She Said: Plans for Brother

CC: (pats my tummy)
Me: Are you going to hug and kiss your baby borther when he's here?
CC: I'm going to cut him in two and eat him.
I'm pretty sure (hoping) she was kidding.

If You Had Blinked...

It's been a weird winter here... not too cold and hardly any snow. Coming from Texas/Louisiana, I want snow and I want it now! I got my wish on Monday (for a very brief moment). There were about three hours of big, fat flakes. I called it a snow day, got Bop suited up and we went outside to catch snowflakes on our tongues.

Bop licked snow and ice off of every surface area in the front yard, e.g., the patio furniture, rocks, trees, yard toys. Sometimes there was dirt with the snow, so I tried to steer her away from this.

Sadly, once it stopped snowing, the sun came out and melted it all away. It was like it never snowed. Good thing I took pictures, otherwise I'd probably have no recollection of our brief snow.

Maybe I should be careful what I wish for, though. The little man is due in 3 weeks and we will have a 40 minute drive to the hospital. Don't want to do that in the snow, I guess. I just want to see some pretty snow in our yard and on the mountains. There is something very peaceful about it.

And it makes my heart happy. =)

The Waiting Game... Waiting on a Game

We've been nail-biting nervous waiting for the big game to roll around. So we kept ourselves busy doing various toddler-friendly science experiments. This one (baking soda + vinegar + food coloring volcanos) was found via Carey on Pinterest. Thanks, Carey... this was big fun!

Claudia got really into the whole thing so I started searching around for other experiments... or as Claudia calls them, "magic tricks." Also, big thanks to Paps & Mama Kate for the Tinkerbell costume (she's sporting it here). It arrived last week (with the other much appreciated goodies!) and she's worn it every day since. Every day!

I found a great website, TinkerLab, that has all sorts of science projects, organized by baby, toddler, preschool & school age. Great website with endless experiments... or "magic tricks." Be forewarned... some tricks get messy. So now its game day and this is all the enthusiasm Bop can manage to muster up.

I bribed her with animal crackers if she'd do some sort of cute pose in her LSU get-up (big thanks Amy for the LSU outfits!). So she got up...

.... and ran away. Go tigers!

Welcome to the Dark Side

Claudia, who has never seen Star Wars, just loves Darth Vader. She has, however, watched the YouTube video of Darth Vader wielding a "light saver with a 'B'" (roughly 1 million times) and now loves him dearly. I suspect she'd freak out if she saw the movie... what with the scary Darth Vader breathing and chopping off appendages with his light saver with a "B", etc., so we'll save that for later. Much, much later. For the time being, there's a lot of this going on around here:

And We're Off!

Happy New Year, everyone! We've been very busy doing absolutely nothing since Christmas... wearing pajamas all day, baking brownies, and watching bowl games and Little Bear. Critical stuff. Our first ever staycation has been a total success.

We stayed up really late last night... maybe 10ish? We did wake up early, though... 6 o'clock. And that, my friends, is midnight in the US Eastern time zone. So we were right there with you. =) What did we do to celebrate? Danced around our living room with hats and noise makers until I collapsed in a heap on the couch. This morning I woke bright and early determined to make my first New Years meal. I followed my mother's menu and baked a glazed ham, slow cooked black eyed peas, sauteed cabbage and baked some cornbread. Claudia also repeated her tradition of wearing her cabbage hat.

Bop ate everything and actually liked it. It's a pretty miserable struggle to get her to eat what I cook. A struggle that usually results in me heating up a hot dog and rice and slicing up a tomato. It's her go-to meal. But not today! She actually ate her ham, peas and cornbread.

I think you're supposed to eat the peas for your health and the cabbage for your wealth, but I recently read that this traditional Southern new years meal is to remember the struggles of the South after losing the Civil War. It goes that after the war, the Northern troops raided Southern homes, leaving nothing but undesirable items (like pork fat backs, cabbage and black eyed peas). The stalwart Southerners did the best they could with these foods and it became a Southern tradition to eat these foods on New Years to commemorate their struggles.

In other news, I turned thirty something last week. If there was a theme for the day, it would have been "Go back to bed. Today has been cancelled." Our poor Bop had a nasty 24 hour bug that kept us glued to the couch for the day. She never gets sick, so it was pretty rough on her.

My loving husband gave me a do-over birthday a few days after Christmas, securing dinner reservations, opera tickets and a babysitter for a night out. It was our first time to go to the Budapest opera house and it was absolutely stunning. We mostly went just to see the beautiful theater. The opera was nice, but it is what it is... 3 hours of some folks singing in a language we don't speak. Not the most thrilling thing.

