cups

Everyone is back to good health. However, Mark and I have been feeling exhausted with the hot weather.
Emily learned to pull herself up from sitting to standing and wants to stand all the time now. She still isn't crawling and it is difficult to get her to spend much time on her tummy so that she can figure out the crawling. We put her on her stomach and she rolls right over.

Claire is trying my patience these days. We are trying to get her to use a regular glass or cup at home for drinking and only use the cups with the lids and straw when we go places. About three times a day she will whine incessantly about wanting milk in a sippy cup. (We try creative things like putting it in a tea cup or a measuring cup.) Thankfully she does drink from it, but the whining gets old.

Claire always asks for bedtime stories, specifically, "stories about when Daddy was a little boy." When his childhood times in Arcata are mentioned, she always says, "I want to go to Arcata with Daddy."

sick again

Clarie has bronchitis and Emily has a cold. This is the third time in the past 6 months that Claire has had an illness which affected her breathing. This time the doctor sent home a nebulizer machine and prescribed a bronchiodilator (Albuterol) and a steroid to use several times a day. This is much more than she had the past two times but the cause was thought to be bacterial before and she received antibiotics whereas this time it is thought to be viral. Thankfully, Claire has been pretty cooperative with the treatment and was feeling better today. She was fairly energetic although she was definately more needy than usual. Her daddy did an excellent job taking care of her and reading lots of books with her.

shoes and kisses

Claire is very interested in trying on shoes these days. Every time we go to eht park or to playgroup, Claire tries on all the shoes she sees. At home she tries on mom and dad's shoes. She even tries to put on doll shoes. She also tries to put on the doll clothes :)

Emily is perfecting the art of kissing. Whenever she sees our cat she makes kissing sounds to him. Yesterday she kissed the cat in her cloth book that Nanu made. She also kissed the teddy bear in a story I was reading to her. So sweet. Yesterday we were watching videos of baby Luke and each time a new one started Emily made a kissy sound.

Marmoleum II

I managed to scrub the new floor and put two coats of polish on this evening. We still need to nail down the quarter round edging which I painted and Mark cut to size. I can't wait to put all our furniture back in place and put things away the chaos is getting to me.

We enjoyed our time with Nanna and Poppa yesterday and this morning and hope to see them one more time before they head back to OK. We had two tea parties yesterday!

Mark and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary with take out from California Pizza Kitchen (which we ate by candlelight) including two wonderful deserts. Then we spent some time reading aloud to one another.

The girls are doing well. Claire took a spill this morning and has a welt on her forehead but seems to be fine otherwise. Initially I iced it then later I put some Arnica gel on it so hopefully it won't bruise too much.

holding the kids

I love to hold my daughters, and they love to be held. It is music to my ears when Claire says, "Please hold me, Daddy." Often she says this halfway through dinner time when she is getting tired.

Claire also sometimes asks to be comforted, or for me to wipe the tears from her eyes. Her honesty is a treasure, and I hope to be worthy of her trust forever.

Sometimes I try to remember back to when I was a little kid, but there are only a few times I remember being held. Once was when I was afraid of fireworks on the 4th of July.

From 109canon

Marmoleum

We finally finished installing linoleum tiles in our kitchen. I say "finally" because we started the project last Thursday when my folks were here helping us. We just finished adhering the last edge piece. I spent most of my free time this week cutting tiles and am so glad to be done. Now we have to thoroughly clean it and put on several layers of polish and add the 1/4 round at the edge.