Four Months Old Today!

Today, Eloise is four months old. I was able to get a cute smile, but she has a bit of a rash on her cheeks, hiding her lovely dimple. She is a very happy baby and loving her big sister.

Claire also wanted to get in on four month photo shoot action too!

Yay for toys!

Eloise is starting to have fun grabbing onto various toys and putting them into her mouth. She especially likes her play mat where she can roll over (only from front to back so far) and play. Today in Kindermusik, she even held and shook her own jingle bell!

Potty Training...Success!

We'd put off potty training Claire for a number of reasons. We didn't want to jump in before Eloise was born, thinking she might regress or feel like we were kicking her out of the baby slot. We were further delayed by our sudden move onto the base. We thought the transition time wouldn't lend itself well to potty training either.

For the last several months, we've been introducing her to the idea and encouraging her when she wanted to use the potty, but we didn't do any specific method. I think both Andy and I were hoping that it would just happen on it's own as Claire did show some interest, but there was nothing consistent.

Finally, over the long Veterans Day weekend, we decided to follow Lora Jenson's three day potty training method. The method is really child centered and does not have the parent putting the child on the potty at specific intervals, rather it tries to teach the child to pay attention to his/her own body.

Going into it, we were skeptical as we didn't really believe it could be done in three days, however, even though it really wasn't a three day "quick fix" the method really did work. It was a tough several days and she really didn't seem to "get it" until the very end of the third day. The fourth day was much better and she continued to improve from there. In addition to using the method, we did end up using various small rewards with her, which really seemed to work.

Since then, Claire has definitely had some accidents, but most days are good days and after about five to six or seven days, we were ready to declare success with the potty. Claire still has accidents sometimes, but she is doing really well with it. Interestingly, she does particularly well when we are out and about and many of her accidents are at home. She (and all of us) are still trying to work out the kinks, but in general, we are all much happier about it.

And, it is SO nice not to have to change two sets of diapers any more. Yay!

Halloween Fun!

I always seem to be a little behind with my postings, so, here is Halloween, a little bit late.


We had a great weekend, filled with lots of Halloween events. Claire totally got into it this year and had been happily wearing her butterfly costume for almost two months (mommy ordered it early)! She was really excited about it for weeks and would tell anyone who asked that she was going to be a butterfly and Eloise was going to be a strawberry. They were both so cute in their costumes!
Here is Claire with her friend Sadie marching in the Halloween Parade. Below is a picture with more of the kids from the parade.


The events started for us on Friday morning with a "trick or trunk" and parade with the mom's group, Connect the Tots, that I'm a part of. It was fun seeing all the kids walk around in their costumes.

Later on Friday night, we went to the Spooktacular at Carney Park, which was fun, but very crowded. Claire enjoyed the little trick or treat booths and the "spooky" train ride. She really loved hanging out with her friends Sadie, Ava, Alec, and Lauren.

On Saturday we carved pumpkins with the girls, but alas, I forgot to take pictures with the finished product.
Then, on Sunday, Halloween itself, we had a bunch of friends over for dinner before trick or treating around the support site. It was a great, but VERY fast party... people were in and out in a little over an hour.
We saw a lot of Claire's little friends out trick or treating, including Sophia, who had the same costume as Claire! Too cute.

Three Months Old!

On Saturday the 30th of October, Eloise turned three months old. Time is flying by!

Trulli Darling in Alberobello

After the zoo safari, we headed to the nearby town of Alberobello (literally translates into beautiful tree). Alberobello is in the region of Puglia, in the southeastern coast of Italy. We hadn't yet been to that area of Italy, so we were really looking forward to the trip.

Alberobello is a darling town, and the area is known for it's Trulli houses you can see in the pictures. They have little dome shaped roofs made out of stone. While we were there we rented a two bedroom trulli house for the night. My interior pictures don't do the house justice... it was truly darling! ;)
I know this last picture is really blurry, but I wanted to give an idea of what the domes looked like on the inside. The trulli house had one dome per room, so four total; one for each bedroom, one for the bathroom and one for the living/dining/kitchen.

The Bari Zoo Safari and Alberobello

The weekend before Halloween, we decided to get away to the eastern coast of Italy. It was our first trip with Eloise and everything went really well. Andy took Friday off and we drove to the Zoo Safari outside of Bari. The zoo consisted of two parts; a drive through safari and then a combo zoo/amusement park. First, we did the drive through. The safari was amazing. There were a TON of all kinds of animals and we brought along carrots and celery to feed the animals. Unlike in American zoos, feeding the animals is not looked down upon. Claire was totally enthralled with all of the animals and loved feeding them. Because we went in the off season, there were absolutely no crowds, which was wonderful.


Some parts of the zoo safari made us a bit nervous however. The lions, tigers, and bears, who each had their own fenced off section of the safari were intense. The bears were off in the distance doing there thing, but the lions and tigers were RIGHT THERE! We even met one tiger lying in the road that Andy had to drive around... the tiger was not too happy about being disturbed either, so we stepped on the gas a bit. YIKES!


You can see by the reflection of Claire's polka dot shirt, how close we were to the lions and tigers. We were sure not to roll down our windows and pass out any carrots or celery to them, though!

After the drive through safari, we visited the rest of the park, which featured a train that you could ride into the monkey enclosure. The train was a series of cages for the people to sit in and the monkeys jumped all over the train. Inside the train there were little tubes/slides to send peanuts down that the monkeys could get on the other side. It was a pretty weird experience, and a bit scary, but Claire thought it was really funny. Eloise just slept through most of it.