10 months

Claire,

• You are walking! You will take from 3 steps up to 10 steps sometimes and are getting more balanced and confident every day!
• For Christmas you got a rocking Elephant you can sit on which you love, and you were thoroughly spoiled by Santa and all of your family.
• I swear you are getting your top front teeth, but every time it seems they are about to pop through they don't... This doesn't stop you from eating just about everything solid though.
• Your new favorite foods include veggie meatballs, cheesy green beans, fish sticks, and you are adamant at every meal you have your own cup of water.
• You say "mama" now and I swear that most the time it seems like you know that is me!
• Anything that makes you feel like a "big girl" is the best. Sitting in your Rocking chair like the adults, eating big people food, and of course walking around. 
• You are a little ham and smile at everyone when we are out and about. You love getting smiles from strangers and look (gawk) at everyone with your mouth wide open, and wave at everyone. 

10 month photos

First time in the Snow - Snoqualmie Pass in early December 

Christmas morning at Nana & Grandpa's house 

Loving being a big girl in your rocking chair 

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!