The Middle

Today I had the rare opportunity to spend a few hours alone with my girl.  It doesn't happen often.  I get one on one time with Boden when Claire and Titus nap in the afternoon, and one on one time with Titus because he's the baby and he is pretty much always with me.  But today, Claire had a Dr appt and my parents were visiting, so they stayed home with the boys and we girls headed off...

 - after getting our "earrings" on first, of course.  

She asked when we got in the car "Titus coming? Boden coming?"...it unusual for her to go somewhere with me alone.  We often make it a point to take time out with Boden - he and Michael go on a special "boys night out" a few times a month, or go to Starbucks and hangout.  It made me realize that I really need to be intentional about spending time with Claire one on one.

I really enjoyed our morning together.  She loved that I was able to carry her a lot - something that doesn't happen much with a baby brother.  

After her appointment, instead of rushing home I decided to capitalize on our girls day out, so we stopped by the cafe in the lobby of the hospital, got a big chocolate chip cookie, and headed outside.  

we found a sweet little fountain across the street 

enjoyed our cookie on the bench

talked excitedly about her newly aquired strawberry shortcake sticker

curiously checked out the fountain

 and watched the city buses with awe.  

I asked her if she was ready to go home and see her brothers and she looked at me and said "no.  i just want to stay right here."  I was a bit surprised - she loves her "buddies", as she lovingly calls them.  She gets excited when Boden gets home from preschool or when Titus wakes up from a nap.  But today, I think she was loving some mama time.  And I was loving it too.

Being the middle child isn't always easy (coming from a middle child myself), sometimes the middle child feels like the older one gets all the privileges and the younger one gets all the attention, and sometimes I feel like Claire missed out a bit on being the baby since Titus came along so quickly after her.  But, today I was reminded that it doesn't matter the birth order or how close in age my kids are, or how many of them there are....I HAVE to be intentional about spending time with each of them...and making that time count.  Today could have gone a lot differently, it didn't start out as a mommy/daughter date.  I could have rushed to and from the appointment, seeing it as an interruption to my day... but instead, I saw an opportunity and I chose to slow down and enjoy it.  I chose to ignore my phone while in the waiting room and instead play with my daughter.   I chose to get on her level and talk about what interests her.  I even chose to eat a chocolate chip cookie when I didn't want to (ok, ok, that one's a lie.  no one twisted my arm there.)

It was a good day.  I'm so thankful for my precious daughter.  She is full of laughter and brings immeasurable joy to our family.  

(And for those of you wondering - her appt went great.  Her hearing is just fine and we decided to hold off on getting a second set of ear tubes for now. )

lately

Just a random assortment of what we've been up to lately...

Titus is perfecting standing - he loves to pull up on EVERYTHING! The last few weeks he has even tested out letting go a few times...crazy to think we may have a "walker" soon!

 Boden had "Character Day" at school - where you dress up like a character from one of our favorite books and then bring the book to school to share with the class.  He dressed up in his baseball uniform (t-ball t-shirt under his Cardinals jersey- had to wear them both) and took the book "Froggy Plays T-Ball." He had a lot of fun with it - he was so excited that he got to take his glove to school!

Boden is such an artist - he amazes me every single day with the elaborate drawings he comes up with - he will sit and draw for an hour sometimes - I asked him one day what he was doing and he said

 "oh,  I'm just using my imagination" - I love that kid!

this pretty much sums up Claire....sitting on the counter, crazy hair, hollering about something, with a dumped box of crayons...yep, that's pretty accurate.

Titus got ahold of a chocolate chip pancake I left unattended for about 10 seconds - lucky duck...

Boden read his first book! He is having fun learning to read and it is such a joy to see him grown and learn.  I love getting to see the lightbulbs pop on when he figures out a new word or concept.

It's been a pretty mild winter here - we had snow one day for about 20 minutes.  We've had a lot of days to play outside which the kids love and so does mama.

