Clara: Week 7

Clara loves her older sister this week. She's really becoming aware of us and socializing with the cutest coos, gurgles and smiles.

She loves her binky in the evening hours. I'm so grateful she'll take one! Otherwise the Shaw household would be a noisy one at night. Luckily she's not dependent on it to sleep, just to calm down when she's having her fussy times during the day.

Mackenzie is dressing up like a princess just about every day. Her favorite is Rapunzel and I finally fixed that dress. In the meantime, she's been favoring this Cinderella dress.

On Monday the 17th, I went to my friend Sarah's house to get my hair done. I wanted a change and really didn't want to chop it off. I loved going dark after Mackenzie so I thought I would give it a whirl again. Keith was against it at first but I was pretty determined to get it done. Poor Sarah, the coloring system had changed so we tried a new way of doing it and my hair went RED. So we stripped some color and put on a darker shade. Still red. At this point it had been 5 hours and Keith was home so he came over to pick up the girls. He was kind of shocked to see me hair so red and was pretty worried how I was going to look at the end of the night. After almost 8 hours, we got the look we were going for, albeit a couple shades darker than planned. It was shocking to see myself in the mirror those first few days but it's faded a bit and I really, really like it. Keith was pleasently surprised when I came home with brown hair instead of red and he's since admitted he was wrong:)

Mackenzie sometimes think Clara's just another doll to play with as you can see in this picture. All in all, it was a fun week with my last Drs. Appt that checked out good and two girls that got along pretty well.

Clara: Week 6 & Boo at the Zoo and Potty Training

We love Boo at the Zoo, it's one of our favorite Halloween events. This year we went on a Thursday night (13th) which was a rainy day. It seriously stopped raining just as we reached the zoo so the place was empty. That proved to be a good thing because Mackenzie hates crowds and she really liked going to the different booths and asked to have her picture taken in front of the castle and with Elmo and the princesses.

Clara did great! I nursed her before we went into the zoo and then she fell asleep after a bit in the carrier. It's so much nicer to carry her on top of my stomach instead of inside!

Mackenzie is really obsessed with Princesses right now. She loves any story that begins with "Once upon a time" and ends with "And they lived happily ever after." Anyways, she's wanted to be a princess for Halloween for awhile and right before we left for the zoo she put this Dorothy dress on (I bought at Target on clearance last Halloween for dress up- she doesn't even know who Dorothy is) and told everyone she was a princess. So no, I didn't forget the braids and ruby slippers, I just wasn't planning on a little Dorothy.

This is really Harry Potter's castle but she didn't care. Of all the pictures, this is the one she wanted most.

I just love this picture. They're both so dang cute and best buddies. I picked a good one!

This week I was feeling ambitious because Keith had Monday and Tuesday off so we decided it was finally time to buckle down and potty train. We warned Mackenzie Sunday night that we were taking away the diapers. On Monday we told her to tell her last diaper goodbye and put a pair of underwear on her. She was MAD. She threw a big half hour screaming tantrum then decided to go potty and that was pretty much it. We've had a few accidents but overall, she rocked it! It's so nice that she's so independent now and doesn't need much help. Keith was also a huge help and definitely contributed to her success.

Clara: Week 5

This was a busy week for us. We took Keith's mom, Joan, to his school and showed her around. We also took her to Schimpffs, Huber Farms, and Bernheim Forest (see posts below for pictures). The weekend was realxing because it was General Conference. Keith took Mackenzie out to fly a kite between sessions on Sunday. While Joan was here, Mackenzie was able to spend a lot of time outside exploring and taking walks with her grandma as well as reading books. We were sad to have her leave but she's already making plans with Keith's dad to visit next year. It's so much easier saying goodbye to our moms when we know we get to see them soon at Christmas! Clara also had her month check-up on the 3rd. She weighed in at 9 lbs. 7 oz. and measured 21 inches. This week, she started to really smile and sleep a 5-6 hour stretch at night (thank you Babywise).

Schimpffs and Huber Farms

While Joan was here, we also took her to Keith's school, then Schimpffs and finally to Huber Farms. Schimpffs was really fun this time because the owners were there and demonstrated how they make their red hots and let the kids in the museum area have a treat out of the old candy machine. Kenz thought that was really cool and picked a tootsie roll. Below are the pictures from Huber Farms. We had a delicious lunch at the restaurant and Mackenzie loved all of the painted pumpkins and picking her own pumpkin. She was really in love with the mini pumpkins so we picked out one large one for the 3 of us to carve and got her a little one to paint.