Grandma came to visit! Yay! We love Grandma!

Clare showed her some of her new tricks, like taking out all of her books from the basket and putting them on the floor. Oh! And getting into weird positions while looking at books – doesn’t look comfortable to me…

Grandma brought the best gift ever! A Clare-sized rocking chair from Great-Grandma in Glendive, Montana! Clare immediately started rocking in the chair and continues to love it.

“That’s hard work! I’ll just play with Monkey instead.”

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Clare-Bear is now officially mobile. She took her first crawls on a Friday night (my first overnight away from her) right in front of Daddy. He got it on video and I’ll post that shortly. Parenting in the digital age meant that he called me as it was happening and then promptly took a cell phone video that he sent out to everyone he could think of. By the time I actually saw her crawl for the first time on Sunday practically the whole world knew about it. Clare loves crawling and being mobile. It means that things are very interesting at our house – J and I are trying to keep one crawl ahead of her busy little fingers. It’s a challenge but so far so good.

So you’d think that in all of this picture-taking we would have taken pictures of JP and Deb’s visit and our Memorial Day weekend in Bend. Sadly, there is no photographic evidence of our relaxing weekend, hanging out with JP and Debbie, Deb’s strawberry cupcakes, Clare’s first taste of frosting, JP’s bread making, lovely long walks along the Deschutes River or across lava fields, the pair of swans on the river outside the house, or any of the other relaxing memories. There’s also no photographic evidence of Jeremy’s business trip to Las Vegas, my business trip to Chicago, or the colds that Clare and I had last week. Phew! It’s been a wild ride the last month and we’re all looking forward to a slightly calmer June.

We spent Clare’s ten-month birthday in Sun Valley, ID, where I had a conference for work. The conference was good, but traveling to a beautiful place with the family was better. This trip was just one of our whirlwind May, where J was in Orange County two weeks ago, Greg visited last week, we just got back from Sun Valley, I go to Chicago this Friday, J goes to Las Vegas on Saturday (there’s about a 12 hour gap between when he leaves and I get back, so we’re both out of the state for 12 hours – thank goodness for grandparents!), and Grandma T arrives on Saturday! Oh wait, but that’s not all – next week JP and Deb arrive for a much anticipated visit. Whew! To much fun stuff going on (and some silly work stuff too). This weekend is also the first birthday of Clare’s best buddy Gabriel, and Clare is going to bring us along as her date to the party. It seems like not that long ago Robin and I were both pregnant and working out the details of the nannyshare agreement.

The words are coming thick and fast around here. Clare has always been a little talker, but now we actually recognize some of her words. Her current vocabulary consists (as of today) of “Dada (Dad),” “Bo(book),” “yum,” “Hiiiieeeee,” and occasionally “Mama” or “Momom.” The words seem to come and go, but these are pretty consistent. She’s also really starting to imitate sounds, so more words may follow soon. If she’s not talking, she’s signing “milk” or “all done.” It’s pretty cool to see her starting to communicate with us more and more.

Besides her vocal achievements this week, she’s been very busy going from laying down to sitting up and then from sitting to hands-and-knees. I think she’s delayed crawling for a few more days while she’s practicing this new trick. She’s also starting to pull herself up to her knees and is working on how to pull up to her feet. As with the scooting, she likes to practice these new skills instead of sleeping in her crib. I’m ready for that to end 🙂

The big news this week is that Uncle Greg is visiting us from Arizona! He brought the sun with him and we’ve had some beautiful spring days while he’s been here. I don’t have any pictures of he and Clare yet (the picture below is my dad), but she’s warming up to him so I hope to get some good pictures of the two of them together. J and Greg went golfing today and have big plans to do some hiking tomorrow.

Oh yeah! Today was my first Mother’s Day! It’s been a lovely day doing exactly what I wanted to do – play with my little girl all day! We’ve kept it pretty low-key, but Clare and I went and got a new carseat (for her) and just spent lots of time playing. Then J, Greg, my Dad, Clare and I had a BBQ at our house. My comment was that “everyday is Mother’s Day” because everyday is a day with my little girl.

I’m ten months into this motherhood thing and I thought I’d write up a few things that I’ve learned as a parent.

So I’m calling it – Clare, at 9.5 months, is now saying her first word. It’s not Mama, or Dada, it’s “Hi.” Often done with a wave, sort of like a shriek, but it’s happening with enough regularity that I’m comfortable saying it’s her first word. I’m pretty sure she’s also saying “Da” for Daddy and maybe even “book” but we’ll see if it continues.

