18 months!

Clara is now 18 months. At her doctor's appointment she was 20 lbs 9 ounces and 30 3/4 inches tall. Evelyn is HUGE compared to her, weighing in at 25 lbs 4 ounces and measuring 33 1/2 inches. They are most certainly no where near the same size!

Clara is talking up a storm. It has been fun teaching her thing like the difference between off and on (something we did repeatedly yesterday when she was putting her shorts on and off). This age is great except for the tantrums and the frustration. I feel bad for her because she wants to try things she can't quite do yet, like buckle and unbuckle her seat. She does not quite grasp that she has limits right now and causes a lot of anger.

Right now Clara is eating waffles and grapes for breakfast. I asked her this morning if she wanted grapes or strawberries for breakfast and she picked grapes. That is fun as well. The food thing is getting hard though. She is awfully picky. Getting her to eat different things is a bit of a challenge. We went to Cheesecake factory when Heather and Charlotte came to visit and she would not even TRY a piece of cake or whipped cream. She missed out! She does know she likes ice cream though because Daddy got a bar from the ice cream man and she helped him out after he convinced her several times to try it.

The one food concept that Clara just does not understand yet is the whole dip and eat. She will dip her food in something (like BBQ sauce) and lick it off, not eat whatever she dipped in the BBQ sauce. She is pretty funny!

Though yesterday we had a bit of a food breakthrough. We went to lunch at Panera and we got her a grilled cheese sandwich. We were not sure if she would eat it because in the past, sandwiches are really not her thing (even if it is with cheese her favorite thing ever), but we cut it up into small pieces, gave her a fork and she at the whole thing! I was so impressed. I think she was very busy checking out the world around her to sort of notice she was eating but she did a great job. Something tells me though that I won't have as much luck with grilled cheese if I made it at home. One way to find out!

Molars are in!

Clara officially cut her first molar a couple of days ago. Well, half of one. The one on her left side is half in. The half towards the back. I feel so bad for her. It must hurt a lot. Her hands are constantly in her mouth. She can almost fit her whole hand in her mouth. She is talking SO much now. She can do the alphabet to G with help from us and can count to four. I say one, she says two, I say three and she says four. Pretty neat!

Mommy toot

Clara is talking so unbelievably much. I would say in the last week alone she picked up 20 words. She will start saying something that I did not even know she knew. For example, she was vacuuming with her toy vacuum and was saying vacuum over and over again for a few minutes before I even realized she was doing it. At dinner tonight, I burped and she said Mommy burp. Too funny. She calls pillows pum pums. Most of the time she gets it right. She has no "l"'s though. So a turtle is a tuttle. I could not even list all the words that she has because there are so many! Recently added to the list is:

- pants, shirt, shoes, socks, turtle, fishy, blanket, apple, burp, toot, outside, upstairs, downstairs, milk, hot, all done (which she started saying TODAY along with the sign), pretty (which she signed and said to the mother's day cards I made), vacuum, tickle, toes, hair, nose, chin, cheek, eye, ear, teeth, bee bo, cat, doggie, plane and I am sure many more.