Envy

Joshua has dozens and dozens of trains. He plays with Thomas the Tank Engine trains everyday, all day. We read Thomas or other train books before he goes to sleep every night on his train pillow beneath train blankets with his tracks next to his bed. He wears train pj's and underwear, has a Thomas alarm clock next to his bed, as well as an engineer's hat, a Thomas pocketwatch which he carries around daily, a thomas piggy bank, and a set of train russian stacking dolls. When Josh wakes up in the morning he brings his trains to the table to eat breakfast on his Thomas placemat with his Thomas cup. On the way to preschool we listen to Thomas stories in the car, and when he gets to preschool he plays with trains ALL DAY. Then he comes home and has a nap with his trains in his bed, and when he wakes up he takes his trains out to the sandbox until dinnertime. He even has train bath toys and coloring books, and will only watch train movies. We think it's great, but there is one problem....

Joshua doesn't like to share his trains. Ever.

Now, Joshua's baby sister Claire really looks up to him. She wants to do what he does, and so she too has begun to take an interest in his trains. However, Joshua isn't quite as enthusiastic about her interest. Whenever Claire crawls over to pick up a train that Josh has set up, he will pick her up and carry her as far from his trains as possible.

Today we decided to give Claire a train of her own. Her train is Rosie:

Right away, Claire LOVED her train! She got a big smile on her face and she knew it was hers. She started playing with it on the floor and crawling around with it. Joshua however, wasn't so happy about Claire's gift. Jealousy reared it's ugly head.

Maybe it's time Joshua learns to share.

Claire's 1 year Birthday

Yay!! Claire is 1 year old!

Since Jason and I both had a busy evening, we decided to celebrate Claire's birthday at lunch time. And we celebrated in style....McDonalds!!! haha
It was Joshua's request that we go to Mickey D's, and we all had a blast!

We were planning on having a party for Claire on Saturday, but decided to move it to Tuesday because it's supposed to rain Saturday through Monday and I want an outdoor party with twinkle lights in the trees!

I think the birthday girl enjoyed herself.

She was very excited about her birthday cake, but wanted it right away, so she's a little distraught in this picture! Patience child!

Hold on Claire, we have to light the candle!!!
We got special permission from the McDonald's manager to light her candle, as long as I promised not to burn down the joint.

oooOOOOoooo fire....



mmmm..... lip smackin' good!

Claire was fascinated by the cake's squishiness.

Yay Sugar high!!!

After McDonalds, we took the kids to the toy store to play for a little while.

Later on, Claire unwrapped her presents.

She loved playing with the paper and took the ribbon off and tried to put it on her head.
Isn't that what ribbon is for?

Now Claire has a zoo train to play with when Joshua is playing with his trains!

... and a wooden duck that flaps its wings!

Nana gave Claire a little toy microwave and some toy doughnuts.
Josh and Claire have been chewing on them ever since!
Hopefully they are lead free! haha :)

mmmmm.... PLASTIC DOUGHNUTS!

We also gave Claire a little Jack-in-the-Box, that plays "pop goes the .... " BEAR?
The idea behind the teddy bear was that it would a nice cuddly, soft, and furry alternative to the more frightening clown popping up, which is usually the norm.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

However, this turned out to be Claire's LEAST favorite birthday present.

Poor little girl. So sad.

Today Claire was still suspicious of the bear-in-a-box, but a little more daring.
She crawled over to it and touched the bear very tentatively, then tried to push it into the box and close the lid. After some assistance in closing the box, she touched the music crank and looked at me, so I started to turn the music box. I've never seen Claire move so fast AWAY from something! She crawled about 6 feet away (a safe distance I guess) and waited for the bear to pop up, then gasped with her eyes wide, looked at me and smiled a huge grin!
She did this about 4 times in a row.
So, I think she may be warming up to the bear.

Happy Birthday Claire!

