Brett and Sara Musick: Catching up

It's been a while since we've posted, and so much has happened!

Summer pretty much showed up like a slap in the face. All of a sudden I went from putting the girls in fleece pjs and jackets to shorts, tank tops, and sunscreen. So much for spring, huh? I'm glad all the cold weather is behind us because summer is going to be SO much fun with these kiddos.

Claire is growing and growing. She's just the sweetest thing. I love this age. 10 months is my favorite by far. She's learning so much everyday. At 9 months, her teeth came in with a vengeance. She has her top and bottom front teeth, and now she's working on the next two on the top. I unpacked all of Sophia's old 18-24 month summer clothes, and Claire easily fits in to everything. YAY! No need to shop this summer. Just this week, Claire has finally decided that she can sleep through the night. It has been heaven. She sleeps like a rock from 8 pm - 6 am, and sometimes we can get her to go back to sleep with a little rocking. After going without a full night of steady sleep for over a year, the mere idea of going to bed and not having to wake up for at least 7 hours is just awesome. It's amazing what weaning can do. We can tell that she's starting to say some words, mainly mama and dada, which I'm not sure if she connects with Brett and me, but it's still worth it. She points at things and says something that sounds like, "What's that?" She will clink glasses with you and say, "Cheers!" I swore she said hot dog the other day. No signs of walking quite yet, but she's a pro at crawling and pulling herself up on things.

Sophia is about as 2 and a half as you can get. She's getting very independent, and like all 2-year-olds, is pushing boundaries to see how far is too far. Even though she can be a pain now and then, she's still fun. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. She hugged Claire the other day and announced, "My best friend, Claire!" So fun. I love taking Sophia and Claire to the storytimes at the library, where Sophia totally rocks out with all the other kiddos. The latest big thing happening with Sophia is her teeth. Ugh. Early this spring, she fell down my parents stairs and chipped her molar. Yes, I said her MOLAR. We added her to our dental insurance in Feb and took her to the dentist to get it checked. In the process, the dentist said she had CAVITIES and referred us to a pediatric dentist. Apparently, Sophia has unusually deep fissures in her teeth, which are breeding zones for cavity-forming bacteria. It was inevitable that she'd have problems, but I still feel bad! We did find an AWESOME pediatric dentist though. Sophia's cleaning was amazing, she had one cavity filled (with the help of some laughing gas), and had a crown put on her chipped molar (again with laughing gas). The dentist said she did better than most of her 12-year-olds, so that's good news. This dentist was amazing. So amazing that Sophia never wanted to leave her office. The doctor covered Sophia in stickers from head to toe on one appointment. And for her next two, the dentist road her pink bike around the office and delivered stuffed animals to her in the bike's basket. After being treated like that, I wouldn't want to leave either! So, Sophia has healthy teeth now. The next big thing to tackle is potty training, and she's not really interested in that. We'll see how that goes this summer.

Brett has been busy at work lately, taking on a lot of training for the newly-hired first officers at Colgan. He loved being able to teach new pilots but says it can really get exhausting when you do it week upon week. He's enjoying some vacation time right now, which he totally deserves. (I say this as he's cleaning our bathroom.) We've actually accomplished a lot over his vacation. We remulched the yard and pruned and planted flowers. It really looks nice. Much better than it did last year when all we were concerned about was a new baby. We have more plans before he goes back to work on Sunday. I think we're going to try to make it to an Indians game this week. I'd like to take an outing to Trader's Point Creamery. The girls would love that. We're just trying to take it a day at a time and soak up all the time with Brett that we can. He works out of Albany, NY next month instead of Dulles, which will be nice for him. He'll get to see some of his old flying buddies. He also has a full week of training this month. His paycheck will be great, but he'll be gone a lot more than normal. I'll have to think of a lot of things to do with the girls to keep them busy. We may be taking a lot of trips to Lafayette! I'll need some adults to talk with before I go bonkers. And starting in September, Brett will change his base to Houston. They are making a lot of changes in his company, mainly pilots are transferring over to other planes, so there are open slots in Houston. He hears that the operations in Houston is much better, so we'll see how Continental treats him.

I've been keeping busy with work, which is the main reason why I've been behind with the blogging lately. I got a HUGE job from a display company back in NY. I did some animations and graphics for a Houston shareholder's meeting for GE. GE people. That's my biggest client EVER. It was an awesome gig, but boy, did it take a long time. I was up working until 3 am several nights in a row just to meet deadlines. The work paid off though because I bought myself a NEW LAPTOP!!!! It's beautiful. And last week, I just got the new Adobe CS5 Suite. Mom can buy it through Purdue at the student price. It's so good to have connections. I've been itching to get the software on my new computer but just haven't had the time yet. So, I'm still working on the old laptop for now. We also found a great deal on a laptop for Brett, so now we are both clicking away on super-fast computers. It's nice to have an upgrade after working on our laptops for the past 6 years. I've been crafting and sewing as much as possible between projects and kids. I have lots of friends and family expecting babies in the next few weeks, so I'll be busy with baby gifts.

In a nutshell, that's what's been happening. Here's the latest pictures and videos from the past few months. Enjoy!

Sophia's tent. She loves to take her library books in there and read them with a flashlight.

DANCE CLAIRE!

Claire claps, with a little prompting from Sophia.

Reading library books with Aunt Kay and Daley.

Not sure what we did this day, but the girls were just exhausted.

New jogging stroller! I'm no jogger, but I've always wanted one of these just to make our walks easier. It's AMAZING. I got it from someone on Craigslist. It's almost brand new! What a steal!

Singing in the rain.

Claire is showing Sophia her crib, and Sophia is rediscovering her old bed.

The happens a lot when Brett comes home from work. He must be really comfy.

SO BIG!

Doesn't every parent have a picture of their kid sobbing? Well, I do. Look at that face!
"Mommy, how DARE you leave me in my crib for a nap!"

Sophia has been the artist lately. These are her faces. Pretty darn good for her age. They have eyes and noses and mouths. Lately, she's been adding ears and hair too.

Ah. I made Claire a blanket a few weeks ago in the effort to make her something that would calm her down and help her sleep through the night. Didn't work, but she still loved the blanket.

Ooo! Teeth and a skinny neck!

Drawing again. Give this kid paper and a pencil, and she'll be happy for at least 30 minutes. Wonder where she gets that?

Sophia feeding Claire grapes.

Steak and Shake with Grandma and Grandpa Suppinger.

First summer movie of the season! We went to Dillon Park and watched "Cars" on a big, blow-up movie screen. It was a late night, but it was so much fun. We almost finished a big bag of kettle corn that we picked up at the Carmel Farmers' market that morning.