So I mentioned in the last post that Clare has started growling. Here is a video I took on Sunday and you can hear her ‘growl’ at the beginning. Yes, that low noise is coming from Clare. Halfway through the video Prowler cat starts up. Honestly, I should have edited this video a little bit better. It’s really only interesting for about the first 30 seconds.

Another banner week in the McPherson household. It marks the first of the Clare’s “lessons.” We signed her up for swimming lessons and had our first class this weekend. I think the class is mostly for the parents – for each parent/child that was in the water there was at least another person (and sometimes two) taking pictures on the side of the pool. In our case, J got in the water with Clare first and I joined them later. Clare was OK about swimming – she was a little overwhelmed by the whole pool/kids/loud/big water thing and she did NOT like getting her face wet. But we certainly enjoyed it! Besides, is there anything cuter than this little bathing beauty? Our friends Steve and Leah and their little guy Grayson are going with us, so every Saturday you’ll find us at the local community center in the pool.

We’re also making progress on the solid food front. Clare chewed on a pear today and didn’t hate it! I also got her to take half a dozen bites of rice cereal before she threw back her head and clenched her lips together. It looks like maybe, just maybe, she will someday eat from a spoon. Good thing too, since we had extra butternut squash today that I pureed up into baby food. Whenever she finally decides to eat it, there is some delicious homemade squash waiting in our freezer for her. The picture below is her with an apple I gave her earlier this week – she wasn’t impressed.

Happy 2010 from the McPhersons! We rang in 2010 with snores – and were glad of it! I think I was in bed by 9:30. On New Year’s Day we had brunch with my parents and then went over to a friends house to watch the Rose Bowl. The Ducks lost (oh well) but it was nice to spend a relaxing day with friends and family.

The picture below was taken on New Year’s Day. My mom gave Clare an apple chunk to chew on. Clare hasn’t warmed up to solid foods, so we’ve put them on hold for a while. We’ll try again in a few weeks. Until then we’ll do things like what Mom is doing here, giving her pieces of fruit to explore the tastes and textures. Maybe then when we try food again she’ll be more receptive. Our girl has a mind of her own and is, in the words of Mary, “a very strong-willed little girl.”

Tonight we gave Clare her first hair cut. We didn’t cut off to much (after all, her long hair is her signature style) but I wanted to get it out of her eyes. The picture below is right after the cut. She’s wearing the cutest little outfit from Grandma T with matching sparkly Nike’s from Auntie Kathy and Uncle Jon. She looked pretty stylin’ with her new hair do and her snazzy clothes.

A few things I want to remember about 5.5 months:

• She’s still VERY verbal and loves to talk/listen/sing/shriek/roar. Our friends have a little guy who is 3 weeks older than Clare. When we saw them on New Years Day Clare shrieked her familiar greeting and promptly made her little friend cry. Every time she would talk he would get scared and cry. I joked that she was saying something mean to him in baby talk. Her Daddy is secretly proud of her for making the boys cry already.
• The ABCs are no longer the cure-all to get her to smile. Sigh, it was nice while it lasted.
• She’s starting to hug us back – it rocks!
• She’s all about her feet right now and gets annoyed with us during diaper changes when we try to take them out of her hands.
• She’s particular about people. When she really loves someone her whole body just convulses with joy to see them. So far only J, myself and Mary get this response. She likes certain people (generally women) and they get smiles very quickly (her Aunties Debbie, Beth, Kathy and Grandma and Grampa), but in general she watches people intently first and then, maybe, she’ll smile.
• We’ve started teething. Nothing has broken through yet, but there’s been a lot of hand chewing, drooling and crying. J and I feel bad for the poor little kiddo and we both hope it will be over soon.

I forgot to mention in the last post that we’ve started Clare on rice cereal. I was resisting doing it (trying to hold onto my baby, I guess) but pressure from everyone else (including both my mother and our nanny Mary) caused me to relent. Here are some pictures from our first go. As you can tell, Clare wasn’t impressed.
Fortunately, last night went better and hopefully we’ll continue making progress so that one day soon she actually enjoys eating from a spoon!

We’ve had a wonderful white Christmas in Colorado with the fam. Clare handled her plane ride beautifully (perhaps better than the adults – but waking up a mere hour and forty-five minutes before the plane was due to take off is a whole other conversation). She’s been the center of attention here at Auntie Deb’s and Uncle JP’s and loves every minute of it. You can imagine that between my parents, Debbie’s parents, JP and Deb, and Jeremy and I Clare doesn’t touch the ground very much. When she does actually get on the ground she’s working hard on rolling over, grabbing her toes and rolling from side to side, and pushing up on her hands and elbows. She’s working so hard on these skills that she practices at night when we’re trying to put her to bed – and promptly wakes herself up. Sleep has been a little bit of a struggle, but being on vacation helps. Usually we could hand her off to a grandparent in the morning and sleep in. Ahhhh… it will be sad to get back to real life when we can’t do that.