These pictures below are part of the “Clare and Prowler” series. Prowler is really good with Clare. He comes up to her looking for petting, and she pets him at first and then often will grab him and even throw him on the ground. He is great about just moving out of the way, and even coming back again. She LOVES him and will usually giggle whenever she sees him.

As you can see from this picture above, he’s pretty good at moving quickly to avoid her reach.

Clare continues to be a book lover. Her new favorite toys are books and she will push other toys out of the way to turn the pages of a book. We have several little cardboard books of various sizes that she can turn the pages of and throw without damaging them. I’ve even noticed her ‘talking’ quietly as she turns the pages – imitating what it sounds like when we read to her.

The picture above is of one of my favorite times of the day – the bath and bedtime ritual. We usually give Clare a bath (which she loves) and then wrap her up in the towel and smile in the mirror on our way to her room. We sing “Sweet Baby James” (except we change James to Clare) while we rub lotion on her and put on her night diaper and PJs. Then she gets her soft yellow blanky (which she usually greets with a little hoot and then she snuggles with it) and she settles in to nurse in the rocking chair. We finish with a short book while she cuddles in my lap and then it’s into the crib. She’s getting so that she really enjoys this time of the day. She knows what to expect and seems to look forward to each step in the bedtime ritual. I love any excuse to cuddle with my little girl.

What you can’t tell from these happy pictures is that we had a rough weekend around here. Clare’s top two teeth are causing her fits on their way in (and those little suckers still haven’t broken through yet!). We’ve had a lot of scenes like the one below where she’s chewing on everything in sight and is generally cranky. She has NO patience when she’s not feeling well and every little frustration sends her into a screaming fit. Fortunately the storms seems to have passed and our sweet girl has returned.

She makes some sounds that sound suspiciously like words these days. I’m not quite ready to call something her first word yet, but, for example, she makes a “hhhiiiieeee” noise when she sees someone for the first time. Often she’ll make a “doo” noise when she sees the dog and sort of clicks her mouth like “itty” when she sees the cat (kitty). It hasn’t been with enough regularity and consistency to say for certain that she’s using words, but it’s often enough that I’m pretty sure she’s trying hard to imitate our speech. She’s become such a little mimic lately. Any time J vibrates his lips, or makes a funny noise with his mouth, she’ll work on the sound until she copies it. Honestly, the kid makes complex noises that I can’t make. It’s pretty impressive. It’s sort of like Advanced Raspberry Blowing.

I had one of my first big “mommy guilt” moments this last week. We had a great weekend together, complete with a trip to the farmers market and a hike at Silver Falls. On Monday Clare was excited to see Mary and Gabriel and my mid-day update was that she was having a great day. When I picked her up at 5:15 I was met with a red-faced and puffy-eyed little girl. Mary said she had woken up from her nap a little fussy and hadn’t snapped out of it. Immediately she started smiling and laughing when she saw me and didn’t stop. I think my little girl missed me! Up until now I’ve said that Clare doesn’t miss me during the day, since she has such a great time with Mary. We are very, very fortunate that she is so loved and cared for so well. We miss her, but I’ve doubted that she even notices we’re gone because she’s having such a great time. However, Monday was the first day that I know that my little girl missed *me* and no matter how much she loves Mary (and she LOVES Mary), she wanted Mom and I wasn’t there. Sniff sniff – this parenting thing isn’t for the faint of heart.

It’s been a big week at our house (aren’t all the weeks?). Clare has started imitating gestures, like waving, patting and clapping. We’ve had a few moments of it before (an occasional wave, clap, etc.) but now it’s consistent, intentional, and she will even instigate it to get our attention. Of course when she claps, pats or waves we make a big deal out of it, clap back at her and everyone smiles, laughs and shrieks with joy. I mean, has there ever been a smarter baby? We don’t think so 🙂

Clare has also started getting up on her hands and knees regularly and rocking back and forth. It’s quite a sight – and it kind of strikes fear in my heart since I know that her stationary days are numbered. Not that she’s really stationary these days, but she generally is confined to a 5 foot radius when I step out of the room for a minute. Once she figures out how to crawl (and move forward) she’s going to cover that five feet in about five seconds. Look out world! Really, it’s look out pets. I think she’ll spend most of her time chasing around the dog and cat.

