Don’t say I didn’t warn you, but this post is the braggiest, most in your face my-kid-is-the-smartest-in-the-whole-world post that I may have ever written. I just can’t help myself, but I do realize that it might come across as a bit pretentious, obnoxious and even arrogant to people so just FYI that I’m going to the farthest reaches of my Mom-bragging.

OK, that over I’ll just come out and say it. My kid is the smartest 21-month-old EVER! Seriously, the toddler is brilliant. Now J and I have been called fairly bright before, but I think that our daughter is probably way more intelligent than both of us combined. A few examples:

• Clare can now identify a bunch of letters. She’s really interested in words and letters and can point out A, G, C, R, W and a bunch of others. Adam makes a point to say “A for Adam, C for Clare, D for Dog, etc.” and Clare will regularly point out an A on a sign and say “A for Adam!.” Seriously, not even 2 and she really wants to learn her letters.

• She also is beginning to know her numbers. She knows the quantity and number 2. She’s started telling us when there are two of something – “two blankies,” “two earrings,” etc. We’re working on identifying other quantities (one, three…) but I’m pretty impressed that she’s so accurate with declaring two things.

• She can count to 10. OK, she doesn’t understand the concept of counting quantities besides 2 yet but she knows the phonetics of the words 1 – 10. Tonight I asked her how many ears she had, and asked her to count them. Her answer was “one, two, free, fo, fide, six, seben, eight, ni, ten!” I know that if she had somehow seen both ears next to each other (like on a stuffed animal for example) she might have said “two!” but asking her to count means that she’ll run off a stream of words. Still, it’s pretty brilliant. Not to mention cute.

• I think I’ve mentioned before that Clare can almost recite some of her books. Tonight she pulled out “Are You my Mother?” to read. Based on where she got it from, I don’t think it’s been read to her recently. Still, when I would turn to a page she would recite a line from that page (“down down down” or “I am a cow”). From a week or so ago when we last read the book she remembered certain lines on certain pages. This book has 40 some pages (very simple, but still a lot of pages). Her memory is incredible!

• She’s talking in full paragraphs. Now, I don’t usually understand most of her soliloquies but she will tell me long, involved explanations and stories about things. I’m pretty sure her vocabulary is considerably larger than her diction and enunciation, so we don’t catch half of what she’s saying but that will come in time. It does lead to some frustration on her part though, and I think it encourages whining. We know what she’s conveying when she whines, though we work hard not to acknowledge it and say “use your words.”

• When she does use her words she will say up to 4 “English” words in a row sometimes in a sentence. Usually it’s for pretty simple stuff, “More juice please Grandma” for example (which lead Grandma to stop right in the middle of a parking lot and give Clare more juice on the spot). In the wee hours last night I went into her room because she was crying and she reached up to me and said “rock for minute Mama.” So if you drove by our house at 3 am (and could somehow see in the dark) you would’ve found Clare and I in the rocking chair.

• She’s becoming more and more empathetic and tuned into emotions. When her buddy G is sad and crying she always rubs his back and says “it’s OK.” If she hears a baby or kid crying she gets worried and says “baby sad.” She’s also very worried when she sees a sad person in one of her books. We’re working to develop new emotional words for her, happy, angry, etc. So far she also recognizes happy. She hasn’t used the words to describe her own emotions yet, but I expect soon we’ll hear “Clare sad.”

Oh yeah, not to mention she’s cute too!

Yes, we are still alive around here, though the blog has been sorely neglected. Since last time we talked, we’ve packed up and moved about 1.5 miles away to our beautiful new house. The house is beautiful, the neighborhood is friendly, we have wonderful friends and family who helped us tremendously, and we are all enjoying being in a bigger space. It was also just as crazy, chaotic and exhausting and I thought it would be. I may never move again. We still have unpacked boxes sitting around (though now they are mostly limited to the office and the garage) and I still haven’t found my extra towels and a bunch of other things I’m just getting used to living without.

I’ll put in some pictures of Clare bopping around the new house – to give you an idea of what the new house looks like. Most of these pictures were taken in our first week here, so ignore the boxes and the laundry basket sitting around.

Moving whining aside, Clare is pretty cute these days. She struggled with the move a little bit so we saw some extra whining, testing and general crankiness. Fortunately the struggle is over and she loves her new house. I planned to set up her room like a reading nook with all of her books and comfy places to sit – I figured she’d love the quiet time in there. Nope. No more quiet time in this house! While Clare regularly played quietly in her room in the condo, in the new house she likes to run, generally shrieking or singing, from one end of the house to the other. I think she likes to be able to stretch her legs. She also likes to look out the windows, point out when the neighbors wind “chines” are chiming, and climb on the kitchen chairs.

I’ll write more about Clare’s latest milestones later, but here are a few pictures from our new front yard. The daffodils are blooming and it finally looks like it might be spring around here.