11 Month Pictures

Wow… 11 months.  Did you know that is just one month away from 12 months? Jeff and I feel like Clara has changed so much just in this last month.  We are really starting to see her personality.  She loves to laugh and interact with us.  She is a very happy baby.  She seems to really enjoy music and singing and has even started to dance to music. We often go to baby story time at the library, and the songs, interactions, and bubbles are a huge hit.  We also frequent the children’s museum just to play and to go to classes about math, Spanish, etc.  It’s amazing what is offered! Clara still loves to read, and her current favorite books are the ones where you lift the flap.  She is able to do this on her own but we have had several flap casualties already.

Clara has started pointing in the last month and will usually point to the correct item when asked, “where’s your bunny?” or “where’s the fan?”  Speaking of fans… she is fascinated by them, and we have several at our house.  When she is sitting in her seat for meals, she can see at least three different fans.  One day, she pointed to the one in the kitchen, then to the one she could see through the window on the back porch, and then turned around to point to the one in the den.  This has now become a fairly regular thing to point to all of the fans that she sees.  Can you imagine the fun we have in Home Depot on the fan aisle? If only they kept them running… Clara is now saying “mama” and “dada” regularly for us and approximates other words.  She does the sign for “all done.”  Although this still is used to mean a lot of things right now, she consistently does the sign when she is finished eating.

You can see 4 teeth now, 2 on the top and 2 on the bottom, with another starting to come through on the top. And… Clara is taking several steps at a time now.  She has been increasingly walking longer distances between furniture but will now take off on her own and can take up to 5 or 6 steps before stopping.  She also enjoys sticking out her tongue these days and touching yours when you stick it out too.

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Mississippi State went to the college World Series in Omaha. This was a huge deal for our school.  Sadly, we ended up in second place but Clara enjoyed hanging out with her daddy during the games.

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Clara’s kicks in this picture were Jeff’s as a baby.  Aren’t they cute?

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Playing in the cabinet and even crawling all the way in…

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And the pointing…

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We Miss You Tucson

Our blog has been down for a while but we should be back up and running and will hopefully have a new look soon too. We spent a weekend in Tucson in June and were thankful to have some quality time to spend with friends.  Our Tucson friends are really like family, and we love to see them.  We packed the weekend full of time with friends and thoroughly enjoyed it!

 We visited Nick, Betsy, and Silas on Saturday morning. It’s amazing how much Silas and Clara have grown.  It was really fun to see them interact and just to catch up!

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We also were able to say goodbye to the Evans as they head off to start Christ Church San Antonio.  It was wonderful to spend time with them and their kids.  Their youngest is only 4 days older than Clara, so it was fun to have them together again too. Luke and Marianne are special people, and I think part of us wishes we could move to San Antonio to be a part of their church.

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Sunday, June 16th was Jeff’s birthday and his first Father’s Day.  We were happy to celebrate in Tucson with friends.  We even had a Dairy Queen ice cream cake courtesy of Ryan and Yunuen and Matt and Dana.  If you know Jeff well, you know that this is a favorite! Sunday evening we spent time at the Holleys.  Over the last six years, you could find us at their home on Sunday evenings and it feels like home to us.

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