Claire: One Year

(3 months late, but better that than never!)  This girl is such a sweetheart!  We love her.  She makes all of us smile a lot.  Lucy loves to play with her and make her laugh, and Ryan and I love her constant cuddling!  Here'a a little about our Claire Bear at twelve months:

• 75th percentile for weight and 90th for height. 
• She understands a lot of what we say to her and ask her.  She will think about what we ask her and either shake her head no or nod yes.  It's usually the right response, so I'm assuming she understands what we are asking. 
• Claire is still a little thumb sucker and whenever she gets tired, we can just hold her on her side and her thumb goes right into her mouth and her eyes close.  It's always, always her left thumb.  Never the right.  The funny thing is that every time she sucks her thumb, she has to grab onto my shirt with that same hand that's in her mouth.  I think it's pretty adorable.  Her little hand just goes searching for a piece of fabric to grab and then all is good in her world. Ha!
• She is an awesome sleeper!  She very rarely wakes up at all during the night, if ever.  The only sleeping issue is she goes through periods here and there of waking up too early.  She had a few months of waking up between 5-6am.  That was rough.  It's all just phases though right now still- both the good and the bad.
• Not quite walking yet.  Has taken a tiny step here or there but nothing consistent.
• Claire is a great eater.  She usually has a bottle, bananas, and cereal for breakfast, whatever Lucy has for lunch, and whatever we have for dinner, for the most part.  She loves fruit- especially bananas, strawberries, and grapes.  She also loves avocados and will eat an entire one by herself in one sitting. 
• Still just has 6 teeth- 4 on top and 2 on bottom.
• This girlie has started to become quite attached to mom.  Her separation anxiety is getting stronger and she always wants to know where mom is and prefers to be held by mom as well.
• LOVES bath time and hates getting out when it's done. 
• Claire loves princesses and babies and all girlie things.

We had a little birthday party for her  with just us and my grandpa and Becky.  The party was just like Lucy's- pizza, presents and cake.  Claire loved the attention and Lucy loved to help Claire with the whole process.

We are so lucky to have this girl in our lives.  Happy first birthday Claire!

I LOVE seeing Lucy's excitement for Claire. :)

And I LOVE that Claire was clapping for herself. Haha!

Grammy and Papa skyped in for the party!

There was some rain during the party and I got a text from two different neighbors showing me the beautiful rainbow that was right over our house during the party.  Beautiful! 

Forward facing

I thought she might like her new car seat since it was forward facing, but nope.  She just hates being in the car at all and just screams the whole time.  So, yeah.  I avoid extra trips anywhere at any cost.  Lucy usually ends up plugging her ears and yelling "TOO NOISY CLAIRE!!!"  Hahaha.  Oh well, she will grow out of it.

 Desperate times call for desperate measures... like handing your one-year-old child a granola bar to keep her from screaming.

Fire trucks

One evening Lucy and I went to story time at the library during fire safety week and they had firemen and a firetruck come visit.  They let all the kids walk through and took them around the whole truck, showing them all of the special things about it.  It was a lot of fun and Lucy loved it!  It also happened to be raining on and off all night and there was a huge double rainbow in the sky.  After story time, we swung by McDonald's and got Lucy a chocolate chip cookie.  Such a fun night with just me and her!

Swaddle time

Lucy found an old baby hat and swaddle blanket one day and BEGGED me to swaddle "her baby" (a.k.a. Claire) and let her hold her.  I assured her that Claire wouldn't like that but with so much persisting I finally gave in.  Well, turns out Claire thought it was hilarious!  So then of course Lucy wanted a turn next, so we played this little game for a while and all had a good time laughing about it!

Neighbor Girls Night Out

I live in the best neighborhood ever.  I already dread when we have to move and I know it won't be for a while.  Of all of the homes around us, almost every one of them has a child or a few that are my kids ages and almost all of them are stay-at-home mom's.  So I see these ladies every single day, we are always out and about with each other during the day, our kids all get along, we all pretty much parent in similar ways and have similar standards when it comes to parenting and life in general (well, mostly... I am the only Mormon, but they are all very active in their own respective churches as well, which is great).  Anyway, there are monthly scheduled craft and game nights, where 20 or more of our neighbor friends will go to, but this particular night a few of us snagged an awesome groupon for one of those pottery painting places.  We went there and then out to dinner and it was a blast!  I feel so blessed to be surrounded by such great neighbors!

Preschool

As I mentioned before, we do a little at-home preschool with a few of our neighbor friends that are Lucy's age.  I got the ball rolling with it since I knew I wanted to do something of the sort, but these other two moms have been gung-ho with it as well and have both done a lot of teaching in their days and you can tell because they do an awesome job!  It's exactly what I was hoping it would be for Lucy.  We hosted the first day a few weeks ago and talked all about the letter A, sang some fun songs, played a game or two, did a craft, and ate apples for a snack (we cut them with an apple peeler/slicer, so they looked like spirals, which of course made it more fun to eat).

Baby pushing a baby