Meeting Santa

We took Claire to see Santa last weekend, and she loved him! The 10 kids in front of us all cried when sitting on his lap (and I always feel so bad for the poor kids who are scared of Santa), but luckily Claire just smiled and clapped. She is always so happy! I don't think Santa wanted to let her go, haha.

9 months

Posting this a few weeks late...

Claire -

• You are standing all the time now, and "Cruising" around with your toy walker and on our coffee table and furniture. I'm not ready for you to start walking, but it's going to happen before I know it. 
• You are starting to get some attitude! When you don't want something (like your bottle) you make a mad face and shove it away with both hands. Or if I am trying to rock you to sleep and you don't want to sleep yet you will reach up and smack me or daddy. 
• You still love love love food. Anything we are eating you want, and you won't eat any of your own food if we are eating something different in front of you. At daycare you love the pancakes and waffles they make for you. And at home you have loved our chicken curry recipe, as well as pasta, mashed potatoes, any kind of bread, fruit, or veggies (except peas... you still hate those). 
• We took you to mexico for the first time with the Whitfield family for the week of Thanksgiving, you were a trooper on the plane and loved talking to all the people around you. Once we were there you LOVED the pool, and would have stayed in there the whole time if we let you. Naps on the shady lawn chairs by the pool weren't too bad either, it was a great vacation and escape from the rain in Seattle. 

9 month pictures (these were the hardest to take yet... you did NOT want your picture taken)

And some pictures from Mexico! 

8 months

Claire -

• How are you 8 months old already?!?
• You want to stand all the time, and practice all day long at daycare. 
• You love to bounce and when music comes on you will rock and bounce, and sometimes singe along with it (although your singing mostly just sounds live "Ahhhhhh Arghhhh ahhhhhhh"
• Your favorite word is still Dada 
• When I respond to you and say: Claire say "Mama", you just smile and say "Dada Dada"
• Food is one of your favorite things, especially anything solid in chunks... pureed food is so boring. Cut up bananas, sweet potato, turkey, and cheese is the best. And you are trying more foods that we eat for dinner as well, this week we had red curry chicken and you went crazy for it. 
• I realized now that you are truly on the move, I need to start saying "no" to you when you are getting into something you shouldn't (we have child proofed things to some extent, but even when we have child proofed electrical outlets it still probably isn't a good idea for you to think you can lick them). So now when you head towards an outlet I say "No" (without smiling or laughing I swear), and you just crack up laughing! Hmmmm.... 
• It is getting harder and harder to get you to sit still for your monthly pictures! 

All dressed up for Halloween! The cutest ladybug ever... 

Fall

I LOVE fall. Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Pumpkins. Beautiful fall leaves. Crisp weather. Sweaters. Coffee. Boots. Even the rain on a cozy weekend morning. We are fulling enjoying fall now that it is here, and I don't want it to go by too quickly.

Claire - 7 months

"Claire Claire"
• You are on the move! Right after about six months you were sitting up on your own and starting to rock back and forth on your hands & knees, and then at about 6 ½ months old you just took off crawling!
• Within days of crawling you learned how to pull yourself up standing on anything you could push up with your hands on (toys on the floor, the coffee table, and now the stairs).
• You are trying to stand all the time now and will let go of things and try to balance standing up, you can stay up for about 2-3 seconds sometimes, which I think is pretty impressive for 7 months!
• At the beginning of October we started you at a new daycare near our home in West Seattle. It was kind of sad since you really loved your teachers at your other daycare, especially Miss Ariel who you were very attached to already! But we are excited for your new school which will be great also, and now your dad can pick you up on his way home from work.
• Speaking of your dad…. He is your absolute favorite, funniest person. You say “dadada” all the time, although I’m not convinced yet that you associate that with dad yet, but it’s pretty cute none the less.
• Oh and if I haven’t mentioned this already, now that you crawl… you place a chase game with dad where he comes after you and you crawl away and hide laughing. It’s adorable, and sometimes when he isn’t even playing the game with you and he walks in the room you start crawling away from him laughing.
•  You have 2 teeth! After a day or two of being weirdly grouchy (you are always so happy), all of a sudden your bottom two teeth popped up one day, both at the same time. Now you love eating some solid food like cut up bananas, and your "snacks" (rice puffs which you go CRAZY for).

The bar is finally finished finished

Woo hoo! A project done that we have slowly finished over the last few months. After the cabinets were installed, there was just a couple things we needed to do to completely finish the bar (putting down tile on the floor, the molding on the bottom cabinets after the tile floor was done, and some wine racks we wanted to put on the walls).

