• She’s taken to walking like a duck takes to water. In just a few short weeks she is toddling/wobbling everywhere. She still crawls about 30% of the time, but she seems to prefer walking.

• One of the cutest things she does right now is when she wants to go somewhere but doesn’t want to crawl (she usually has something in her hands) and doesn’t want to push all the way up to her feet she’ll try to walk on her knees. Her little little legs aren’t long enough for her to really ‘walk’ on her knees, so she doesn’t go very far.

• Clare has always been a silly baby and loves to make people laugh. When she’s feeling particularly goofy she’ll crawl or walk with a little head and butt wiggle and song. It’s pretty funny and we generally laugh along with her. She loves nothing more than making us laugh, even most of the time she doesn’t even know what it is that makes us laugh. It doesn’t matter because once she realizes we are laughing at her she claps her hands, throws her head back and does her little wiggle even stronger than before.

• She is becoming quite good with her sign language. She signs “milk,” “all done,” “more” and “food.” Now we’re working on “please” and “thank you.”

• Despite all of her words these days Clare won’t say “Mom” or “Mama.” Apparently she sometimes says it when I’m not around, and she has said it to me once or twice, but she won’t say it to my face. I ask her to say it or I’ll point to myself and say “mama” but she usually just grins and says “dada.” Little stinker…

In this picture they were making “elephant” noises at each other. They’re both good at making noises at this point Clare has a better elephant impression than I do.
Other happenings in our house include Clare is now walking! Tonight, at my parents house, she pushed herself up to her feet from the floor and walked 20 feet. She’s been spending lots of time practicing this, so it’s exciting to see it come together. It’s pretty cute because when she would go a few feet she would clap for herself and sometimes it would cause her to fall down.

Other fun things, the words are thick and fast around here. Clare is very, very talkative and we understand some of what she’s saying. Her favorite topics are “dogs,” including “woof” whenever she sees a dog, “book” (usually an order so that we read to her), “walk” (when she’s walking), “baby” (whenever she sees a person either in real life or in a picture – she thinks that all people are babies), “Dada,” “socks,” and “bookabah” (peekaboo). She also says “bunny,” “hug,” “mo(re)”, “kitty,” and a few others that I can’t think of right now. Her tone and inflection are getting more and more like English. In the picture above she’s standing at the door chatting away, giving orders to J and I that we need to take her outside immediately. Of course we didn’t understand a single word she was saying but her meaning was pretty clear.

Our girl isn’t *quite* a walker yet, but she is certainly a “stander” and a “stepper.” In the past week she’s become quite stable and has pretty good control. She’s even taken 3 and 4 continuous steps in a drunken sailor-styler, but when she really tries to get somewhere it’s back to the good ol’ crawl. Her crawl is wicked fast and gets her into all sorts of trouble in the house.

Clare has turned into quite the little mimic these days. If we rub our hands together, she rubs her hands together. If we wipe our feet, she wipes her feet. We’ll notice her nodding or shaking her head along with a conversation, or imitating speech patterns more closely than before.

It was also a sad week in the McPherson house when we had to put down our sweet kitty-cat Prowler. He’s been sick for several months but it was still hard to make the decision. We’re missing him a lot around here. Clare has looked around for “kitty” several times and J and I miss his greeting us at the door, his sitting in our lap and his general presence.