Russell assured me it was the first and last opera we'd be attending here. He's suffered through about four operas total with me. I suspect its the last opera he'll be attending anywhere. Thanks for putting in your time, honey. =)

It was a very nice birthday do-over.

Happy New Year everyone!

I wish you health, prosperity and purpose in this new and exciting year.

Holly Jolly Christmas

Christmas is the best time of the year. It just is. It's the time when you hug your loved ones close, slow down, and appreciate the small things. It's the time when we can appreciate that the birth of Jesus draws us all together and gives us something so special to be thankful for. We spent this Christmas away from our families, but we still made our warm and fuzzy holiday memories... our little family of three, going on four.

Claudia decorated her little pink tree, decking it out with ornaments we have given her each year, along with ornaments family and friends have sent her. This year we gave her a homemade Hungarian ornament, but her favorite ornament arrived last week by mail from Rachie & Ryan. It's a Chicago ornament and every night Claudia would touch it and whisper "Chicago!" We often reminded Claudia that Santa was watching her and that Jihermichael (Elf on Shelf) was sending reports back to Santa. She took none of this seriously. She has her moments, but my girl has been pretty good. We made cookies for Santa on Christmas eve. Claudia got a little out of control drizzelling red icing on the gingerbread men. Daddy commented that the cookies looked like they were covered in blood, and they kind of did, so we added some snowflake sprinkles. Good as new. Claudia stayed up a little late on Christmas eve. She didn't have too many questions about Santa, but when we hinted he might pass us over if she stayed up too late, she scooted off to bed. She loved wearing her little snow man pajamas from Aunt Debbie and Uncle Matthew. For some reason, Claudia had no motivation to go downstairs and open her toys on Christmas morning. She peeked down the stairs, saw her toys and slowly toodled herself down to investigate.

She was most excited about her light saber. Just so you know, she wasn't wearing any pajamas when she woke up and it took about fifteen minutes to coax her into this pair. CC's bike from Santa is pretty neat. The kids over here don't use training wheels, but they start out on balance bikes (no pedals). After they master their balance on these, then they get the real deal. I think they're catching on stateside too.

This is Claudia's baby. She firmly refuses to name the baby, but insists the child receive serious dental attention.

She didn't much care about any of the other toys, but did enjoy stomping on the wrapping paper and playing with a toy ladybug that game in her stocking. Being away from our families this year, it was a wonderful blessing to have several friends over here that were also spending the holidays in Budapest. We spent Christmas day over at our friends' house. Claudia was excited to play with her little buddies and eat some delicious food. When we got home, she spent more time taking care of no-name baby. I think she's getting geared up to be a big sister. Celebrating Christmas away from family has made us appreciate our families and miss them terribly. It was strange being away from my mom for Christmas and I missed her very, very much. But I appreciated this sweet moment where Daddy and CC inspected the tree and shared a hug.

Thanks to my new handy tripod, we were able to take a McLendon family photo when we got home Christmas evening!

You can also take pictures in the dark without getting things all blurry with that tripod. We loved our little tree and I'll be sad to take it down. The Hungarians (and apparently most Europeans) wait until Christmas eve to put up their trees and then they wait until mid to late January to take them down. Weird, huh?Claudia's Christmas artwork. She loves making her artwork and I love watching those little hands glueing, cutting, coloring and flinging glitter everywhere.

It's freezing here and we have nothing to show for it but a few measly little flakes and a bunch of ice. Not really a white Christmas, so much as it was a foggy and icy one. Claudia got the last laugh on this one. She took the "coal" out of her stocking in the morning, asked what it was and got defensive that she'd be getting this. She later dumped the coal out on the floor and began spreading it around the room. That's the last time she gets this mess.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Weekend on Ice with Icing

It's nice and chilly in Budapest so we decided to go out and test the ice.

The lake in City Park is nice and iced over. With the Vajdahunyad Castle behind the lake, it makes for a picturesque place to skate. I watched and drank hot chocolate rink side. The next stop was Disney on Ice. The downside was that the show was all in Hungarian. Nevertheless, Claudia had a ball, especially watching the Sleeping Beauty part. Claudia loves Sleeping Beauty and even wore her Princess Aurora costume to the show. There was lots of laughing, lots of oohing and aaawing... and occasionally Claudia would scream out "Nem beszélnek magyarul!" (I don't speak Hungarian) and "In English! In English!"

So here's the icing part. Claudia had a cookie decorating party with her playgroup a few days ago. She had a lot of fun cutting the cookies, but mostly liked licking the icing off the final product.

Look at that focus!

Look at all that icing! Shortly after I took this picture she licked those cookies clean. Seems like something Daddy would do. Claudia loved it. After this little party, I'm thinking a cookie or cupcake decorating birthday party would be pretty awesome.