Colds, teeth and other fun stuff

Claire has been battling  yet another cold, her third of the season this week. Sorry to those who were with us on Saturday, she apparently came down with this on Saturday evening after not napping all that well during the day. She had a fantastic time at Sarah & Peder's gathering, nevertheless. All that girl power was quite a sight! 

In general she has been a busy girl since the new year began, heading off to play at the Children's Museum a couple of times and visiting with Grandma Jackie and Papa, recently. Mom & aunt Karey are pretty certain she said Hazel's name after a recent visit. She handed Hazel a toy when mom explained who it belonged to and said something very close to her name. She can be very shy when she first enters a new situation but warms up to people quickly. She has certainly determined that she is often the center of attention and will purposely do something funny to see what reaction she is granted. 

Soon, mom & dad may not need to cut up her food. Claire is cutting 4 new back teeth, two on top & two on the bottom. We didn't even realize this was happening. She is such a good natured kid. Despite cutting 4 teeth and having a cold, she still runs around like a mad woman and tears after the cat. 

She has been determined to put on her own socks, but can't quite get the hang of it. She also likes to try and put on her running shoes.

Trying to put on her shoes.

Deciding they seem to go on the horsey much easier than her own feet. 

Christmas Wrap Up

Trying to play with the walker. Hazel fits in it much better :)

Yea! It's the ABC song!!

A semi-decent shot of Claire and one set of the cousins. 

Claire checks out her new kitchen with dad. 

Petting Zoe dog with dad's help and playing with the fridge magnets with Uncle Pat. 

The holidays are over and we're settling back into our rhythm. Claire was a trooper, despite being seriously short on naps. Mom was probably a bigger baby than Claire. 

She enjoyed seeing much of her family over the three day Christmas adventure. We started out at the Whitcomb's on Christmas Eve day. Claire got outside for a bit but it was quite cold so she stayed inside the house and received several kisses from Zoe dog and enjoyed checking out Grandma Jackie's toys upstairs. She was very happy to see fridge magnets as one of her gifts. Claire can often be found in front of Grandma Jackie and Papa's fridge playing with the letters. 

Due to the excitement of the previous day and a short nap in the car, Claire didn't last too long at Great Grandma Shirley's house the next day. She had a fun time playing with Garrett and checking out Ron's train set. She promptly fell asleep once we got into the car on the way to G&G Pichner's. 

Friday brought her cousins and big sister to Faribault for another day of celebration. She was delighted to have a whole new host of toys to play with and was excited to receive more fridge magnets (the leapfrog kind) so know she can make super long words. 

She has started to show more interest in learning about potty training so we've been reading potty books on a regular basis and mom bought a potty at Target today, which will be slowly introduced into her pattern. 

Holiday Gal

Who is this man??

Claire visited Santa last night at the mall. We waited in line for roughly 45 mins (well, one of us waited in line while she ran around with the other). She did the crying and get me the heck out of here thing but we were able to get one image where there are no tears. Of course, we didn't realize we could bring our camera too (hey, mom is new at ALL of this stuff) so we have nothing to post. Mom is going to attempt a photo shoot with Claire after she wakes from nap so hopefully some holiday themed photos will be posted soon. We'll see how the photo shoot goes...

In other news, mom forgot to post earlier this week that Claire can blow her own nose! Since mom has been sick for nearly 2 months and Claire has watched her numerous time with the tissue she quickly picked up how to blow her nose. There isn't a lot of force behind the blows but she is using her nose. 

She also helps mom/dad put her lotion and/or wipes up on the shelf after a change. Such a big helper. 

18 month stats

Claire visiting the zoo with dad. Cool animals!! 

She's onto us. Claire does not dig going to the doctor any longer. She knows the shots are coming. Today's appointment started off OK but once we sat her on the chair it went south. Quickly. She knew that something was up... After mom took her off the chair and was holding her, she offered her doctor green bear, a sign that she had slightly forgiven her for poking and prodding. The nurse who gave her the flu shot and the other shot, not so easily forgiven. Not even the kitty and Dora stickers did the trick. 

Mom doesn't have the exact stats in front of her (she will update the post tomorrow) but she does remember that Claire is roughly 31 inches tall and is in the 46th percentile and weighs 22 lbs which is somewhere around 17th percentile. 

Our doctor said that she wasn't too worried that Claire isn't speaking yet as she witnessed how well Claire listens and understands. She was a bit concerned she might have a hearing problem but has come to the conclusion that Claire is simply developing her mobility skills more quickly than her verbal skills. 

Claire has been busy the last few weeks. Mom apologies for not updating the blog, we've been battling colds and blogging has taken a back seat. She is overdue to upload some pictures and promises to get some loaded soon. 

Claire continues to amaze us with new skills. Her drawing skills continue to improve, she really likes to draw 'circles' (or what seem to look like circles). She appears to be leaning towards black as her favorite crayon. She draws a line or a circle, stops and points to the line and says 'na'. ('Na' is her word for everything she can't pronounce. 'Da' is a close second.) We assume she is saying, "look at this cool line I just drew!". 

She has really started to engage with her stuffed bears. She likes to have them sit in her booster seat when she isn't eating and enjoys bringing them bottles so they can get a drink. Yellow bear even made a trip to the store with us last weekend. She hasn't given up on her blankie's as her loveys but the bears sleep with her at night and she is certainly attached to a particular few. 

Her motor skills are moving right along (no pun intended). She can move herself around on the sit and spin, now she just needs to learn how to approach it and sit down without falling off. She is also climbing on everything she can get up on - and trying on others. Last week she figured out how to open certain doors in the house. She is intent on figuring out the door handles that are more ball shaped, those have kept her from getting out and she wants to be independent! 

She really likes to sit on mom & dad's bed and either play handheld poker (start 'em young!) or tear out the tape flags mom brings home from work. Somehow these tape flags find there way into every room of the house! 

New words have been added. Claire can now say a version of bye-bye. It sounds similar to her word for bubbles and reminds mom & dad of the SNL skit where David Spade and Helen Hunt (?) escorted people off the plane. Buh-bye. It's fun to hear her add words and she knows she is going to get cheers when she says something. 

Learning and Playing

(Look Grandma Jackie! I like my horsey!)

Claire had a busy weekend with Thanksgiving and mom being home for four days in a row. She had a great time at Grandma Jackie and Papa's, bringing Grandma Jackie nearly all of the letter magnets from the fridge. Claire also had some quality time with Jared, Rachel, Mitch and Jake. At one point we saw her trailing after Jake and Mitch. "Hmm...wonder what my cousins are up to", she thought. On Friday we worked on drawing the connection between who she saw on Thursday with the family photo book. Papa will be proud to know she has said his name on more than one occasion.  

Lots of playing and mom & dad saw some progression in her abilities. We've been working on drawing and after dad worked with Claire on painting the lights turned on and she started moving the crayon back and forth. Many masterpieces were drawn this afternoon.

She also helped dad shovel the first 'real' snow of the season. She looks like a giant pink marshmallow in her snow pants and jacket.