Here Clare is talking with Uncle JP. You can’t tell, but she’s saying “Thank you for the Pack ‘n’ Play Uncle JP! You bought it just for me to sleep in when I visit and I appreciate it!” She’s also thanking him for the delicious meals he’s made while we’ve been here. For those of you who don’t know, my brother is a closet chef and made some incredible, all-from-scratch Christmas meals.

When we haven’t been eating, we’ve been exploring Denver and Boulder. On Christmas night we went to the Denver Botanical Gardens to look at lights. Clare wasn’t a huge fan of her snow suit, but enjoyed the lights.

In general, she’s not enjoyed being bundled up to leave the house. She’s a Momma’s girl and prefers to be in warm weather.

We’re busy packing tonight for our big trip, but I wanted to take a minute to post a holiday-type pictures.

The obligatory baby with Santa picture. We found a nice, quiet Pictures with Santa experience at a local photo center. Clare wasn’t especially smiley that day, but she didn’t cry so we count that as a success. She was more interested in the dogs who were waiting next in line to get their pictures taken then she was with Santa himself.

A family picture that was taken the weekend after Thanksgiving. We were in the throes of sleep woes at this time, but we all enjoyed the hike.

Finally, here are some pictures of Clare and I from last Friday. She came down to my office for an unofficial “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” It was actually our office holiday lunch so it wasn’t it wasn’t going to be a hugely productive day anyway. Clare did great in the office, napped a little bit, charmed everyone, and generally had a good time. A co-worker took some pictures of us in front of the office tree. We NEVER get pictures of Clare and I, so I’m especially happy with the pictures. Looking at them though it’s really obvious to much that she looks nothing like me. Seriously, look at the little red-headed baby! I do think I see a little bit of Grandma T in that smile though.

Here are some cute videos we’ve taken of Clare in the last few weeks for your viewing enjoyment.

Our girlie turned five months old on Monday. I’m remembering why I always said this was my favorite baby stage – it’s so fun! Watching Clare in the bath tub every night reminds me of why I like this stage so much. She gets so much joy from the world and is so expressive. Everything good causes a huge smile and she just shakes her little arms and legs in joy. On the other side, everything bad is absolutely horrible and she screams, but fortunately she laughs more than she cries.

Blog posts have been fewer and farther between this month because we’ve been struggling with sleep issues. Remember all those things I wrote a few months back about her being a good sleeper? Well, my newborn sleeper turned into a four-month-old non-sleeper. Sigh. J and I have been struggling for survival around here, running on less sleep than a I thought a person needed to function. Fortunately a couple of things have happened. 1) She’s growing out of her little sleep struggles and 2) our wonderful nanny trained her to go to sleep without us holding her. It took an hour, but at the end of that hour Clare fell asleep on her own in her crib with Mary patting her chest. She has gone to sleep in her crib every single time since then. Sometimes we have to be in there patting her chest and shushing her, but sometimes we can just put her down, give her the blanket and binky, and walk out. It’s heaven!

• Clare loves to be sung to. Nothing stops her from crying and fussing like a good old singalong. We sing the usual Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Row Row Your Boat, etc. I had my dad put some of our old Raffi records onto CDs for me so we can start singing along to those. Clare doesn’t care about Raffi so much, but I needed some new material.
• Her absolute song is the Alphabet song. She LOVES her ABCs.
• She hasn’t been particularly interested in rolling over to becoming mobile. In general she’s happy to stay in one spot, often with a toy, and talk or sing.
• She can sit up on her own now for short periods of time. She doesn’t have much balance, but her strength is great!

• She has started to notice the animals and has “petted” the cat a few times. She’s pretty good about not grabbing at his ears, tail or hair – but I suspect that will happen soon enough.
• She’s very tactile and likes to explore new textures with her fingers.
• No one makes her laugh like her Daddy. I suspect this will be a reoccurring theme throughout her whole life 🙂
• She’s becoming a little wary of new people. Not stranger anxiety exactly, but she will certainly study new faces before she smiles at them. Our little girl is a watcher and a thinker.

Right now Grandma T and GranDan are visiting from Alaska. She’s having a great time playing with them. I hope to post pictures soon, but if you can just imagine giant smiles on everyone’s faces that’s pretty much what it’s like around here. Grandma T is smiling the biggest!

I have a blog post to write but I’m a little tired to do it tonight. Until tomorrow, here is a video of Clare’s new favorite toy – the Exersaucer.