Chocolatespoon: Emily’s Musings

Clara turned 2 today! With the impending move (we’re about half way packed and the house should be ready to move into in about 2 more weeks of fix-ups) we didn’t manage to throw her a party or anything, but tried to fill the day with some of her favorite things and will be bringing lots of cupcakes to her daycare class tomorrow.

She’s talking up a storm these days — our current favorite is when she comes over and asks “whacha doing mommy?” and then when you answer says “oh” like it’s something profound. She parrots back pretty much everything so we’re trying to be careful with what we say. She talks a lot about her best friend Camryn at school and we’re all very sad that Camryn and her family are moving to Texas in 2 weeks! The two of them have been together at daycare since Clara was 3 months old and just love each other. Clara talks about her all the time — “Camryn is a busy bee” (their 2’s class at daycare) — and Camryn is incredibly useful for positive peer pressure (look, Camryn’s doing that, why don’t you try it?) She still loves to color and paint, to hang on any parallel bar she can find (especially at her weekly Little Gym class), to go on the swings and slide at the park over and over and over again, to watch Curious George (part of our nightly bedtime routine) or read her Curious George books, to watch Elmo, jumping (which she really wants to do but can’t quite get both feet to time it right yet), to dance (especially in the bed of “Abba’s white truck”), to sing the “spaghetti song” (on top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese…), to help with the laundry, to scold the cats (“No sitting on the table Mitzy!”), to push her baby doll around the house in the toy stroller, to make cookies (real with me and the ones in her toy kitchen). She’s also very into throwing food and pretty much everything else she gets her hands on onto the floor, especially when she’s done eating.

And, after all the fun (and chocolate) today, her birthday present to us was going to bed early tonight!!!

It’s our date anniversary again — the 5th year in a row that we’ve gone to Maurizio’s for dinner on August 20th (site of our first date) and the second one we’ve brought Clara to (here’s her there last year.)  Each year we tell them it’s our first-date anniversary and that we always come back to celebrate and this is the first year the waitress was nice about it and congratulated us.

Happy anniversary to us today!  Love you Meep!

Flash back three years

8 month sheep photo

Originally uploaded by chocolate spoon

Wow — I can’t believe another month has gone by! Here’s Clara’s 8-month photo with the ever-shrinking sheep! Its been a busy month — Clara is crawling, climbing on things trying to stand up, running around the house in her walker, swimming (well, she had 2 swim classes and didn’t really like it, so we’re going to just try it ourselves in our pool more slowly), shredding magazines, and Skyping a lot with her grandparents and others.  She’s eating “stage 2” jars of food and little fruit-flavored toddler Puffs (or apparently is at daycare, at home she mostly plays with them.) S started a new job last week so our schedule is up in the air again, but we’re trying to adjust…

7 Month Sheep Photo

Originally uploaded by chocolate spoon

Clara is 7 months old today! Here she is getting much bigger than her sheep!

She’s crawling backwards really well (still hasn’t quite figured out forward) and can pull herself up to standing a little bit in the right circumstances (though she can’t stay up). She’s added a lot to her food repertoire — her favorites so far seem to be sweet potatoes and carrots, and she does pretty well with applesauce and pears, still not so hot on broccoli or bananas. She has a bit of a cold right now (as does everyone in her class) and is teething like mad (but nothing has broken through yet).

Mom sent us a fabulous little Flip Video camera and I’ve been taking little mini videos of Clara for the past two weeks. I finally had a chance to plug them into my computer last night and used their mix tool to make this quick little mix (the music and silly little graphics are theirs). It picked rather random scenes from each of the videos, so its a bit of a mish mash, but I think it gives a pretty good picture of what a busy little baby she is these days!

Enjoy: Watch Clara

Clara is 5 months old today! I took some photos of her with her sheep this morning but she was making goofy faces in most of them. She seems to be in the middle of a growth spurt — she’s eating all the time again (especially in the middle of the night unfortunately) — but each month its amazing to see how she’s grown in relation to the sheep.

Here she was at 4 months, 3 months, 2 months, and 1 month old.

She’s wearing her new little Osh Kosh B’Gosh outfit again and Nicole and I were looking through old 80’s ads. I thought I remembered one that Brian and I used to act out, but I haven’t found a video of that one yet.

Clara tried some more rice cereal tonight and ate quite a few bites of it (and wore quite a bit of it as well)! We have a quick video clip here of some of the fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtNra0UijTM. Note the sticking out of the tongue, but then eventually taking a real bite.

Its our anniversary today!

Two big milestones today — Clara had her first try at real food (some nice rice cereal) and her first passport arrived in the mail in plenty of time for our big trip! She wasn’t all that excited about or interested in the cereal, but did manage a couple of bites. We were excited even if she wasn’t.