Happy Birthday to all!

Nana and Baba have birthdays that are 5 days apart, and Claire is always looking for an excuse to make cupcakes. Mommy is always looking for an excuse to eat cupcakes, so this arrangement works out very well. Today we held an honorary birthday party for the grandmas.

This is the only part I allowed Mr. Helpful to participate in (well, besides the eating). He had more fun wadding up the cupcake wrappers than putting them in the cups.
 
My precision cupcake filler
 
Ta-da!
 
Icing...the best part! These cupcakes are definitely "family only." I won't tell you how many times that spoon went from the icing, to her mouth, and THEN to the cupcake. :)
 
The finished product
 
The proud chef (with chocolate on her lips)
 
Baba got a cake because Hayden destroyed the majority of my cupcake wrappers.
 
What's a cake without sprinkles?
 
And finally...the eating!!
 
 
Oh yeah, and yesterday was Tucker's 11th birthday, too. I'm still a little miffed with him for a certain diaper shredding extravaganza that occured on Thursday and caused me over an hour of clean up. How am I going to handle two dogs and three kids?!
 

Bits of cuteness

It has been so gorgeous here the last few days. We finally got out in the backyard and picked up after the dogs (I won't even tell you how long it had been since we'd done that or how freakin' much my dogs poop), and now we feel like we have a whole new room of the house. Here's some pics of the kids enjoying the space:

Yes, he's bigger than her now.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Random Sunday pictures

Nothing much going on here. We're all recovering from yet another illness that Claire brought home from preschool. We have decided that preschools were invented by the pharmaceutical companies so that they'd have a larger pool from which to test their products. In between the coughing and the nose blowing this weekend, we dusted off the ol' bounce house. Claire was thrilled to be reunited with her old friend, and Hayden...well, he was okay with it...as long as he could sit in the middle and eat raisins.

Your typical picture of a 3 year old
 
Happy, happy Hayden
 
Snacktime!
 
Justin was playing with the features on the camera, and this picture cracks me up because it looks like the book is about to attack poor Claire.
 

Our Third Family Day!

Three years ago today, our adoption became official! I feel like we became a family the day we met Claire, but in the official sense, today is the day Claire became our daughter. Most adoptive families call this their "Gotcha Day," but something about the the word gotcha sounds quick to me - kind of like, "We grabbed you, and then we ran off!" And dang it, we grabbed Claire and sat in Kazakhstan for seven more weeks. There was absolutely nothing quick about it!

While we were in Kazakhstan, we bought enough gifts to give Claire one each year on our family day until she's 18. She got a small felt yurt (the traditional homes of the Kazakh nomads...sort of like the Native American teepee) the first year, a little Kaz flag the second year, and this year, a traditional Kazakh dress hat:

It's hard not to love something that's purple *AND* has feathers when you're three:
 
 
We really need more boy dress up stuff:
 

Spring Tease

It was rainy and cold when we woke up yesterday morning, and we reconciled ourselves to staying inside and whining about how ready we are for spring. A couple hours later, we were pleasantly surprised to look outside and find that it was sunny and 60 degrees! When did that happen? We decided to take advantage of the weather and drove to the next town over for an "art festival," a term I use very loosely. We had fun walking around the town, though, and we even managed to have a nice lunch at a real restaurant with the kiddos...only minimal throwing of food and silverware! After lunch we took the kids to a playground on the beach to wear them out before naptime. It would've been more fun if the playground had already opened their bathrooms for the season, and we didn't have to race home with Claire yelling, "I have to go potty NOW!" I never thought the day would come when I'd wish she was still in diapers. The weather was back to cold and rainy a few hours later, so we were glad we took advantage of the short spring tease.


Cuteness
 
These kids love balloons more than just about anything else on earth.
 
Swinger Thing 1
 
Swinger Thing 2
 

32 weeks and counting...

 

Only 8ish weeks to go!

Rock....Chalk....Jayhawk......

 

We're still waving the wheat here this morning! That was maybe the most amazing game EVER. We were prepared to have our hearts broken with just over two minutes left. We even went upstairs to finish the game in our room, where Justin could muffle his sobs into his pillow. Then Mario Chalmers hit THE SHOT and secured the fact that Baby #3 will be named Mario Chalmers Sumner. Wow. We stayed up ridiculously late to watch all the post-game celebrations and poor Justin ended up getting about 4 hours of sleep before getting up this morning to catch his ungodly early train. Poor Daddy. I plan to put on an episode of Sesame Street and take a nap. Rock Chalk, my Kansas buddies!!

Daddy & Claire's Date

 

Justin and Claire went to the circus today. Nana and I took Claire to the circus on her birthday last year, and she still talks about it at least weekly, so we knew she'd be excited to go again. We made the mistake of telling her about the trip last week, which resulted in a few middle of the night conversations where Claire yells, "Mommy!" at 3 a.m. and when I get into her room, she smiles and says, "I'm going to the circus." Nothing more I'd rather hear in the middle of the night, Claire. So today, Daddy and Claire took off for the Big Apple Circus, and equally exciting, lunch at McDonald's and a ride on the subway.

They got home this afternoon and I think Justin might have enjoyed it more than Claire. He excitedly relayed everything that happened while Claire would jump in once in a while with, "Yeah...they did flips!" and, "Mommy...there were dogs!" Maybe next year Hayden will get to go, too, but for this year, a two-hour show during naptime with a 20 month old was just not within our realm of sanity.

In front of the big top:
 
Blurry, but inside the big top:
 
Clown nose Claire:
 

Big Boy Bed

Hayden is transitioning to his big boy bed this week. I remember the first night he slept in his crib, and Justin and I looked at our tiny boy and said that it was weird to think that one day he'd be too big for it. Sniff, sniff. We're going to need the crib for #3 in two short months, so we figured it was time to start the process so that he doesn't feel like his little brother "ousted" him. So far, he loves the big boy bed as long as we're in the room. He nuzzles up to his pillow, he pulls up all his blankets, and he tucks in his Curious George doll. As soon as we walk out the door, though, the bed apparently turns into a torture device. I'm glad we started the transition early. It was so easy with Claire!