Clara's Big Adventure

As promised, here is the email with pictures that my friend, Carrie, sent me of Clara's adventure while Paul and I were at the hospital for Rose's birth:

 

Hey, so I kept trying to text you photos of Clara while she was with us but for some reason they would never go through!  So I thought I'd just compile the whole collection for you here.

Dinner time.  The kids all had macaroni & cheese and veggies.  Charlie was not here and I had four little kids to feed so I went with something easy.  Clara loved the macaroni and asked for seconds and thirds.  You probably feed her nicer dinners at home so maybe dinner from a box was a novelty?  Ha!

 

 

Clara & Luke played with the Cars.  We have a whole box full of Cars from the movie (we have another whole box of regular matchbox cars).  We have pretty much every character so I thought it was really funny how Clara gathered this little collection for herself.  She obviously has some favorites.

 

 

Before bed Luke & Clara prepared us all a little bedtime snack.

 

My boys brush their teeth in the dark because they got flashing light saber toothbrushes in their Christmas stockings.  We also turn on the Chomper Chums app every time.  When the music started playing Clara's face lit up and she brushed for the whole two minutes.  (Check out the app, it is free and my boys have been LOVING it for months.)

*Amy here - Carrie is right, this app is pretty great and Clara has been loving it.  It shows a character (Clara's is a crocodile) with its mouth wide open and tells the kids to brush the germs away on one section for 30 seconds before switching to the next section and has a little horn and announcer telling them when to switch.  Clara thinks it is the coolest.

This morning I discovered that I have no idea how to do little girls' hair.  Honestly I can barely do my own hair.  We took Isaac to school, then came back and ate breakfast round two (Isaac will only eat cold cereal for breakfast and both littles said they wanted it too, but neither of them ate it so I made them pancakes).  Then I had to drop Luke off for an OT appointment and I took Clara with me to Trader Joe's.  She was so cute with the little cart and so obedient!  My boys are wild maniacs when they get carts.  She found a Cliff iced oatmeal granola bar and acted like she knew what it was and wanted one so we got one for her & one for Luke.  Do you buy those?  I thought it was funny how excited she was about it.

* Amy again - our Trader Joe's doesn't have these little carts which bums me out.  And Clara has never seen a Cliff iced oatmeal granola bar before, the little rum beggar.  Thanks, Carrie, for humoring her whims. 

After we picked up Luke we went to get a car wash.  They watched a few cars go through and then they started running in circles around my legs playing chase.  I had someone ask me if they were twins.  Also during the course of the morning I had three different people tell me how cute Clara was and two others tell me that they loved her dress.  You're going to be in trouble when the boys start noticing her!

We went back to the house for a bit and watched Cat in the Hat until it was time to pick up Isaac at school.  Clara was so funny with Cracker.  When she first got here she was definitely a bit nervous and wanted me to hold her.  During dinner she kept looking under the table to see where he was.  Eventually she warmed up to him and pet him a lot.  She liked watching him eat always wanted to know where he was.

* Clara isn't a huge fan of dogs.  Well, actually, she loves them until they get close.  Same with cats.  But ever since we got home she has been pretending to have a dog and calling him Cracker.  We tied a jump rope around one of her stuffed dogs and she "walks" it and tells us it is Cracker.  I love that Carrie's family is obsessed with their Daschund.  He even dresses up to match the boys for Halloween and is in all their family photos.

We always play at the park for awhile after school.

Here they all are crammed into the car together.  We listed to "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" approximately 1,000 times on repeat.  I turned on the kids Christmas CD last night when we were driving home because my boys were getting restless and fighting in the back.  The Hippopotamus song is their favorite.  When we were at Trader Joe's Clara was singing parts of it and told me that she liked that song and then she asked for it over and over again while we were driving around.  We also got to hear her rendition of "Let it GOOOOO!"  So funny!

And that's what you missed while Clara was away.  We sure enjoyed having her!  She is darling.

Love,
Carrie