"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.

Popcorn

"Like father; like daughter," as the saying goes, continues to hold true for Miss Clara.  Brian, Jan, Brandon, and Kevin will understand the significance of this video easily, but for the rest of you who have taken an interest, let me explain.

Mitch is serious about his popcorn.  He ate it nightly during his teenage years.  When we started dating, I was a little put off by the fact that he didn't seem too excited about sharing any of it with me either.  

Since we've gotten married, he's taken his popcorn habit to the next level.  He doesn't make it every night, but he will frequently fill our largest mixing bowl full of "home-made" popcorn.  It's quite a science.  He will either air pop it with a spray bottle of melted butter in hand, evenly coating it as it pours out, or kettle cook it in our giant stock pot.  

He's much better about sharing now, but can still finish this large quantity on his own, and often does.

So for me, it's quite entertaining to see Clara insistently interjecting herself into the "popcorn" way of life, as Mitch tries to relax with his popped handiwork while watching some Hulu.

This is a small sample of what went on for quite some time.  Notice he's rather stingy with the popcorn he gives.  But she was relentless.

Makes me giggle.

Learning Explosion

Learning Explosion

Clara is in the midst of a definite learning/development explosion.  Within the past few weeks she has starting learning like crazy!  Here are a few examples of the things we're seeing her do.

• Blowing kisses (...we never taught her that... ?)
• Doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider actions 
• Patting a back, high fiving, knuckles, kissing, hugging on command.
• Dancing on command or when music plays (her favorite move is to "worship" by sticking her arms up in the air--so cute!  I did that once day and now she's all about it.)
• Understanding a lot of what we say to her, including "wait," "no," "come here," "bring me that ___," "sit," etc.
• Knowing her boundaries: she no longer tries to stand in the bath, get breakable dishes out of the cabinets (although she knows exactly where the mixing bowls that she IS allowed to play with are located), pull the books of the bookshelf, play in the trash, etc.  The boundaries we've emphasized with her, she respects.  So encouraging!
• Identifying her belly, hair, nose, eye, ear, and toes, although she gets pretty insistent that her "eye" is located on the side of her head at times. 
• Playing games with us (pat-a-cake, break the pickle)
• Understanding her surroundings.  Her eyes show that she is with-it. She finds ways to communicate what she wants most of the times, but also reverts back to her much-loved whining tactic at times.
• Signing: "more, all done, please, food, help, up"
• Talking: She says "no, mom, dad, eye, more, yeah, hi, up"
• Babbling continuously throughout the day.  There's no doubt at this point that she's going to be a talker.
• Carrying her baby doll around burping it, an outflow of her recent exposure to baby Anna and Grandma's persistent and vigorous (and effective!) newborn burping techniques
• Going up and down stairs by herself successfully, sitting and sliding down a slide, and crawling through tunnels.
• Identifying some of her animals correctly

Melts my heart.

Busy talkin' and rockin'.

Not sure about this one.

It's so fun!  We can pretty much "teach" her anything we want to now, because she is picking it up so fast.  I am having the best time with her.  Kids are awesome.

Meeting Baby Anna

Clara and I finally had the pleasure of meeting Baby Anna, Crystal's newborn daughter, earlier this week at the ripe age of one week old.

During Crystal's pregnancy, we had often mentioned how cute the exchange would surely be when Clara met her cousin for the first time.

As it turned out, Clara was none-too-sure about her wiggling, beautiful, dark-haired, sleepy little cousin.  Much like a new sibling, Clara was quite put out by all the attention Anna was receiving, especially from her MAMA.

Since I was meeting Anna for the first time, it was only natural that I would be given the honors of holding her for a while.  I could not believe how tiny she was!  And so cute!  Unfortunately that lasted all of about 15 seconds before Clara noticed and came to investigate, whining and pulling at me, and eventually barraging her way onto my lap, though unsatisfied with even these results.

photo by Crystal

"Hey, mom, what about me? I'm here. Aren't I important? Hey, mom? Mom? MOM? What about me?" she seemed to say.

photo by Crystal

 It's a little hard to enjoy a newborn when you're fending off an unhappy, "unloved-feeling" toddler 3x her size intruding her personal space.

This is how I eventually had to experience my niece. 

photo by Crystal

Poor Clara could not have a moment's rest while Anna was in my care.  I passed Anna off to grandma.  Clara sat in my lap, sucking her thumb, and casting frequent suspicious glances in Anna's direction.  "Who is this little person intruding on my show?" she seemed to wonder.  And there's no doubt Clara has been the center of a lot of attention these past 15 months.  

It was disappointing to not get more time cuddling with Anna because I KNOW how fast she will change!  She will not be this baby next time I see her.

Nonetheless, I'm grateful for the time I had with her! I think Clara will adjust... soon...

Adele

Most babies/toddlers have some TV show, video, or movie that captures their interest at a young age, more so than any other, and will hold their attention for extended periods of time.  For Zoe, it was Wall-E.  For Will, it was Elmo's World. For Connar, it was Shrek.  

Once discovered, these precious bits of multimedia become a mom's best ally (when not over-used).  They come in handy when you're baby's ready to start the day but yet it's way to early to actually be awake,  you're trying to do your hair and make-up, they're fussy and discontent for no apparent reason, dinner has to be made and babies pulling at you aren't helping things, or you're not feeling good.  

Or so I'm told.

You see, until now Clara has never showed the least bit of interest in TV.  Overall, I'm pretty happy about that fact and have no intention of it being a big part of her life.  However, there have been times when I really wish I could have a 10 minute reprieve to accomplish something pressing or take a short break.  Especially considering Ms. Clara is of the... social... nature. 

Well, her day has finally come.  Mitch made the discovery last week.  What is Clara's one fail-proof, multimedia fascination?  

Adele music videos.  

We tried other artists, but no one captivates her quite like Adele.  Fortunately Mitch and I both also like Adele.  Here's a video Mitch took for the record.  If you make it past the first 30 seconds of Clara's unwavering fixation on the computer, you'll see her trying to sing along.

It's so fun getting to know this little girl more everyday!