her crib :-)

(Tomorrow we'll be having her birthday party with the family....pictures to come of course!)

Rollerskating!

I brought Claire to Skate-a-Way for their toddler skate this week! SO much fun!! It really brought back some memories from my younger years....and not much has changed since then! (We did the Hokie Pokie, the Limbo, the Chicken Dance, and Red Light Green Light - I remember doing all those at our skate parties back in the day.)

At first Claire said "take 'em off, take 'em off, NO!" But then she saw her friend Lily skating like an old pro and we were off to catch her! Claire loved it and eventually didn't want to hold my hand - she just wanted to "GO GO GO!" At the end they even let the kids take their skates off and run around on the rink.

Here's Claire and Lily doing a little Foosball (is that how you spell it?!)

That afternoon while I was at work, Mimi asked Claire about rollerskating. Claire went on and on about it! She explained to Mimi that you have to "put the shoes on" and that she did the Hokie Pokie! She also told Mimi "Go every week" - so I guess that means we're headed back another time!! For $4, it's the best deal in town :-)

Rockin' and Rollin'

Go Mommy Go!

Claire (and Mimi) joined me on a weekend trip to Virginia Beach for the Rock N Roll 1/2 marathon on Sunday. We had a dreadful start to the weekend....four hours from Richmond to Va Beach with a cranky toddler who wanted OUT and a car behind us blaring the music so loud that our car was vibrating. Not a fun beginning to our trip, but once we got there we had a wonderful weekend! I had a great time running with my training partners Niki and Heather and I also got to see my "cheering squad" three times along the course. Claire was saying "go go go" to the runners as they went by. Thanks so much to Linda for being a great hostess and letting us wreck her house for a couple days!

Topsail 2009

We were so lucky to go back to Topsail Beach again this summer with my family and we had a wonderful time! I had such great memories of last summer's vacation - playing on the beach, time with family, and Claire taking her first steps - so it was great to go back and make new memories. This year, I didn't know what it would be like to "vacation" with an almost-2 year old, but with so many people to help it was truly relaxing and so much fun to watch her play on the beach.

Here's a few of my favorite Claire memories from the week: (actually it's a pretty long list...this is mostly for my own memories' sake - feel free to skip ahead to the pictures and videos montage!)

• Every night before bed she would tell us she loved the beach - "the beach is so fun, play in the dirt, swim in the water" We would also name everyone and say that we were all going to play again tomorrow! (Then she usually asked to go to bed because she would be SO tired!)
• At dinner one night, Claire looked around the table and said "I love Papa. I love Mimi. And Aunt Tara. And Uncle Andy." When we kept prompting "who else?" she would keep looking around the table and would even look at me, but I never got a "I love mommy" - I'll keep waiting for it!!
• Papa Jim likes to teach Claire all kinds of goofy things to say and one afternoon he called Claire a "slimy dog" - later in the day when Mimi was trying to get Claire to say she loves Mommy, Claire instead looked at me and said "Mommy is a slimy dog"
• We saw lots of helicopters and airplanes during the week which Claire gets very excited about. She would say "that is awesome!" Now when I ask her about the beach, she tells me about the helicopters! (Awesome is a new favorite word - she also said "that's an awesome dog" one day on the beach...that's in the video below.)
• "Wanna cover up!" "Wanna GO GO GO" "Wanna spin around" - these were some of Claire's favorite things to do on the beach! ("Cover up" meant she wanted to be buried in the sand!)
• To get to the beach, we had a small path with tall sea grass around it. Claire called that "the jungle" and she would tell me "go in the jungle, go in the hill (the dune), go on the beach!"
• Mimi and Claire would go for walks on the beach to look for shells to "kerplunk" into the bucket. Claire only wanted shells to "go on the finger" - the kinds with holes that she could put on the top of her fingers!
• We lucked out with Tropical Storms Danny and Bill - neither one affected us much other than some big waves and 1 or 2 rainy days. When we were inside we would find fun things to do - Andy and Tara put up a tent, we painted (mostly Claire tried to drink the paint water), we played with poker chips, and we watched "Animals." Thank you to Aunt Alison and Uncle Matt for the animals DVD you gave Claire last year for her birthday - we watched it several times each day and I seriously don't know what we would have done without it!! :-)
• Every day it would take until the late afternoon for Claire to warm up to the water. In the morning she wanted nothing to do with it, but by 6pm she'd be out jumping in the surf with us. The only exception was her last morning and Papa Jim convinced her to go out and jump the waves. It was so fun to hear her laugh and see her so happy to be at the beach!
• My little early bird still woke up around 6:30 every morning (I think that proves no matter how much I wear her out or what time she goes to bed, she's still going to be up at the same time!). Mimi was kind enough to get up with her most mornings - the funniest morning was when Claire decided she had had enough of waiting around and said "Get me OUT of this crib!"
• Clay and Patti came up from Wilmington in their boat and took us for a ride. I really think Claire would have just jumped off the side if I wasn't holding onto her - she had no fear! Thanks so much Clay and Patti!

I'm sure there are other things that I can't think of right now....it was a great week with my family and I am so grateful for the time spent together! Here's a montage of photos and videos from the week: (Actually it's a link, I cannot figure out for the life of me why it's not working to post it here? Just click on the thumbnail and it should take you to it)

Topsail Beach 2009