Clare is also starting to ‘say’ her first signs. She’s understood the sign for ‘milk’ for a while now, but she’s now started doing it when she’s drinking a bottle or nursing. We’re also working on ‘more’ (she’s struggling with the distinction between ‘more’ and clapping) and ‘all done.’ Lately Clare has been getting very opinionated while eating and I’d like to give her some more communication tools besides yelling her frustration or displeasure.

Lastly, our girl has turned into a little bookworm! She’s showing some partiality to specific toys (loves the stacking cups) and lately, books. At first she was just interested in turning the pages, but now she’s started looking and touching the pages. She has quite an attention span to sit through several stories, so we do a lot of reading. Being a bookworm myself, I love it.

Now that Clare is a few days away from her 9 month birthday, I want to write down a few things to remember about her eighth month.

• She likes to feed herself in order of her favorite food. For instance, if I put sliced ham, bread, cheese, and banana on her tray then she will eat every sliver of ham off both her tray and bib before touching anything else. Then she’ll move onto the cheese and maybe, maybe eat the bread and banana last. She’s quite the little carnivore and has a strong preference for ham, turkey, chicken and other meats.
• Besides meat, she loves blueberries. I haven’t given her the choice of either blueberries or meat, but I might just to see which she prefers the most. Fortunately for her, I make sure she has a more balanced diet than just meat and blueberries 🙂
• She has started to really laugh with us. The other day my parents and Jeremy were laughing (at me) and Clare joined in. Don’t know how I feel about my daughter laughing at my expense but I think I had better get used to it.
• Now that Clare is getting more mobile and independent (video below) she’s making a point to request cuddles and affection. Sometimes she’ll start getting a little fussy and a little bit of lap time and hugging puts her in a good mood. When I’m holding her on my hip (our usual position) she’ll snuggle in to engage a hug. It’s nice to have her initiating affection back.
• She’s so stubborn! When she doesn’t want to do something she’ll flat-out dig her heels in and refuse to budge. Being the vocal child, she also squawks and screams. At this point it’s fairly easy to distract her, but two-years-old should be interesting.

Lastly, here is a video I took of Clare a few weeks ago. She’s scooting around a little better these days but it gives you an idea of how busy she is and how well she gets around for not crawling.

We’re celebrating Easter in weekend in Bend this year with my parents. I completely forgot that it was Easter and haven’t really done anything for it – fortunately Grandma to the rescue and she bought Clare an Easter basket and Easter dress. Since Clare’s a little to young for egg hunts, and we’re not church-goers, we’re not going anywhere but Clare looks awfully cute in her Easter dress here at the house.
We also gave Clare another hair cut this weekend – this time a little more cut than her last trim. Grandma did it in the kitchen and we all got involved either supervising (me), distracting Clare (J), cutting (Grandma) and photographing (Grandpa). It turned out a little shorter than Daddy may have preferred, but it will definitely stay out of her eyes now (which was an issue before – see pictures below for evidence), and since it grows so fast I know it’ll be long again soon enough. Hopefully now it’ll grow out a little more evenly. before she had some really long strands over her ears and really short strands in the back.

Last weekend Pat, Dave and Rylee visited and we went to the tulip festival in Woodburn. It was crowded, but a really pretty day and so fun to see fields of tulips. Unfortunately Clare started to get crabby by the time we got to the flowers, so we didn’t have any photo ops of her in the tulips (darn!) but here are some pics of her trying out her new backpack for the first time.

Some of Clare’s latest tricks are that she’s getting incrementally closer to crawling. She’s pretty good at scooting backwards, and rotating around side to side. She can actually cover some ground when she wants to. She still can’t go forward though (unless she’s on a wood floor – then she pulls herself around with her hands… straight to the dogs food…). But up until a few days ago she was only using her arms, she hadn’t quite figured out how to use her legs to propel herself. The last couple of days I’ve seen her pull her knees up and even push herself up to her hands and knees and ‘rock’ a little bit. I don’t know how long it will take before she makes the connection to use that motion to move her body forward, but she’s a little bit closer.

She’s also really getting into dancing. Any music will make her bob her little body and sway a little bit (the cutest thing ever). She’ll also mimic our motions when we wave so we do a lot of waving hello and bye-bye.
Lastly, here are some pictures Mary took of the many faces of Clare. I like this one because if you look closely you can see her little bottom teeth! You can also see why Little Miss was in need of a hair cut. She was looking a bit like a raggamuffin. Unfortunately she’s also figured out how to pull out barrettes and pony-tail holders, so my only solution is to keep her hair trimmed short around her face.