The Busy Work of Being a Toddler

This is the second day in a row Clara has insisted on wearing her "jress" ...aka "dress" ... aka "tutu" for most of the day.

It's fun to see her getting more and more a mind of her own, although challenging at many points as well.

This little girl makes my heart happy.  How can you not smile watching this image prance around the house, busy with the important work of rearranging teacups, building towers, and coloring all morning.

Oh to be a one-year-old again, no worries, no fears, just knowing you're safe and loved, with little more on the schedule than eating, playing, being rocked and read to, napping, and pausing once per hour to do a little dancing when the Christmas clock plays its carol.

Although, now that I think about it, the one thing better might just be being the parent of a one-year-old...  It's definitely good for a lot of chuckles.

It Could Be Worse

Anything in excess can present problems, or at the very least inconvenience.  Clara has developed a couple of recent "toddler fancies" that I find myself fighting against throughout everyday.  You may be surprised that I would fight against...

Eating oranges and hand washing.

But, when child has already had a whole orange for a morning snack and another for lunch, and is ignoring all her other food while reaching and repeating "aurge, aurge, aurge!" in pursuit of a third, you have to put your foot down.  What could so many oranges each day do to a little 30 lb body?  I don't think I want to find out.

And then there's hand washing.  SO fun for this little one year old who can't reach the sink on her own even with her step stool.  She demands to wash her hands (straining for the sink and repeating, "hay, hay!") before meals, after meals, before she takes a bath, after she takes a bath, anytime I wash my hands, anytime I'm in the general vicinity of the kitchen or bathroom, and anytime she notices a sink anywhere.  And after she's washed her hands once, she wants to do it again and again.

While I initially reinforced her hand washing interest, I'm now seeing the inconvenience of letting her wash her hands at her own discretion, so I explain, I reason, I distract.

"You're about to get in the bath, you don't need to wash your hands."

"Hay! Hay! Hay!" she responds as a little cry of frustration breaks through and she strains all the harder to reach the sink.  Eventually I give in, hold her up to the sink, turn on the water, get her some soap, and let her wash them so she'll move on and get in the bath.

It's an interesting dilemma, because both of these new little toddler preferences are so good... but moderation is not such a bad thing either.  I'm hesitant to discourage them, but find myself resisting them quite a bit.

However, Clara's recent interests are going to keep her extra healthy this flu season, so I can hardly complain!

It could be a lot worse.

Next year at this time I'll probably be tackling preferences for making play dough cookies and feeding them to the new baby or something of that nature.  :)

My best 'little' buddy and me.

Mother-daughter.  Makes my heart happy.

High-fiving dad.  Because he's just that awesome.

Love that gleeful expression.

Girly Girl

Miss Clara has been revealing herself to be quite the girly girl in recent weeks.  

Her Papa (Mitch's dad), was the first to pick up on her uniquely girl-ness months ago upon observing her pick up a toy car and pretend it was a cell phone.  With three sons and three grandsons prior to Clara, he noted that he'd seen many phones turned into cars, but never this!

She never lost her love for talking on the phone.  It is her best game and one she plays many times each day.  I've learned quite a bit about my "phone mannerisms" as a result.  She answers the phone with a hi and then proceeds to babble while intermittently inserting a pause and a "yeah."  She casts her eyes around while in these imaginary conversations, as though listening intently and not really seeing.  She paces around, lounges, and gestures with her arms quite a bit, which I've been told I do pretty much. 

What's more, she's getting into wearing pretty dresses.  I tried a hand-me-down Christmas dress on her this Sunday morning to check it for size (it was too small of course... Clara's a big girl), but she got so excited anyway.  She went over to the mirror and grabbed hold of it, laughing, coyly smiling at her reflection, and cooing.  She proceeded to twirl and twist around, very pleased with herself.  I changed her out of it.  Later that afternoon she went to her room, found the dress, brought it to me to put on her.  When I did she proudly wore it around all afternoon until I removed it at dinnertime.

Her other favorite girly things: talking, SHOES, her baby doll, changing clothes and shoes, and she tolerates shopping outings pretty well too.  And she looks great in PINK!

Giving baby a hug.

And a kiss.

And some swinging.

It's so cute.  I always secretly hoped she'd be the girly type since I totally am.  I love the bows and dresses and tights and frills, so hopefully this means she'll tolerate it all a little longer!

