Whine much?

Clara is SO whiny right now. She got a cold when we were in Pittsford and she is particularly crabby about it right now.

Clara is getting better at taking a few steps, maybe a little bit more adventerous! She really thinks about if before she does it and it is pretty great when she does take those steps. Watch out!

She is also doing a bit more sign language. She is doing the scratching thing (which looks just like MILK so not sure what to do about that) for the kitties and does ALL DONE all the time. I think she started to do more when we were away but it looked like clapping so who knows! I am sure it is though because she certainly understands the concept. When you ask her for more and she sees the plate of toast strips, she will point at it or drop the toast in her hand in order to accept more.

Clara has been getting up earlier and earlier. It might have to do with being in a different time change while we traveled and the fact that someone was willing to get her at her first peep in the morning.

Clara's new favorite toy is Hokey Pokey Elmo. She likes to dance to him. Grandma even got her a Elmo Get Up and Go book and she dances to that too. Today is the day we go to the toy store for her Christmas gifts so I am excited about that! Thanks Grandmas for funding her toys!

BIG STEPS!

Clara has been taking a lot of big steps lately. Yesterday, she was even crouched and stood up and then walked away a few steps. She really will crawl for her new kitty.

Clara just was doing something funny. She was playing with Grandpa's pool triangle and was putting it around her waist. Though she got mad when she could not take it off!

First Steps!

Clara officially toke her first steps today. She was standing near the television and in order to get over to the fireplace, she took two steps to get over there. Later, she took a step or two towards me from the fireplace. She is also getting a lot braver when it comes to walking with me, she will do it with one hand! I am excited :) She did this one day short of her first birthday!

DONE DONE DONE

Clara's new thing is she says done over and over again. "Done, done, done, done". She just sort of says it whenever. It is so cute.

She does all done when she is eating pretty much all the time now. I love it, I really hope she picks up some more sign language.

Clara's first birthday party

Yesterday we had a little party for Clara's birthday. Ryan, Amanda, Evelyn and Kelly came over to celebrate! Clara had a great time and was SO crazy after the party. She got all of her presents from my mom, Cherie and us yesterday. I think the hit of the presents was the giant pegasus that we bought her and the Hokey Pokey Elmo that my parents got her. She also really loves the Wizard of Oz thing. She likes to put all the characters from one bucket to the other. I had never seen her play with one toy for so long.

She kept kissing and hugging the "StarButt" as I have named him and it made her laugh when Matt made it dance.

Clara and Evelyn had their first taste of chocolate cupcakes made by Bad Aunt Kelly. Evelyn LOVED it and Clara had more fun watching Evelyn make a chocolate mess of herself than actually eating the cupcake. It was pretty funny.

Evelyn is completely walking now. It is so funny to watch her do it, it looks so darn uncomfortable to watch a baby learn how to walk. She seems to prefer scooting and crawling though when she wants to get somewhere fast. Evelyn is SO SO much bigger than Clara. Clara looks darn small next to her.

The funniest part of the day was when I gave Evelyn the same present that Amanda gave Clara. Too funny, the cute little backpack from a little bit of this. Very sweet!

After the party, Clara was completely crazy after her nap. She played and played and laughed and laughed. I think she liked her new toys!

Almost one

I cannot believe that Clara is almost going to be one. That just boggles my mind. I was looking at pictures of Clara's older pictures from when she was a few weeks old and she has grown so much since then.

She is learning so much now and is so interactive. We have been trying to teach her more sign language. She is having a very hard time learning "More" since it usually involves food and she gets so desperate about food. She will do it if we show her, then show her how to move her hands. But then she defaults to pointing and screaming. She is a stubborn one. She did do all done on her own will, she does that one sporadically.

My sweetheart

Clara is so sweet. She kissed a kitty in her book today. She and Smithers are really getting along well these days. Smithers lets her "pet" him but sometimes she gets really excited and starts to pound on him. I have taught her "gentle" and she does it sometimes! It is pretty funny because she starts to pet instead of pound at makes this "ss sss ss" sound which is similar to kitty. Matt and Clara spent the weekend at the Morans while I went to ND to see the Tennessee game and she was pounding on Colin and Carrie told him to be gentle so she did the same thing. Started to pet him like a kitty!

YELLING!

Sometimes I feel like Clara yells all day long! AHHHH!

I think she is having a hard time with the fact that I am working sometimes when we are home together since we no longer have a nanny. She is ALL over me while I am at my computer and when I pick her up, she cannot decide if she wants to be up or down. She is a little nuts that baby!

Well, it's official

Clara ate cat food

Standing!

Clara has been standing mroe and more lately. It is so funny because she is standing but does not really seem to be acknowledging the fact that she is doing so. For the longest time, she would not walk with me like most babies do. She would walk with her walker (LOOK OUT!) but for the most part if you had her two hands her legs would buckle underneath her.

Anyway, so I just pulled Clara away from playing with the cord to the iPod speakers and put her down in front of the toy box and she stood! For a few seconds too. The longest I have seen her do it.

Carrie

So we let Carrie go. I feel really bad about it because I am all about guilt, though I know I should not feel that way. We really gave her many chances and sometimes I feel taken advantage of. But I do feel bad that Clara and her have created a relationship and now that is over because Carrie made some poor choices. But there is not much I can do about that. It got to the point where I felt I could no longer trust Clara with her and that is certainly something I had to end.

Duck Du Du Du

Clara said duck through out her whole bath today. Duck du dudududududu. She is so funny. She seems to be saying Kitty more and more. We were in her room and she said Kitty when she saw one of them in the hallway before I even saw him, so she told me a cat was there!

