We've had Lara home now for just over a week...look how much she's changed. Now we can see more resemblance between her and her sisters. The big sisters love holding her, especially Claire who still believes this is HER baby. I don't know what Claire is saying here, but Lara looks a little weary...

In some ways Ashlyn likes that mom is more distracted it gives her some time to experiment with body and wall art. Thank goodness for baby wipes and mr clean's magic eraser.



Ashlyn loves being a big sister and is always very gentle with Lara. She is glad I am not pregnant anymore and that I have more energy to play. She is also glad that Grandma and Grandpa Plumb returned from their mission in England...more people to play with. My parents left when I was 9 months pregnant with Claire and returned to me nine months pregnant with Lara. :) It has been wonderful to have mom around. I think I will offer her the bottom bunk in the girls room and see if she'll stay on permanently. Who wouldn't want to share a room with these two.

Lara Abigail Solano was anxious to follow in her sister's footsteps...she wanted to come into the world on a day when her father had a final exam. So she woke mom up four days before her due date at 3:30 am on October 16th, we checked into the hospital at 7 am and she was born at 10 am. 8 lbs 2 oz, 20 inches long, and already smiling. Another cutie from head to toes.

To Do or not to Hairdo?

I face a daily inner struggle. Claire has a great head of hair with lots of styling potential. However, clips and rubber bands will only last a short while. As soon as she has a moment to get bored and contemplate the fact that something is in her hair, she will find a way to pull it out. So we usually leave the house cute and reach our destination with hair out, shoes off, but way more comfortable. Rubber bands last longer, but leave crazy crimps and bends in the hair as shown above. Clips are worthless. With Ashlyn it was easy because I just needed a bow and some elmers glue to make her bald head a little more fancy until she was 18 months. I guess with Claire I will just have to stick with it until she learns to leave her hair alone. Any suggestions or miracle clips out there? Or did I seal my fate by not putting elastic headbands around her head from birth to get her used to having something on her head?

Brock and I decided that we would go ahead and bite the bullet and put up some bunk beds. We wanted to keep a room as an office/study and knew that deep down the girls will love being cramed into one room for a couple of years...it will build character and sisterly love and affection. As we set it up Ashlyn and Claire kept climbing on the bottom bunk anxious to try it out. We asked Ashlyn what it needed and she suggested sheets, but other than that it was comfy. She is so easy to please at this point. While we were driving today I pointed out some hot air balloons and she was pretty excited. She suggested that maybe they were racing and said, "that would be fun to ride on one, but we don't have one...We have a rocking horse though." I'm glad she is content with her rocking horse 'snowpea'.

Back to the bunk beds...Ashlyn loves climbing her ladder and going to bed every night...well, most nights. She is coming to the realization that after she goes to sleep we do all sorts of fun things like clean the kitchen and do homework. She requests to sleep in our room or on the hallway floor, or tries to make us promise to go right to sleep. The excitement of a top bunk to sleep in has curbed those requests for the moment.

We are so glad Great Grandmother gave us this exercise tramp...hours of fun.

Photo shoot, Family, and Friends

I finally tried to get some shots of the girls together, and Claire was not ready to pose. Ashlyn was having a ball striking any pose, but Claire kept laughing and running out of the room. We would position her and she would be still 3 seconds...not a lot of time to get her and Ashlyn to look at the camera and smile. Ashlyn was smiling in this one, but I told Claire to give her a hug to keep her put and this is what we ended up with.

My brother Spencer and his wife Kim blessed their new baby Melanie and all my siblings were able to be together for the week-end. All the little cousins had so much fun spending time together. We missed My parents (still in England until Oct. 2) and Cami (8 months pregnant) and Ezra, and thank Kim for letting us gather in her home and feeding all of us. Lots of playing, food, and fun.

We also had a visit from the Wahlins. It was so fun to have them over and Caden made the greatest horsey noise I have ever heard! Check out those froggy goggles Ashlyn is sporting...a fashion queen already.

It struck me today how much older Claire looked... I think it was the pigtails and her toothy grin. She has a good variety of words in her vocab including: Mom, Daddy, doggy, more, book, ball, bubbles, and Grandma. Its fun to see the girls become playmates. They both will sit and look at books together quite often, and chase each other and scream and laugh.