Boden's artwork was featured on the entrance wall at school - I just happened to take him to school one day that week so I got to see it and snap a picture.  He LOVES art!

in addition to standing Titus is constantly exploring the stairs.  I knew the day would come that I would dislike that double staircase...it's here! He makes a dash for the stairs every time I put him down (as long as the dishwasher is not open.  If the dishwasher is open he prefers to try to crawl in it instead). :)

Tea party with my favorites.  There is no photographic proof...but I was dressed up too! 

So that's a bit of what we've been up to - in between my kids catching every single virus and cold that comes near them. I'm so ready for spring and warmer weather to come!

moments

I want to remember these moments...

 sharing an orange

 and some giggles

with my two year old little girl!

TWO!

Happy Birthday baby girl!  Yesterday marked 2 years since our sweet Claire entered our lives and turned our world upside down.  It has been so much fun having a little girl... dresses and bows, pigtails and sparkly shoes... but she loves the dirt too - she's not afraid to sit down on the lawn and start digging in the dirt with her bare hands.  And at the playground she isn't shy either - she takes off for the biggest slide every time, and if Boden can climb it, she thinks she can too.

Claire is really starting to talk alot and in 4-5 word sentences.  It's been so much fun to hear her language skills take off.  She and Boden have a lot of fun playing together (most of the time).  It's fun to listen to their conversations.

She loves to help me cook and constantly pushes a chair up to the island when I'm making dinner so she can "help."  And her favorite food by far is cheese...she would probably eat an entire block of cheese every day if we would let her.  She gets into the fridge approx 3x AN HOUR and brings me a cheese stick that she wants me to open for her, and then throws herself down when I deny her the 3rd cheesestick of the day.  A few days ago I caught her actually just taking bites our of a big block of cheese.

Claire loves technology, she can work my iphone better than I can!  Today we were organizing in the garage ands she went inside.  I went after her when she didn't come back in about 2-3 min, and found her upstairs on our bed playing a game app on Michael's ipad.

She is such a good big sister too - she wants to hold Titus all the time, she tries to help feed him ("open mouth Titus!"), and is always excited when he wakes up from a nap.  Recently she has started trying to read books to him too.

Claire is such a fun, crazy, spunky, busy, little girl.  She is teaching me so much about motherhood.  I always thought Boden was strong-willed, but then I met Miss Claire.  Maybe it's just the age, but this girl knows what she wants and is determined to get it!

I am so thankful to be her mama and I can't wait to see the woman she grows up to be.  I know God has big plans for her life.

"Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him.  Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior's hands.  How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them! ..."  Psalm 127:3-5

little worship leaders

these two crack me up... a little morning worship time at the Brueseke house:

18 months and no more crib?

Little Claire is growing up fast.  18 months already, can you believe it? I can't.  Maybe it's because she's the second child, or maybe because we had so much going on with moving (a few times) and pregnancy but time has seems to be going by so fast!

She is one spunky little girl. She has so much personality and boy, does she love her big brother.  She follows Boden everywhere and wants to do everything he does.  He, for the most part, is great about it and wants to show her how to do new things and of course tell her what to do.  I seriously love watching them interact.  I'm excited to see how they take to having a new baby around.

Speaking of new baby, it was time to move Claire out of the crib to make way for #3.  I was so nervous about this since she's just 18 months, and honestly moving Boden out of the crib was a serious chore for a really long time.  He has just now gotten to where he stays in bed when we put him to bed.

Boden and Claire are continuing to share a room at our new house, and we thought it would be fun to get them a bunk bed.  It's not a traditional bunk bed, because they are really too little for that, but it's much lower to the ground.  It's from IKEA -


The top bunk is only about as high as my waist and it has sides all the way around so he can't roll out.  And the bottom bunk is right on the floor, so it's easy for Claire to get in and out and not a big deal if she falls out.  It has a fun little tent for the top bunk that we had on at first.  Boden really liked it during the day, but kept asking us to take it off at night.


I think it made things just a little too dark for him.  We decided to just take it off and maybe in a few months or a year he might be ready for it.  I made their coordinating quilts over the past couple months and was so excited to finally finish just last week.

