Birthday

So, I am incredibly behind again on blogging but here it goes anyway.  We had Clara’s birthday party at the beginning of August.  We had a great time with just a few friends over for swimming and food.  Clara really seemed to enjoy her party, particularly when everyone sang Happy Birthday to her.

  

All of the kids…

We were so happy to have Nick, Betsy, and Silas join us for the party!! We both now have baby girls born only a few days apart!

Clara just turned two at the end of July.  It is so hard to believe! Time has gone by quickly, and we have really enjoyed our time as a family of three (soon to be four)!  I really want to remember this time.

Clara is a vibrant, busy, independent little girl.  God has given her a strong personality.  It can be hard to deal with sometimes as a two year old, but I know these traits will serve her well as she grows.  She is kind and loving, always wanting to “hold mama.”  She has been learning to be kind to friends as well and often says, “nice, kind friends. no hitting/pushing.” If we could only get her to implement these lessons all of the time!

Growing

Clara has always been on the small end and that continues.  At her two month check up, she was just over 22 lbs and 33 in.  We always get the same talk from her doctor that she is below the norm but nothing to be concerned about.

Eating + sleeping

Clara is a pretty good eater– at least with things that she likes.  Right now, her favorite is “blueberries, ya-peas (strawberries), yogurt.”  Since our Seattle trip, this combo also includes granola.  She still refuses meat and fish.  I was making spaghetti the other day, and she told me, “no like it” as I was cooking the ground beef.  After we discussed what it was, it became, “no like ground beef.”  Oh well.  Other favorites are packs (applesauce, chia, kale-mango) and fig bars.  She still enjoys smoothies which I pack with tons of spinach and green juice (either our own homemade version or a kale-ginger juice from Costco).

She has always been a great sleeper and still sleeps about 12 hours a night, from about 8pm -8am.  This has been her go to for a while now.  She just takes one afternoon nap, usually from about 2-4.  We are still putting her in a sleep sack at night because she has yet to out grow it, it provides some additional warmth (although it’s getting pretty warm here already), and seems to keep her from contemplating the dreaded climbing out of her crib.  She is down to just pajamas at nap time which has been interesting now that she can take them off on her own as well as her diaper.  We have just had once incident so far, and it was not fun. Update, since it has taken me over a week to finish this post before actually posting it, we are now done with the sleep sack. This occurred mainly because she was asking not to wear it.  So far, still no climbing out of the crib…

Wearing

Again, Clara has always been small.  She consistently wears a size smaller than her current age, although she seems to slowly be catching up.  She is wearing 18 month clothes now with some baggy 24 month clothes mixed in.  She is starting to have an opinion about her wardrobe, “I like this shirt” or “wear pajamas forever.”

 

Doing

As I mentioned above, Clara is busy.  She enjoys running around the house with Walcott, swimming, and venturing out to her favorite spots– the aquarium, zoo, splash pad, and children’s museum.  Right now, it seems the children’s museum is top on her list.  We bought her a puddle jumper at the beginning of the summer, so she just swims around the pool on her own now and readily jumps in to one of us while wearing it. While at home, she still likes to play with her activity table although it has become her “minkus (music) table” where she plays the piano. She is a fan of building towers with her blocks and playing with her new guitar and microphone that she got for her birthday.  Before the new microphone, she was using our TV antenna while standing on the hearth and singing.  All before the antenna finally broke…  She likes to set up her “suitcase” (aka- box with a handle) with her microphone in front of it, sit down, and play her guitar and sing.  I think some Seattle street performers were her inspiration.  She frequently plays with her kitchen and sets her table with play food for dinner.  She has started to really enjoy pretend play which is so fun to watch.  Recently, she was pretending to take a bite of some plastic strawberries and looked at me and said, “I’m pretending.”  She then pretended to pick one out of the bunch, put it in her mouth, then smiled and said, “pretty tasty.”  She has also started having her little people “talk” to each other while she plays.  She still really enjoys books and will sit and listen for as long as you will keep reading.  Some of her favorites are “But No Elephants” and “Elephant Goes to School” (both from her daddy’s childhood collection) and “Pete the Cat” and “Iggy Peck, Architect.”  One day while we were walking to a bus stop in Seattle, she started saying, “walking down street. brand new white shoes” which is a line from Pete the Cat.  When you ask her if Pete cried, she says, “goodness no.”  It’s pretty funny.  She will sometimes read on her own too, “strawberries are red, ladybugs are red, little bird (instead of Big bird) is yellow….”  I recently found her flipping through a book with Walcott next to her.  He also had a book between his paws.  She said,  “I read this book and Walcott read this one.”