If you go to our earlier posts you'll find a similar video of Ashlyn falling asleep at the dinner table. Now it is Ashlyn's turn to laugh. We babysat for some family friends for a couple of weeks starting at the end of June and poor little Claire did a lot of her naptimes in the car, and was busy growing four of her molars at once. We watched three kids ages 11, 15, and 18 and they were so fun. It was a mind stretching experience jumping into dealing with instrument lessons and practicing, chores, friends, curfews, and eating ice cream at midnight instead of park days, potty training, hair-pulling (one of Claire's favorite revenges) and time-outs. I confess eating Ice cream at midnight wasn't too bad although my OBGYN will not be too happy with me since she told me that I should not have a goal to weigh over 200 lbs with this pregnancy. It cracked me up because one night I was trying to convince the two oldest that they should probably just go to bed, and they pulled out the line, "come on you didn't have ice cream late at night after dances?!" I'll have to come up with a good retort to that question and anything similar to it before Ashlyn is a teenager. If you can't beat them, join them I always say. Luckily they had a good assortment of ice cream that was able to heal my wounded ego. In many ways, housesitting was sort of like a little vacation for me. The 11 year old Charity was the greatest nanny in the world, Ashlyn loved being with her three new friends, we got to practice swimming in their pool everyday, I had lots of kitchen/cleaning help from everyone, I had fun talking and playing with all the kids, and their chocolate lab occupied a lot of Claire's time and attention. For some reason I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here are some highlights.

Claire's favorite little hiding spot was behind this door/window shade. A great spot for a little light reading. (Can anyone guess that book?...hint "dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum")

I uploaded this picture small so you can click on it and hopefully see a close-up of Ashlyn's face of unequivocal terror. (My brother Spencer requested that I document this facial expression). She gave me the thumbs-up after to let me know how fun it really was going down their fast slide.

Here are all the local cousins with Aunt Becca for the 4th of July fireworks, and here is a picture of the supernanny.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

#1 Dad...we're a little past Father's day, but it must have left an impression on Ashlyn who still wishes Brock happy father’s day randomly and tell him she loves him. The girls got Brock a Yo-Yo for a present, and Ashlyn kept trying to tell him what we got. However, she kept calling it or-yo so Brock thought we had bought some Oreos while shopping and was pleasantly surprised by the yo-yo. Ashlyn calls Brock's yo-yo talent "magic".

#2 New Cousins...Congratulations to Kimberly and my big brother Spencer on the arrival of Melanie Justine Plumb on June 21st. The reality of what October will bring hit me as I held their adorable newborn and watched Ashlyn and Claire roam around the hospital room reeking havoc. Three kids, two arms...life is going to get a lot more entertaining.

#3 Dogs and Cats...stuffed or real, makes no difference. Claire is picking up on more and more Baby signing and gets really excited when she signs dog. We had the opportunity to housesit for a family with two cats and three little dogs, and the girls loved it. Melvin, the orange cat loved Ashlyn who talked to all the animals in a high sweet voice, and wanted to go out and pet them all day long. So cute.

#4 Building With Blocks...This magnificent structure was built for "Pink Kitty" who has become of late the main character in all our stories. She also builds homes for extended family and friends.

#5 Hummus...Claire can't get enough of this stuff. She shares Brock's passion for hummus; sundried tomato is the current favorite. She is a notorious double dipper, she dips her chip and sucks it off, so we just give her a bowl and spoon and let her go to town.

#6 Snuggling up into our towels after a nice refreshing swim. We are trying to hit the pool hard this summer to get Ashlyn more confident in the water and to escape the heat.

These are just a few of our favorite things!

trip to B town

We made a quick trip up to see the Solanos. In Grandma and Grandpa's backyard the girls were riding these little cars and I tried to get a good smile out of them. It felt like one of those Calvin and Hobbes comics where his parents are trying to get a "normal" picture of Calvin. I thought this sequence showed all the "normal" sides of Claire and Ashlyn. Makes me that much more greatful for digital cameras.

Ryker (Brock's cooler younger brother) graduated from college this month and it was fun to witness the event. He had to take off the glasses so his nieces would recognize him...he's a good uncle.


For your viewing pleasure here is a little clip of Claire puckering up. She does this every morning when Brock goes off to work and right before bedtime. We get such a kick out of it and I'm glad we captured it before she grows out of it. It's hard to tell how long cute little habits like this will last.