My sister, Molly, helped me out by planning out the quilts for me.  I just told her how many different prints I wanted to use, how big I wanted the finished quilts to be, and that I wanted to keep it simple since I knew I didn't have a lot of time to get them done.  She came back with all kinds of tables and measurements and told me exactly how much fabric of each print to buy.  It was fun to have her design it for me.  My brain totally used to work that way, and I used to enjoy figuring out stuff like that... but since having little kids and being pregnant I just can't seem to sit down and focus on those kind of details for more than 2 minutes at a time! lol.  Anyway,  here's the quilts:  (Mostly made with fabrics from Amy Butler's Soul Blossom collection, with a few other random prints thrown in)  I'm so happy with how they turned out and I really had fun making them.



So, back to Claire in her big girl bed.  Since 6 mo old Claire has been an amazing sleeper - just lay her down and she's out for 12 hours.  Bedtime was always a breeze, so I was a little scared we might have to give that up with the new bed.  The first night was a dream though....I put her down and didn't hear from her til morning... and that continued for the first 4 nights.  Aside from the one night where we found Bo and Claire wandering the hallway at 2 am, Boden insisting that Claire needed to go potty so he was taking her..(no, she is not even close to being potty trained...i'm sure she had no idea what was going on!)  I thought for sure we had gotten a pass on this one!

Night 5 however, was a different story.  I think she finally figured out that she could get out of her bed.  And she did....over and over and over until we finally got exhausted and put her in the pack n play at 10pm so we could all go to bed.  The next night I was determined to outlast her.  I put her to bed and sat on her floor with my back to her.  I put her back in bed, no talking or anything, every 5-10 SECONDS for about an hour! The child is determined I tell you!  Then for the next 30 min she went from getting up every 45-60 seconds to kicking the wall and giggling about it.  Finally after about and hour and 45 min she started settling down and by 2 hours she was asleep.  I decided to go downstairs and have a bowl of ice cream to celebrate my victory.  I should have gone to bed to get my rest....had I known we would have a repeat of this event from 4-6am!

It's a week later now and I'm sitting outside her room and she's only gotten up 4 times in an hour, although tonight I have peeked in 3 other times to find a pantless, diaperless, giggling little girl that I have had to re-dress...that's new.... I thought we were making improvements?!  It's taking about 1 1/2 hrs to get her to bed each night and we still have issues once in awhile in the middle of the night when she gets up and wanders around and we have to start all over getting her to bed.  Not as much improvement as I had hoped in a week.   We had one interesting hiccup the other day at naptime...she got up and closed her door and locked it....but couldn't unlock it.  They are the kind of doors that have a little flat key that unlocks them from the outside....but none of those little keys were left here when we moved in.  We eventually had to completely removed the doorknob to get her out!  poor thing was scared.  It reminded me of the time when we lived in an apartment and Boden was about Claire's age.  I went out on the back deck for some reason and he went in, shut the sliding door and locked it.....him inside and me out on the deck - 3 floors off the ground!  It was so scary - I had no idea what I was going to do and poor Boden just started crying.  Thankfully, Michael came home early from where ever it was that he was and I only ended up being locked out there about 10 minutes.

Ahhh, the joys of parenthood.  In just a few short days or weeks I'll be up all night with another one.  Thank God he gives us the grace to do it.  (And amazing husbands who help! I have to give some credit here to Michael - he has been getting up for all the middle of the night sessions lately and letting me sleep...THANK YOU!) I'm praying our new little guy just starts sleeping thru the night at 6 weeks on his own....I've heard these children actually exist...let's pray I get to experience that first hand one day!

mmmm...yummy...

who loves to eat her pizza while in a box?  This girl does -







who needs a booster seat when you have a fun box to sit in?

ready for spring

We have had a couple days of some nice weather here. Yesterday, while all our friends and family in the midwest were snowed in and freezeing, we had a 70 degree spring day! I had been a little bummed about missing all the snow, but it only took about 5 mintues of my kids getting to run around outside for that feeling to wear off.  Here's what we've been up to:



Boden was supposed to be giving Claire a hug...

excited to finally get to use his big dump truck




I've also been doing some sewing and sewing planning getting ready for spring, now that I've finally got all my sewing stuff back together.  Here's the bubble skirt I mentioned before:



and a cute outfit for my friend Laura's baby girl



This skirt was really easy and fun, it really took less than 2 hrs start to finish - I plan to make a few for Claire for this summer and spring.  I got the tutorial from Prudent Baby, one of my absolute favorite websites (layer cake skirt tutorial here).  They have great tutorials for easy sewing projects and tons of other crafty (non-sewing) projects too.