I can't believe our little Claire is 1 year old already!
It seems only yesterday I was in labor with her, but it was all worth it!
Claire Victoria Gilbert was born on
September 10th 2007, at 2:37pm in Ypsilanti, Michigan

This is Claire at 2 days old


Here is a collage of Claire's first 12 months of life:



Happy Birthday to our sweet little Claire bear,
our lovely baby girl.

Josh's first day of Preschool

This is a big week for our little family!
Yesterday Joshua started preschool, which was very exciting for him. And tomorrow my little Claire is turning 1 year old!! I can't believe it. My babies are growing up so fast.

So.... Joshua's first day of preschool!
Here he is standing on the porch for the proverbial "first day of school" picture. My plan is to have my kids hold up a sign for each year they start school...it will make a cute scrapbook one day, if I ever get around to scrapbooking my gazillion pictures!

Josh was VERY excited to go to school! He told me the night before that he was "feeling a little nervous" about it, but he was fine in the morning! And yes, he did give an apple to each of his teachers. Kinda poetic, don't ya think?

We hung a giant felt letter "J" on Josh's backpack, as well as a felt apple that has a little picture window in it for his picture. I'm pretty sure he won't be mixing up his backpack with anyone else!

We got some wiggles out....

and headed off bright and early at 8am! I am still definitely not a morning person, but I guess I soon will be!
Here is Josh's preschool.
Well, it's actually the teachers' offices. The preschool itself is in an outbuilding down a pathway beyond the gardens.

School starts at 8:30am, but it's good to get there early...the kids sign-in (to practice printing their name), hang up their stuff, then they sit on the round blue rug to read stories with their teacher and parents while the other kids arrive. They then have a message board where they tell the kids what they're planning on doing that day.


The kids then "slither like a snake" or "hop like a frog" or "gallop like a horse" - and this changes daily - to their small group tables. This is where Claire and I cut out. This is also where I started bawling the second the door of the school clicked shut behind me on my way out, even though I swore I wasn't going to cry! My baby is so big!!! And I cried for a solid half an hour!

So the upside to Josh being in preschool all morning is that Claire is still very portable, so we get to have all kinds of fun just the 2 of us! Although I kept looking for him subconsciously. When I went to pick Josh up at the end of the last couple of days I practically had to DRAG him out of there!! He was having way too much fun. And he met a new friend: DJ. The entire first day of school Josh apparently referred to his new friend simply as "my friend"..."where's my friend?" "My friend, come here!"Josh's teacher's told me that he and DJ followed each other around all day long and bonded over their love for trains. Every day the kids have "work time" where they "plan" what they're going to do during "work time" (it's really just play time), and then they go do whatever they planned. Well, the last couple of days Josh's plan has been to play with the trains of course! He likes painting too, and today he mixed ALL the colors together to see what they would make...which was a brownish-red that I will be washing out of his clothes, shoes, socks, and hair for DAYS! Good thing it's washable!

Here is Josh with his new friend DJ.

Oh yes, and I should tell you all how Mom kinda got in trouble today at Josh's school...
When I went to pick Josh up today, he showed me some pop-bottle hourglasses used to teach math in the school, and said "these are just like our hourglass at home for when I have a timeout", and his teacher turned to me with a questioning expression so I explained that we have an egg timer like this one:
and it is a 3 minute timer, so we use it for Josh's timeouts -"because he's 3 years old and isn't that what they say - 1 minute of timeout per year of age of the child." But I was completely shutdown by Josh's teacher..."Actually, we don't agree with that. We'll be having some parenting workshops coming up."
OUCH!
So I guess I'm doing it wrong. And I will be very curious to see what they want us to do instead! So more to come in a future blog I'm sure!

Anyways, when we got home Josh wanted to ride his tricycle and eat tomato soup...in that order.


Then it was time for some down time....er, I mean UPSIDE DOWN time!
Yup, no hands and no feet!!!
At least he took a nice long nap after.