Another "Three"

Well here is one more thing to add to my year of the three. We had our ultrasound the other day and found out that we will be blessed with a third little girl, little Solano girl number three. When people asked Ashlyn if she wanted a brother or a sister she would always say sister...she is wiser than her years. Claire loves to play on steps. In this picture she kept popping up and down playing peek-a-boo with Brock and Ashlyn across the table. She was cracking herself up for about 20 minutes straight. She is walking more and more, and has recently climbed to new heights getting up onto our kitchen table and constructing a ladder to climb to the top of our piano in order to get two toys that Ashlyn had placed up there for safe keeping. Ashlyn is a little particular with her toys...and Claire's toys.

I walked into the girl's room one morning and Ashlyn looked at me and said, "My animals are all kissing." I guess we'll have lots of this to look forward to as we raise three girls in a row.

The Year of the Three

Claire thoroughly enjoyed having her own cake and ice cream for her bday. She is one and quickly learning to stick up for herself and definately is becoming a match for her sister. Ashlyn turned three the day after, so needless to say we had to eat a lot of cake in April. We had a curious George swim party to celebrate and she got the movie as one of her gifts. Her favorite lines from the movie are "You go girl!" and "That's close enough!"

2008 has become the year of the three for me for three reasons. Ashlyn turned three, I am turning 30, and I am just over three months along. That's right we will be welcoming a third little Solano into our home in October. We'll find out soon whether we will add another girl to the mix, or a boy. Whoever it is, he/she will need to come with a lot of personality to compete with the older sisters. They are characters.

"I left my heart...in San Francisco"

We had a fun week visiting the bay area this last week. Brock had a conference in San Francisco on Thursday and Friday and Branner and Eva alerted us to a great deal on airfare so we decided to all go up and make a trip of it. As a "reward" for finding us the great deal, Branner and Eva got to host us for most of the week, much to the chagrin of Eva's Macaw Biboo. On Monday we stayed with the Shafer's who finally made it back to the promised land of California after years of suffering in Utah :). Joel and Ashlyn share common literary interests, and we hope that will make the arranged marriage relationship go smoother for them. She only made Joel cry once, which is a good sign. All the kids had a great time playing, and Brock, Ben, and Whitney tried to pull an all nighter which I pooped out on early on; not because of lack of great conversation, but I'm almost 30 folks, lets be realistic.

On Tuesday we arrived at Branner and Eva's for a fun Taco night with Shannon, Aldi, and Rei. (side note: I find it very hard after a week of vacation to get back in the grove of cooking dinners every night. We ate so good all week and were so spoiled by everyone...sigh. back to reality). The next day we spent at the Zoo on a behind the scenes tour conducted by Eva.

The 6000 lb Asian Rhino Gahatti (sp?) was incredible. He loved his celery; he just kept opening up his mouth for more, and the second it was gone he started to walk away until the bucket of hay was dumped out. Next we got to be about 5 ft away from 3 polar bears and a spectacled bear, which were fed lots of fish by their trainer. Their paws were massive, and we didn't mind having a cage and a little distance between us.

We saw a bunch of animals in the Children's zoo including 2 armadillos and Sassafras the porcupine who we got to feed peanuts to. Claire got to take home a tuft of hair from the white ferret as a souvenir. She has got a reach and a grip that always surprises me. Eva describes it as X-men like.

Last, but not least we fed the baby giraffe bulldozer a bottle of milk. He was so soft and had quite an appetite, almost tore the bottle from our hands. It was AWESOME!!!

Just because Brock had to go to a boring conference for Thursday and Friday, the vacation didn't end for me and the girls. We went to Pier 39, the aquarium, and the "Butterfly Zone" at the conservatory.

We ate at an amazing Thai restaurant with Branner, Eva, Shannon, and Jeremy and all the kids Thursday night, and basicallly tired Ashlyn and Claire out all week, as you can see from the pictures below. It must be nice being able to pass out and take a cat nap anywhere you want. On the flight home we arrived in San Diego, but our 2 car seats and big bag did not...a little frustrating. Luckily they had two loaner car seats that haven't been washed since the 90s that we were able to use to get home that night. Sorry for the long "journal" entry, on to the next adventure...