Some New Updates:

Right after Christmas I broke our camera so I have no new pictures to post! (BOOO!) While we decide whether to repair or replace it, here are some Clementine updates.
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Clementine's speech has become incredible! Her favorite topic is where people are. For example, she talks about all her friends at school who will be there waiting for her when we get there and she gets very excited the closer we get.

As we leave the house each day she says good-byes to everyone and everything that isn't going with us. She'll start with "Bye house!" then onto "Bye Jack! Bye Kitty! Bye cup, bye room, bye blankie..." and on and on. Then she does it again in reverse when we pull back in the driveway in the afternoons: "Hi house! Hi Jack! Hi Kitty!..."
She also loves the opportunity to tell the animals where to go "Jack-outside!" she says. Or "OFF!" To the kitty it's always "GO!" When she's not telling them where to go, she tells them what to do "NO NO BITES!" she says to the cat. The other day she said "NO NO bites bad-kitty!"
She also lets us know when she is fed up (mostly with me). As I left to run errands I tried to kiss her cheek. She blocked me and said "STOP!" I told her "I love you!" as I walked out the door and she hollered back "I KNOW!" (Who is this child???)

She also loves to repeat after us. Especially when we think she's not listening. For this reason, she may not be able to drive in the car with Cameron much longer. The other day we were driving to the store when Cam had a few things to say to the driver in front of us. Clementine repeated what she thought she heard: "Come on, APPLES!" she repeated. Whoops!
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Clementine has started gymnastics class. Once a week for an hour 2 & 3 year olds have a little class with parachute, bubbles, song and tumbling time. Clementine loves it. She's still figuring out how to navigate all the equipment but she just lights up when we go. This is the perfect chance for our fearless girl to really shine!
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Today we took Clementine to the doctor to have him look at a rash on her face. And because she's been extremely grouchy, clingy and--this was the real shocker--refusing to eat! When this child refuses to eat, we know something is wrong! Turns out she's getting TWO big time molars right now. The teething caused her to have a pretty substantial fever, the drool caused the rash and the soreness caused the crankiness/not eating! Our poor girl! But we did find out that she weighs 34lb 14oz! More good news: the Dr. checked her files (and her ears) and to our delight we discovered she's gone 11 months without an ear infection! Her ears are still clear and Dr. thinks she's grown out of the "danger zone" and we can rule out needing tubes! This made us both super happy!


Those are all the Clementine updates I can think of just now! I hope to have some pictures to post soon!

Growin' on up

Clementine is becoming such a big girl lately. It's all happening so fast now! The new things she does and says each day blow my mind!
Lately she's been very into her personal care. She wants to brush her own teeth and her own hair, wash her own hands and face, etc. Here she is the other night brushing her teeth and washing up before bedtime.



Here comes the fake spit!


Clementine has also been into helping as she gets dressed or undressed. Here she is after nap as she tried to undress herself



These next few pictures gross me out but may have been the highlight of Cameron's Christmas! Everyone knows that I don't *love* meat, especially red meat. I have even argued that my teeth don't even tear into meat (I swear I was meant to be a herbivore). That posed a big problem when I settled down with Meat's biggest fan.
We wondered which way our offspring would go. Needless to say, she went the way of her father.
Here she is on Christmas eve. She had her own sliced up pieces of roast on her plate--most of which she had already devoured at this point. She hungrily picked up a HUGE (and obviously rare) piece of beef and tore into it like a hungry lion cub. I dared not take this slice away as I feared for my extremities!


She actually ate the meat just fine but made a huge mess in doing so. Cam was so proud he had to document our little carnivore!

I guess this is just one more step in becoming an independent little lady!

Jingle Bells

Clementine is definitely in the Christmas spirit!

Here she is as we were finishing up lunch today singing Jingle Bells. Well, at least the memorable part of Jingle Bells--"HEY!"

O' Tanenbaum...O' Tanenbaum

We put up our tree last weekend and Jack's been going bananas ever since. Those blinking lights do something to him! This is our first tree in our new house, of course. But it's also my first ever live tree AND the first tree we've had together in about 4 or 5 years! We have very few ornaments to decorate the tree, but what we do have...well, they are ALL Cam.
We have Yoda:

And Chewbacca and the shiny dude:

And what Christmas tree is complete w/o Superman??

I plan to find some scrapbooking, celebrity-gossip-represented, Starbucks and cupcake ornaments ASAP.

Cookie Party 2009

Today we had our 1st Annual Christmas Cookie Party! Cam wasn't feeling so hot so he was in charge of photography. Clem and I both donned our super cute aprons just in case we got messy (we did).

This little icing "pen" was supposed to be for drawing on our cookies. Instead, Clem first tried stabbing it into her cookie to make polka dots. Then she discovered that sticking the end in her mouth would just cut out the middle-man and disperse sugary goodness with immediate results.

This green sprinkler shaker just DUMPED sprinkles everywhere. Clementine loved it! She had about 2 inches of sprinkles on one of her cookies. We saved that one for Daddy.

Santa Train (aka Stand In Line alot Train)

Today was the day! We had planned this day for months--our first trip on Santa Train! We have been talking and reading about trains, we even rented the Polar Express in preparation for Clementine's first train journey.
Earlier today we headed down to North Bend to meet up with Sissy, Patrick and Nolan at the train depot. The babies were very excited.
We stood in line waiting for the train to arrive. Clementine was very excited right off the bat.

The train ride from North Bend to Snoqualmie was fun and very silly. Our super busy girl just isn't used to standing in lines and sitting still on trains.

I held Clem on my lap for awhile then it was Daddy's turn. While Cam was holding our girl one of the volunteers came up RIGHT behind them. He was decked out in a strand of blinking Christmas lights--I knew we were in for some real fun! He had a microphone and started singing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. Loudly. And directly behind Cam's head.

Here is Nolan's expression during carol-singing. He was a little confused.

Clementine was not confused. She knows this carol very well but wanted no part of the microphone holding, blinking light bedazzled man. She got as far away from this guy as she could--while still remaining in Cam's lap.

Then we got off the train and stood in another line. This one was a DOOOZY! It was the line to see Santa! We were there for a very very long time. Clem is one busy 2 year old so this was today's challenge. We each tried holding her. Cam put her on his shoulders. There was a coloring station, music and a random golden retriever hanging about. I had brought many many different snacks for our girl. But Clem had her mind set on climbing, running and being rambunctious. She stayed busy while we were in line, but she really did a lot better than I had anticipated!

She did pause to look at the miniature town under glass at the depot.

All that waiting in line...and we finally met Santa. He was a great Santa; no loud HO HO HOs. He was very soft spoken and asked Clementine as we walked up to him what she wanted for Christmas.

Just as she did with the caroler on the train, Clementine wanted as far away from this strange man as possible. She was practically scaling my body to get away. So we whispered to Santa a few things on our wishlist. Then gave Nolan a turn (I can't wait to see these pictures). Clementine never did sit on Santa's lap.

We got some great pictures of the babies during our journey today and we got some super goofy ones as well!

These are always my favorites:

Here she is checking to see how well I brushed this morning.

Cam is NOT being hurt in this picture, he is mugging for the camera! He's very convincing though!

It's a little hard to see in this picture but Clementine has a hot chocolate beard to go along with her hot chocolate jowls. LOVE this face!!!

Giggly Girl

Last night Clementine was eating away when something hilarious happened. Only she knows what kind of hilarity sparked this but I love it and I hope it happens more often!