 

Saying

Clara’s vocabulary has exploded.  She is talking in full sentences now and clearly gets her point across.  We have always known she is very verbal.  From early on, she would point to her pink chair in her room as she woke up and say, “Sit, talk.”  In the last month, she has started adding in some really fun words like forever, maybe so, all the time, at some point, everyday, so much, actually, not really, cool, awesome.  For example,

“I wanna wear Nana’s earrings so much”

“I wanna see hippos at some point”

“I want Mommy read this book, actually”

“I want green juice so much.  All day”

“I poop in diaper every day” (in response to attempts to encourage using the potty)

“Walcott read this book forever”

Mom- “Do you have a stinky diaper?”   Clara- “not really”  (she did)

As you may have noticed, “I want” is a dominating phrase.  Also, it is also really clear from her speech that she likes people.  She can name almost all of our friends and family and talks about people regularly.  After our trip to Albuquerque, she started telling me that “Matt lives Tucson” and “Ryan Yunuen live Mexico.”  She requests to pray for specific people before bed, lately this has been “pray Brayton and Beau,” and randomly brings people up throughout the day.  She can name pretty much all of the words in her 100 words book and knows so many animal names that we are blown away.  She says things frequently that Jeff and I just can’t believe she knows.  She learned the word “sledgehammer” the other day as Jeff was doing some work in the yard, but still says that the “nail gun” is her favorite.

She really enjoys singing, hence the microphones.  She regularly sings Happy Birthday, Jesus Loves Me, the first line of How Deep the Father’s Love for Us (which is what we sing to her as we put her to bed), I’m a Little Teapot, and the ABC song.  She has definite taste in music as well.  Now in the car, she proclaims from the back seat, “I don’t like it this song. Different song” or “I like this one!”  She discovered classical music in Seattle while listening to the radio and really seemed to like it as well as the many street performers we saw in the city.

Loving

Clara is into shoes right now and loves to find any around the house, put them on, and attempt to walk around.  She likes to “get ready” with Mommy and put on chapstick or use her makeup brush.  This was not something I encouraged, but I guess it’s just what happens when a little girl follows her mom around all the time.  Another new favorite thing is getting her own cart at Trader Joes.  She is a big fan of TJs.  She tells us, “I like cookies at Trader Joes” that she often gets instead of the sample and will also readily discuss “samples” and “stickers.”  Clara enjoys sitting on the kitchen counter while I make smoothies, wash dishes, or really do anything in the kitchen.  She also likes to collect her book bag, other bags, sunglasses, and sometimes her suitcase and tell me, “see you later, have fun and come back soon.”  She then walks a few steps, turns around and says, “I’m back.”  She usually tells me that she went to Tucson, Mexico, or sometimes the grocery store.

   

 

So we are very far behind on posting… it’s been a busy last few months and we’ve had some blog issues but hopefully we are back now! Only a few months late… Clara turned one!!

Our favorite photographer, Amber Russell of Amber Lea Russell Photography, came all the way up to Phoenix for Clara’s one year pictures.  We love Amber as a person and as a photographer and highly recommend her! We went to downtown Phoenix near Lola Coffee and then headed to Encanto Park.  The day was very hot but all of us managed to hang in there long enough to get some great shots.  We were pleased with the result! Thank you Amber!!

The green rocking chair was Jeff’s as a child and was recently given a makeover with the green paint.  Clara really enjoys it!

We celebrated Clara’s birthday with pictures on the 27th and then lots of family time on her birthday.  Hopefully, we can celebrate with friends next year once we are more established in Tempe. A local restaurant chain gives $10 off for birthdays at each of their restaurants, so we took advantage of this and went to Liberty Market for brunch and then Joe’s Real Barbeque for dinner. We brought Clara’s passport along as the proof required by the restaurants. It is still funny to me that such a young child has a passport and that it will be valid until she is 5.

Clara was walking well by this point, clapping (and even began on her own when singing “If You’re Happy and You Know It”), and imitating motions to songs. I should have been better about blogging at the time or writing things down… so I am kind of lost as to what exactly was going on at the time. She was using several signs at this point for “more”, “all done”, “eat”, and “please”. She started saying “dog” and “book” around this time and could tell you what sound a dog makes.  She was starting to approximate many other words too. She was (and still is) a huge fan of books and was entertained as long as someone would read. She loved the bath and would lay on her belly and kick as if she was swimming.