Chocolatespoon: Emily’s Musings

Enjoying the fruits of our new tree!

Clara is 18 months old today!  I used to be so good about marking each month with a blog post talking about all the things she was doing, but have gotten out of the habit over the past few months.  When I read the last one that Karen wrote about Henry I promised myself I would give it another try.  So here are some of the current highlights:

Words!  It’s all about words these days.  Cat, dog, book, up, out, home, more, bib, turtle, car, bed, cheer(i)o, fish, cookie, chicken, cracker, apple, nana (for banana), down, nose, mouth, eyes, toes, shoes, socks, grape, ball, boat, yellow, flower (yellow and flower sound a lot a like so I’m never quite sure when we’re looking at yellow flowers which she is trying to say), milk, binky, chair, no (should have put that one first since we hear that one the most), yum, mayam (Hebrew for water), tissue, bug, pizza, Baba (for Abba, dad in Hebrew, but close enough and definitely associated with her dad now), bubbles (both for actual bubbles and for my cell phone, which has an App on it with a bubble game), hair, done (though we’re still working on saying done BEFORE (or ideally instead) of just throwing her food on the floor when she’s done instead of afterwards), “la la” for music (mostly because Meagan and Momo gave us a CD with a great song that goes “La La La La lemon.. La La La La lightbulb…” and it’s her current favorite) and lots more.  She repeats almost everything we say though it doesn’t always come out quite right.  She can point out animals and items in books, point to appropriate body parts (she’s pretty good at Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes but usually skips shoulders).  She can understand a lot more words than she can say as well.  But she’s getting much more verbal generally and even managed to leave a voice mail message for her grandparents the other day (though generally she still gets quiet when you hold the phone up to her) and sometimes just sort of sings to herself.

She loves playgrounds (which is why you’ve seen so many playground photos here on the blog) and climbs right up to the top herself now and goes right down the slide and then wants to do it again and again.  She still also loves playing with the woodchips and putting them on the bottom of the slide.

She loves to draw and has filled pages and pages with colorful scribbles.  She usually colors on her hands as well but we have wonderful washable markers that come right off.

We’ve discovered a great group of kids in our complex and they all play together every night around 6pm so we’ve been going there after I pick her up from daycare almost every evening.  There are three adorable 3 year old boys and she loves following them around.  There are two 19 month old kids as well which are just about her size.  There’s also a dog named Cassie.  As soon as we get home now she’ll stand by the front door and say “Out!  Out!”  and “Dog!” so that I’ll take her over to see them all.

She has a ton of teeth, probably needs a haircut again soon but has great curls and fountain-like pigtails, and will only wear her one pair of brown shoes and throws a proper toddler-sized fit if I try to get her to wear her cute new pink sandals.

The bulbs that Clara helped to plant in November have grown into lovely daffodils for her to enjoy!

Just got summoned for jury duty, which would be awfully inconvenient right now.  Turns out there’s a special exception for breast feeding mothers though (Rule of Court 859, according to the form).  I would do it — I’ve been called twice (served once during college in a stupid case that got thrown out before we got to make a decision and sat around at the court house here without being called in) and definitely believe in serving on juries.

I didn’t realize that knitting needles were banned — seems like you could get a whole lot of knitting done waiting around to be called in.

These three day weekends are such a wonderful treat — especially when you have nothing special planned for them (since I had pretty much forgotten this one was coming). I slept a lot, read a few books (I am now a huge Kiki Strike fan if anyone needs a good girls-save-the-world type book), made some frozen yogurt in our ice cream maker and came close to finishing off the baby’s room (with the addition of a much needed bookcase and a super-comfy glider chair.) Meant to do more cleaning and organizing and stuff, but what else is new… We even took a dip in the complex’s pool (since it was VERY hot around here this weekend — and the added benefit of being weightless for a while overrode any embarrassment about my new maternity bathing suit.) Its very hard to believe its September already but certainly nice to go into a 4-day work week (though its going to be quite a busy one.)

[And of course since I came online to blog and check out Kiki Strike sites I see that there are all sorts of people out there also looking for Kiki Strike t-shirts — they should totally sell them on the book’s site, I think everyone who reads it would immediately go buy one.  And the sequel comes out this month which is excellent news as well (just pre-ordered it on Amazon)]