Oh this little girl! It’s a good thing she’s so cute. There are lots of kisses, hugs and snuggles in our house these days. Yesterday Clare had me give her baby doll a kiss good-bye as I was leaving. One kiss for Clare (OK, maybe two) and a kiss for baby. Monkey, bear, her dolls and other beloved animals are hugged and cuddled. Her new Wocket is read to, dolls are spoon fed and Baby Elephant is never far from Mama Elephant. The stuffed animals in our house are very well loved and cared for. Her mother and father, on the other hand, can’t always say we receive such caring treatment. Clare has been, ummm, testing these days. As in she is testing whether or not she can gets what she wants by whining instead of using her words. I’ve shaken my head many times in the last week going “Really? You’ve been saying ‘pwees’ and ‘more’ and ‘all done’ for months but now you’d rather throw yourself on the ground and wail rather than do it? Really?” This same internal conversation has included topics like eating dinner, putting on her shoes, wanting to be held while we’re cooking, and any other issue that we might say “no” to. Deep breath Mama – this too shall pass.
Then there’s this. This girl is climbing, or trying to climb, all the time. Nothing is safe from toddler fingers. J even caught her with a pair of scissors the other day. Seriously, the stuff that nightmares are made of.
But, as always, with the salt comes plenty of sugar. Clare has started singing quite a bit these days. We can ask her to sing us a song and we usually get a “la la la” mixed with other song-like syllables. I was singing the ABCs to her today and she chimed in at “TUV” and kept up the rest of the song! She even did the whole “sing with me.” I was impressed. She also does the hand motions for Itsy Bitsy Spider. Now that we can understand some of what she’s saying I’ve started to notice some conversation trends. We talk about Grandma and Grandpa, Mama and Daddy a lot, but more often we talk about Sadie and Buddy (the dogs), or kitties or airplanes. She also imitated our “I love you” today. OK, it sounded like “iluwee” but J and I needed it after the evening we had.