Almost a year later...

Here I am..I am alive (however I am also 37 weeks pregnant and miserable).

Wanted to post some pics from our life in the past few months. I have so much fun keeping up with my friend's blogs, I thought, maybe I should try to keep up with my own :)

Sometimes you gotta bust out the ringpops on a 4 hour trip to the beach!

September of 2011

"Baby Claire" Turns ONE!

She will always be "baby Claire" according to Carson...


I do not even know where this year went...seriously...our precious Claire Bear is already ONE (April 12th). She is such a joy to be around and has been making us laugh so much lately. She has these funny laughs and expressions she does and a lot of it is mimicking her brother!

She isn't walking yet, it will be a bit longer, she won't even stand without holding on to anything..fine by us, she's so short she is going to look funny when she does walk. She is only 26 1/4 inches (not even on the chart) and 17 lbs 10 oz. in the 5th percentile! Our little thing...

Here are a couple pics of our big (yet little) girl and her bro!

Carson helped make her some cupcakes!

She wasn't sure at first but once she got a taste....it was over!

Loves her big brother!

Update

So, now Claire is 10 months old and Carson is about to be three. Still, I have been a major slacker at blogging...here are some pics over the last month or two to so you can see our growing little ones. To update you, Claire is pulling up on everything and starting to move her feet some as she holds on to the table, couch, or whatever. Carson is so funny, he keeps us laughing on a regular basis. His new thing is talking with his hands. He really gets into what he's saying and just moves those hands to try to get you to understand. We can understand most of what he says, he has the best memory...it really amazes me the things he will tell me that happened so long ago and he will make sure he does things in the correct order according to his memory. So, in a nutshell, we laugh a lot, have a lot of fun and love this family of ours :)

Here's a shot from Christmas in their Santa hats :)

Check out her ponytail!

Always cheesing!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Still in love...

Face it...

I do NOT do a good job at keeping up with my blog...terrible job actually. I think that those that view this also see pics on my Facebook page, so maybe that's why I'm not as motivated. Maybe I should start using it to write more instead of post pics, I don't know but if I don't do something different, it's going to be non-existent here soon!

To update you, life has been good and busy in the Newell house... and full of sickness. Carson and Claire were both sick for at least 5 days each and they did not overlap so, it was basically 10+ days of NO FUN! They both handled it like champs of course, but being contained to the house to try to keep our germs to ourselves wasn't fun.

Now that we're past the sickness, we've been getting ready for Christmas and looking forward to a fun day here in Vegas just us 4. We will miss being with all our family back in INDIANA, that's for sure.

Claire is 8 and 1/2 months old and so happy and fun! Her and Carson are starting to play so much together and he is so good with her. I caught him the other day making sure she had enough toys to play with and apologizing to her when he accidently hit her in the head. Sweet boy... Carson is hilarious lately, I mean hilarious...he walked out from brushing his teeth the other night with me to the living room and looked at Daniel and said, "I love you Daddy Daniel Newell." We were laughing SOOOO hard! Where did that come from? He is so full of love and laughter...pure joy overflows from him and the only other place that I know that simply comes from is the Lord. We pray with Carson every night and he is VERY routine in his prayers and it makes us laugh EVERY night as we have to go in a certain order and sit in a certain spot, etc. We thank God every night for the blessing he gave us in our children and we pray that during this season you too will be thankful for the greatest Gift, our Lord Jesus!

SOOOOO behind

Here are pics of Claire at 5 and 6 months...I've been HORRIBLE at keeping up with this lately... life is busy, but very good! I also left my camera in Indiana and didn't have it for a few weeks so, I don't have a ton of pics of my growing little girl.

5 months with puppy and a cute polka dot dress



6 months with puppy and some others


Claire is doing amazing...her torticollis is gone, they don't see a need to monitor any longer, however a nutrition specialist came over the other day and we talked about the crazy amount of spit up that this girl has and they told me they think she is getting too much too fast so, over the past couple days I have cut down on what she eats (because like her bro was, she will just eat and eat) and it definitely has improved, it's not gone, but I'll take a little improvement. Carson is still madly in love with her. One of my favorite things that he does with her is he holds her hand everytime we are in the car going somewhere...precious! They are just a joy and I am having one of those, "so happy to be a mommy" moments! God is good!

Claire has 6 six teeth, yeah, that's right, 6! And the great thing is, they haven't bothered her a bit! :) She is on the move....she rolls EVERYwhere and is just about crawling...today I caught her totally up on her hands and toes..she has scooted a little forward but hasn't mastered it! Man, I'm not ready for this!

Here is Carson and his best bud, Jack!

Claire's 4 month update

Out little smiler is already 4 months, well, actually she's getting close to 5 by now but that's just b/c I am not so good at updating lately. She weighed 13.4 lbs. at her checkup and is in the 25-50% and she was only in the 10th for height, but I don't remember the measurement. We make short kids, that's a fact! She's doing wonderful...sleeping a ton...about 20 hours a day...can't ask for anything better than that. She is super happy when she is awake (who wouldn't be after all that sleep) and is becoming more and more social. She just laughs and smiles at her big brother all the time! She is rolling a ton from her belly to her back but can't get back to her belly again. She will be on the move soon but I'm not rushing it! Here is her 4 month pic with her puppy dog and then just some others over the past couple weeks.

If you can't tell, she has a little pony tail in the above pic! :)

I guess Carson deserves a little update as well. He is a NON STOP talker...oh man...it's so fun and brings about a lot of laughter! He has become SO independent saying "my do it, my do it" all the time but of course we try to explain to him that he doesn't ALWAYS get to do it! He is very particular and organized and has the most amazing memory. He LOVES music, especially Veggie Tales....he knows many of their songs by heart and watching him sing along is hysterical! He just ADORES his little sister...he has started to TRY to wrestle with her some but of course that's a big no no! Life is busy in our home but life is good.

Carson and friends playing.

Family Movie night (Claire didn't last long).

Watching it rain in Vegas...a rare occasion.

Silly boys...

Need a smile?

I'm WAY behind on blogging but...this will make you SMILE!

Happy Girl!