And now, I've got a couple stacks of adorable fabric just begging to be made into spring dresses and skirts


including these fabulous prints my friend Kelly gave me just before I left Missouri.


I'm excited to get started! Kelly, I think you need to hop on a plane and come sew with me for a weekend!

Brown Bear Brown Bear

I think I've mentioned before that Claire has no interest in being read to.  I've tried...Michael has tried...the grandparents have tried...she just won't sit long enough to get through more than 2 pages.  This is so odd to us because Boden will seriously sit for HOURS being read to.  He has always liked being read to, even at Claire's age.

But, the other day we were playing and looking at a new book my parents got Claire for Christmas.  It's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you see?"

She sat on the floor with me and let me read it to her, not only once....but 3 times in a row!!! This is major progress!  I think a lot of it (ok, all of it) had to do with the little secret windows that you open to see what the next animal sees, but still, I was so shocked and excited.  I love reading, and I really want my kids to love it to.  Maybe she's got a chance after all:)

and yes, I know her outfit doesn't match...at all.  I promise we didn't go out looking like that.

8 Months

I absolutely cannot believe it's been 8 MONTHS since Claire was born! The time has gone by so much faster than I could have ever expected. We've been having lots of fun getting to know Claire's personality, watching her grow, and probably my favorite thing as a mother so far - seeing her interact with her big brother.

This is the standard "Claire face":

she makes this face all the time, especially when she's concentrating on something - trying to pick up a toy, or figure out how she can get to something across the room. Which she is pretty darn good at by the way. She started pulling herself around, kind of an army crawl about a month and a half ago, the same week she started sitting all by herself. Now she's starting to get the hang of actually crawling, but hasn't perfected it yet. That doesn't stop her from scooting, rolling, pulling, and sliding all around until she gets what she's after. She's a very determined little girl.

Claire is such a happy baby - she has her moments, but for the most part, she is so smiley and happy. My favorite part of the day is the morning. Even though I'm exhausted when she wakes me up at 5:30am, she is so happy and "talkative". She jibber-jabbers, giggles and smiles until we are all awake with her. And when her big brother walks in, she squeals and kicks her feet. She loves him so much and he is her world right now. Even when he's tormenting her by trying to check her eyes with a magnifying glass, pick her up by her head ("like the lions do", he said), or pull her around the room by her hands "teaching her to crawl" - she just thinks he's amazing. And he thinks she's pretty amazing too - he is always wanting to help her do something or teach her something. As a mother, this brings me so much joy. I pray each day that they will continue to love each other and take care of each other as they grow up.

Claire is also a great eater. We started feeding her purees a little earlier than we did with Boden because she was always trying to grab our food out of our hands or screaming at us while we were eating. So far, her favorite is avacado by far and the only thing she seems to reject is broccoli. She'll eat it when it's mixed with other veggies, but not alone. She really loves picking up her own food - banana chunks, cheerios, etc. Usually about half of it makes it in her mouth and the other half I find in the highchair. :)

It's been hot here in St Louis so we've been frequenting the neighborhood pool a bit lately too. Claire LOVES the water! She splashes and giggles and then tries to drink the water. oops. Boden is loving the pool too. He's more independent in the water this year - using his floaties and sometimes a raft. Thankfully this year he's developed a more healthy fear of the water- last year he had absolutely no fear of it and would just jump right in regardless of having a life vest on or not or if anyone was in the water to jump to! He started swim lessons last week and is having fun with that - blowing bubbles, and learning to float and kick.

We are just loving being a family of 4 and we are thankful everyday for our beautiful, healthy babies!