Guest Blog: Directing Traffic

This is Mitch again. Katie has been a little under the weather recently and blogging has been at the bottom of her list. Due to her online absence, I have once again decided to take the reigns.

Story time.

Katie, Clara and I were standing in the kitchen the other day. Of course standing around wasn't good enough for Clara. So just like her father, she formulated a plan, didn't tell anybody about it, and set about executing it. First, she waddled over to Katie and grabbed her jeans and began to push her around the kitchen. We thought she was just playing around, but little did we know this was all a part of her plan. She directed her mom with great confidence and ease.They made their way slowly but surely across the kitchen. At one point she walked over to me and pushed me into the middle of the walkway. She quickly realized I wasn't as easy to move so she strolled back over to Katie. With one last big push Katie and I were now standing face to face. Well, in our case face to chest. Then a little arm wrapped around my calf and another around Katie's. As the arms began to squeeze Clara said, "Hug, hug." It was a nice little moment for our family of three. There we were, in the kitchen, hugging. It's amazing how a little person can change your life.

The End

I don't fancy myself a writer. I did teach math after all. The point being, don't expect many blogs from me.

Hope you enjoyed...

"No Way!"

Clara's newest and seemingly only phrase.

She picked it up on Monday.  By Tuesday Mitch, who had spent the entire day with her while I was in and out of the house, estimated that she had said it at least 500 times.  He also noted that, upon discovering this little phrase, she seemed to have suddenly forgotten how to say any other sound or word.

"No way!  No way!  No way!  No way!" Came periodically from the back seat as we drove around running errands and grocery shopping that afternoon, and not without the appropriate highly-expressive intonation.

It's actually quite entertaining to have an occasional and authoritative "No way!" punctuate your conversation. "It's true!" became our most common response back to her, along with a couple of chuckles and other comical defenses for our previous comment.

Where did she get this you may wonder?  Her daddy of course.  For a long time now it has been his way of reacting to her babbling "remarks," prompting her to continue her pseudo-conversation.

Apparently, she liked it.

17 Months and Growing Strong

Mitch set up our home studio this morning to do some prep for an upcoming engagement shoot.

The result?  Some fun pictures of Clara.  :)

This is her new go-to position.  She has added hair twirling to thumb-sucking, and no longer has any interest in doing one without the other.

The pluses to this are:

1. Hair twirling has replaced hair pulling (she was getting a thin spot)

2. She's sucking her thumb less due to the inconvenience of the two-hand requirement. 

3. It's cute.

Last night she and I watched a movie together, and she sat in my lap, absentmindedly twirling MY hair, as it fell beside her face.  

Also, Clara can find and say many of her body parts now.  Here she is showing off her...

Belly:

Nose:

 

 Cheeks:

 And Eye:

17 mo. olds are a blast because you can teach them so much and they catch on so quickly.  This is especially fun for Mitch and I considering we're both teachers by trade.  Clara is a good outlet for our teaching compulsions, considering neither of us are working in our field at this point in time.

Softball

One fun thing that we get to do as a family each Sunday afternoon is watch Mitch play softball.  It is a great time.  He plays in The Crossing's men's softball league (that's our church), which alone support its entire own league, with around 12 teams!

There are several young families on his team and the teams he plays against, so Clara has playmates and I have other moms & spectators to chat with.  I have gotten to know many more faces from church through the three seasons he's participated.

And because it's fall ball, we have had some outrageously awesome weather. 

For each game, I pack Clara a snack, a water, and a selection of toys.  Yet she still manages to be quite a handful.  ...perhaps even more so than some (not all) of the other children.  She is constantly attempting to climb the bleachers, eyeing other people's drinks, trying to pet random dogs, heading out onto the softball field, going in the dugout, wandering off for parts unexplored, etc.   

Let's just say I don't exactly sit back and watch the game.  Despite all the chasing, reprimanding, supervising, and redirecting, we still manage to have a great time.

It's just fun being a family.  I like coming to support Mitch, watching his big plays (the 25% of them I actually catch anyway), watching him lead his team, and debriefing/assessing his batting percentage and contributions on the car ride home.  

I like Clara being an environment of community, which we have truly found at our church, and building friendships with other women.  

Softball, you are my friend. :)

Clara carries her toys from the parking lot to the bleachers.  She normally can't make it the whole way without sitting down right in the middle of the sidewalk play with them.