We have been busy with the baby and getting out enjoying the summer on our weekends, so it was a much longer than usual process to get these done, but we finally put the wine racks up last weekend and now I think we are done for good!

6 months

6 Months, and we cannot believe half a year has gone by already. It is so cliche so say that time flies when you are having fun, but my this year is going by like none other.

Little Claire -

• All of a sudden one day you were sitting all by yourself! Grandma claims it was the day you stayed with her all day
• Just a week later after you learned to stay sitting up on your own, you also figured out how to get there from laying down all on your own. Now we find you in your crib sitting up when you wake up. 
• I went away on my first work trip without you. I missed you like crazy!! You had a great time with grandma though, and then had a Friday night date with your dad. He took you to the daycare BBQ, and then the two of you went on a walk and hung out all day Saturday until I got home (while I sadly waited in Newark all day with a delayed flight home...) 
• You are getting on your hands and knees now and starting to rock back and forth, you want to crawl already so badly and we think you will be moving very soon. I can't believe it! 
• Now that you are 6 months old there are more foods you can eat. You have had lots of veggies and fruits and loved them all (bananas mixed with zucchini, peas/pears/spinach, mangoes, blueberry, blackberry, and more). You have also had yogurt now and loved it!  
• So much energy, so so so much energy. You are not going to be a quiet, calm little girl.... at least based on your personality right now, you are so curious and excited to get into everything. We will have our hands full once you are on the move. 

5 months

5 Months (very belated... but wanted to post before 6 months gets here!)

Claire -

• We went on your first airplane flight to Spokane (to visit our BFF’s Darci & Ruby), and you are a great traveler… of course. The only part you didn’t like was when the plane would start going fast down the runway you would scream, but as soon as we got off the ground you were fine.

• You love animals… especially dogs. You met Ruby’s dog Moses in Spokane and would start cracking up laughing every time he came up to you, and you wanted to pet him so badly. You also love monkey’s…. since your dad got a monkey puppet that he plays with you and it makes you laugh every time.

• You are growing and eating a ton… but are still our little peanut. At 4 ½ months the doctor weighed you at 13 lbs (which was about 15th percentile), and you are about 80th percentile in height.

• Rolling over is old news now, with you going back to front and front to back pretty easily… so now when you sleep, you roll to your tummy and sleep with your knees under you and bum in the air.

• We planned to wait to give you “solid foods” until 6 months… but you have been super hungry lately and really acting like you want what we are eating. So far we have tried some pureed sweet potatoes, carrots, apples and pears which you loved, and bananas and peas which you hated (but I think we’ll try them again in a few weeks… maybe you’ll change your mind).

• You are still the happiest girl around and hanging out with you is the best part of my day every day.

4th of July

Happy 4th! We had a relaxing day bbq'ing with some friends in West Seattle, enjoying some sun and letting the kiddo's splash a bit in a little backyard plastic pool. It was great. Here is Claire in her red, white, and blue!

4 months

Little Miss Claire -

• You are 4 months old and have such a personality already. You giggle and laugh at everything (especially anything your daddy does), and have just started talking and babbling all the time. In addition to your gooo, gahhh, oohhh sounds... you now love to say haaa ahhh in a raspy sounding voice that sounds like a little monster (or we sometimes say our little darth vader). 
• After starting daycare, during your first week in fact, you rolled over.... and since then there was no looking back. You will roll from your back to your tummy 20 times in a row in about 30 minutes, and each time just look up at us like "yeah it's no big deal, I can roll now what of it?". The problem is when you realize you haven't figured out how to roll back onto your back yet and will freak out until we help you.... but then you roll right back on your tummy again, haha. 
• Your third week of daycare you got a little cold, the first time you have been sick, and it just broke my heart. I wished I could be sick for you and make you feel better. You are a little trooper though, and were still all smiles most of the time for the week you weren't feeling good. 
• You seem pretty anxious to try real food, every time we are eating dinner you lunge for our food. I had planned to wait until you were 6 months to try pureed veggies.... but we'll see if we last that long.
• We love you so darn much, and still can't believe you are our little girl. We are the luckiest parents! 

4 Month Pictures:

And some more pic's from the last few weeks: 

Your first time at a hotel when we went to the Washington coast

Hanging out in bed with us in the morning... you love to sleep with your hands behind your head. =) 

All ready for school!