Oh Brother!

Poor Claire's world was rocked with Owen's arrival. She (and me either, for that matter) had no clue of what was to come with a little boy! I have posted many posts on the differences between boys and girls, and many of O's antics, but I have failed to really give you the view from Claire's eyes...

Claire has a gate up in the doorway of her pretty room, so that little brother cannot come in, and not just not play with her toys, but completely trash her room. I am not exaggerating, the boy can demolish a room in less than 5 minutes...dolls and kitchen toys a'flying!! And on the occurrence that O knocks down the gate, she starts screaming and begins picking up everything in sight as she pushing him out the door (Owen is laughing and throwing punches the whole time)...good times.

When Owen is taking his nap, Claire is thrilled as she can play with all of her things that he can mess up. When she is ready to play alone, she starts asking me or Nonna to "put Owen to bed, I think he is tired" =). When she is playing and he is sleeping, as soon as she hears him waking up in the monitor, she starts begging me to "ignore him, he will go back to sleep"! =) Her favorite toys are play food that she can either serve to her dolls (or Keeko, her imaginary friend, which is a whole other post) in "Claire's Restaurant". Owen thinks it is real food, so he takes off with it and tries to eat it =). She has tried to actually serve him (against her will, but she has a sweet streak on good days =)), he takes the plate and food, usually throws it and then wants to take over. After a couple of swings at each other, dogs taking off with what they think is food, and a WHOLE lot of crying, we realize once again, this is not going to work. And you can only imagine the CHAOS from any kind of craft project....

All of these issues have made Claire begin hiding her toys from O...the main point of the post. =)

Here is Claire playing with her new cash register for "Claire's restaurant" (Thanks Nana and Papa). I took these pictures so that I could send them to the grandparents as she LOVES it!! As I took these pictures, Owen started waking up from his nap and Claire quickly put it all away so that he would not want to play with it. I came back down with Owen, was getting him a drink and noticed this...

This just looks like a regular pumpkin decoration....

...but you were wrong...it is a "Hide from you Brother" toys hiding place!!

She put all of the toys that came with her register inside the pumpkin where he cannot reach and would NEVER think to look =)!! Today on the way home from school, here was our conversation:

Claire: "Today the Lunch Prayer Leader prayed for the new baby in his Mama's tummy."

Me: "That was nice, I am sure his Mama needs prayers."

Claire: "Mama, we should probably start praying to God that when we have our next baby, it is a girl, huh?"

Me: "Yeah, that would probably be a good idea"

Claire and Owen - Sept 2006