For some reason, she had a cry fest this afternoon. I think it was because I was telling her no to touching my laptop and she might have been hungry. She seemed much better after dinner. She had some leftover pizza and I made her some pasta with peas and threw some tomato sauce on there.

Clara's first Halloween

Clara had a very busy and exciting first Halloween celebration. It seemed to go on forever! It started on the Monday before where she wore her flower costume to her playgroup and to class the next day. We also brought it to NC but she did not get a chance to wear it there. Today is Halloween and we gave Clara some chocolate for the first time. She LOVED it. She liked to play with the big bowl of candy and I let her until I realiezd she was taking all the small candy and biting the outside of the package, squishing the candy inside. I had a few candies set aside for her and she continued to bite them and squish them until she finally got some chocolate out. I realized it later when she had chocolate all over her face and she was being a bit too quiet! When we took it away from her she was ANGRY! A lot of crying and a bit of a tantrum. We strapped her in her seat and gave her half of a kit kat. That is where she is right now eating away and being very happy about it. She likes her candy!

Hat and Shoe

Clara is quickly adding to her word repetoire and said Hat and Shoe today. I think she is just really into repeating what I am saying as you can see she said these things as we were getting dressed to go out :).

I was on the phone with Matt's mom and she was APPALLED at the fact that I am still nursing Clara. I really wish she would educate herself before she has such strong opinions on things because if she did even a minimal amount of research, she will find that it is recommended to nurse until they are at least a year old. I am just trying to do the best thing for Clara!

Toast strips

For breakfast, Clara has been eating a banana and toast strips. She LOVES them. I usually give her the banana first, make my coffee and thow in the toast. Needless to say by the time she is done with her bananas, she is ready for toast. She gets SO excited. Her arms shake in excitement as she reaches out for them.

The toast strips themselves are a funny story. When I started her on toast, I cut them up in cubes. I got tired of that and decided she was ready for strips. She sort of did not understand the whole put in mouth and pull thing. She finally gets it now!

Another funny thing she does is that I don't give her all her strips otherwise many of them would end up on the floor. But when she has something in either one of hands, even if it is toast, and I put more tooast on her tray, she drops whatever is in her hands and picks up the new toast.

One more funny story

I forgot to mention this. We were at Ryan and Amanda's on wednesday night (BTW, Evelyn is about to walk and still is super loud!) and Evelyn yelled at Clara the whole time we were there. At one point, Clara did ALL DONE. It was SO funny. I guess she was done wtih Evelyn yelling. I feel bad for her. She needs some playmates. Amanda and Ryan were saying how she has no one to play with! Clara has people to play with all week!

Stairs

Clara JUST realized that we had stairs. She could do stairs for a while because she has done the ones going to the second floor and in class before but we were in the basement (Matt and I were trying to watch the ND/BYU game and I went upstairs to get something and she followed me.) She LOVES IT. Matt watched Clara today while I worked on the kitchen table and she went up and down the stairs over and over again. Matt said that when she was about to head for the stairs, she would look back and him as if to ask him if he was coming! She likes to be chased up the stairs :). She had a hard time though when she was doing it with her lovey. Which by the way, I went to Chicago and bought her a duplicate one so there won't be issues in the future about it :)

Clara is getting more and more annoyed with getting her diaper changed. She is CRAZY! She really starts to kick and scream and fight it but what can you do, you need your diaper changed. It is actually rather frustrating.

Clara is really getting around and discovering new things. She loves buttons. She was in Matt's office turning the TV on and off. She is funny.

The weather has turned and it is officially cold. There was no nice fall. It was friggin hot for a while and then it got friggin cold. We put the insulator on the windows in her room. Hopefully that will help with keeping her room warm. Her room gets so much colder than ours at night.

Clara's first word -- KITTY

So I think we can officially say that Clara has said her first word. I think she has been saying Momma and Dada appropriately but who is to say because she has been saying those words forever and I am not sure if she is using them in context. She seems to be but it could also be a coincidence. So, since there is so much ambiquiety over that, we are saying her first word is KITTY! I was pointing to Monty (or Smithers, I can't remember) and she said Kitty. It comes out more like Titty or Sitty or Sissy or Ditty but she is def naming it. I went to Costco and bought her these cat hand puppets and she LOVES them. She calls that Kitty too! She is getting so big so fast!

She is so cute when she says it too. She sort of whispers it. It is really sweet.

Chipped tooth

Meghan and Mike were hear yesterday visiting as they were on their way to the ND/USC game. She really liked Mike and he made her giggle a lot which was funny because there are very few people that can do that. I had noticed a few days ago that Clara's tooth looked chipped (according to Meghan, it is letter E:)) and Meghan confirmed it. Who knows how she did it! Hopefully she willgrind it down on her own, it is not too bad.

All done

Clara definitely did all done the other day after dinner. She does it so thoughtfully. I think it is sort of funny. I need to start teaching her other things. I am working on "More".

Clara is finally feeling better. Her fever went down on Thursday and her rash showed up shortly after that. It was not too bad, it just was EVERYWHERE except on her face. It cleared up as of today! Yesterday, I took her back to the doctor and her platlet counts are back to normal (182) and got a clean bill of health. Though we have to wait another week before she can get her flu shot.

Clara seems to be standing a little bit more. She was standing near a crate and pretty much stood up and she did not realize that she was! Then all of a sudden, she crashed down on her butt. Thank goodness the diaper serves as a cushion as well.