Babies

Lately I've been crashing as soon as Mabel finishes her last feeding. Like, literally before the next minute has passed. It doesn't matter if I've changed into my pajamas, or washed my face, or brushed my teeth- I am out, until about midnight when I have to get up and take care of those things. I just can't sleep if I haven't taken my contacts out. Well, I was having a hard time getting back to sleep this early morning, and I kept thinking about how I haven't written enough about Claire or Mabel, so that is what I'm here to do.

Have I already said this? I didn't know it was actually going to be fun to have two babies! I'm surprised that thought hadn't occurred to me. It's definitely a challenge- don't get me wrong. I'm totally exhausted, but it's so much fun to have two babies at such cute stages!



Mabel is a pretty perfect baby. She sleeps as well as Franny did as an infant- she's 12 weeks old now and sleeping 8 hours at night consistently- and she's just as mellow as Sophie and Claire were during the day. She started cooing a few weeks ago and started with the social smiles. That is the sweetest sound. I've even heard her try to laugh a few times. It just goes so fast! I don't remember it going this fast with Franny. It seems like with each subsequent child, the infancy stage flies by more and more quickly. I'm going to miss all this since this is likely our last baby.



Claire is such a wild and crazy little sweetheart. She constantly has me on my toes, but says and does the most adorable things that it's sometimes hard to remember the things that drive me crazy about her (like pulling all the books off the shelf just for the fun of it, coloring on my books, emptying a basket of folded clothes, etc.). She loves Mabel. Once I heard her call her "baby Maby." She's pretty protective. I usually put Claire in the car first when we go anywhere, because she's sort of a flight risk, but sometimes she screams "baby! BABY!" as if she thinks I'm leaving the baby behind or I'm going to forget her (the second might actually be a valid concern- it is unsettling how often I check the rearview mirror to make sure I remembered to pack Mabel int he car.) Claire does not like it when I let someone else hold Mabel. She screams and screams like maybe they're going to take Mabel away from us. I think that's sweet. When she tells Franny sorry or thank you, she says, "Ke ke (thank you), Mommy Fra-ye!" Same with Sophie, but she calls her "Fo-fof." I sometimes wonder if she feels like she has three mommies. Franny can sometimes drive her nuts, and vice versa. Franny can't stand to see the rules broken, and most 22-month-olds have a hard time keeping all the rules. When we're loading up the car, Claire will already be buckled in and Franny has to pass her bucket seat to get the back. Lately I've been hearing Claire yell at Franny: "Go de oyer way!" (Go the other way.) Franny gets right up in her face and yells back, "NO!" Sheesh. Claire's favorite songs are "The Popcorn Song" and "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider." I love to see her face when we sing those to her- she focuses on our mouths like she's trying to memorize the words and she does one or two of the actions way early and just holds her hands there until we get there in the song, like "smell so sweet" or "out came the sun." But lately she's into "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam." I love when she sings that! She'll ask me to sing it five times in a row and the way she asks me is she sings, "Uh-be! Jesus da da ub-be! please?" She's counting a little. She likes to pick certain ranges of numbers between 1 and 10 and tends to focus on those for a while. Right now she's saying, "Five, six, eight, nine, ten!" Which is unfortunate because the way she says seven is so cute (sebby.) She also loves when we sing the ABC's and she's even trying to sing them herself. It sounds like this: "ABCDE ah G". She's always twice as loud as any situation requires. Especially at church during sacrament. A few weeks ago after the sacrament was passed and she took the water, she said, "YEAH! Wooo!!! I did it!" And it was very loud. One of my favorite thing she says is, "No touch it." Usually we're talking about scissors, or the space heater, or the rocks outside my gym. Today when we were leaving the gym she said, "No touch it. da rocks."

Every once in a while she just decides she wants a hug from everyone in the room. Sometimes it's a kiss. Sometimes if Bobby and I are laying down on the couch she'll just come over and kiss us on the forehead. If Bobby and I ever have to reprimand her harshly (sometimes she hits mabel!), then she hangs her head down and covers her eyes with her fingers! It breaks my heart.

She calls all women besides me "nono." The girls call Bobby's mom Nona and Claire was calling her this when she was here to help when Mabel was born. I was so glad to hear her calling Nona by the right name! But then a few weeks later we were at Walmart and we passed an older lady who looks nothing like my mother-in-law. Claire said, "Hi Nono." I didn't tell Louise this because I was hoping it was just a fluke and she would revert to only calling her grandmother by this name. Then two minutes later we almost hit another lady's cart with our's and Claire said, "Sorry baby Nono." Ever since then she's been calling every woman besides me Nono.

She says "bleshee" whenever one of sneezes, coughs, or burps. This morning she coughed and noone said anything so she said, "Bleshee baby!"


She carries one of those stuffed animal/blanket things around with her all the time and we call it her woobzy. She loves it! She keeps it up by her face when she sleeps and sucks her thumb. She is so attached and I admit, so am I. I'm a mess every time we misplace it. Once we left it at my friend Jill's when we stopped by her house in Kansas City. I had to ask her to mail it to us! And she did the next morning- such a good friend. I was so angry with myself! We realized it we didn't have it when Claire was in the back chanting, "woozy woozy woozy." She was actually more chill about it's absence then I was. I was so excited when it came in the mail and I let her pull it out of the package and turned the video camera on and everything. I was kind of disappointed when she wasn't more excited, but then a few minutes later I saw her sucking her thumb and resting her head on the woobzy tucked on her shoulder. Then she raised it up with both hands, looked at it and said, "Hi baby." It was so sweet.

Ah, there's so much more... but I'm going to try and get some more sleep now. Sleeping is one of my favorite things to do right now!