11 months

How is my baby almost 1???  This year has gone by so fast!  This past month Claire learned a lot too.  She's got lots of new skills to show off.

Of course the only smiling photo is the one with her hand in her mouth.

11 months!

I have to post the photo with the bow in her hair.  Of course she promptly removed it right after I snapped the photo.  I wish she would keep it in!

11 month facts:

• At the beginning of this month I would say to Claire "can you clap?" or "can you wave?" and she would do the actions I was asking about.  I didn't even know she knew what they were called without seeing the action.  It really surprised me!  
• She also understands "hi" and "bye".  If you tell her to say "hi" or "bye" she will wave.  
• Speaking of waving, Claire loves to wave!  Especially at kids (like every kid at church).  She always waves at Dan if we are walking out of a room and he is still in the room we are leaving.  It's super cute.  She also knows to wave when Dan leaves for work.  
• One other thing about waving, whenever I'm on the phone Claire will usually wave.  I think she gets confused because we often FaceTime different family members, so she thinks whoever I am talking to can see her.  
• When we tell her to give kisses she smacks her lips.  
• Sometimes when we pray Claire will clasp her hands together during the prayer (mostly at dinner).
• She is pretty much over baby food and just wants to eat what we are eating.  
• She loves bread, bananas, turkey, beans, and avocado.  
• She loves reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar book because it has little holes she likes to stick her fingers in.  She's also found the holes in her nose and puts her fingers in those too :).  
• This past month Claire got 2 more teeth!  Making a total of 4 teeth.  I thought she would get her 2 upper middle teeth, but she actually got the ones on each side of the middle.  
• During Christmas she really loved looking at Christmas lights.  We took her to one house where you tune your radio to a certain station and their lights flicker to the music and she loved it.  It kept her attention for a good 10 minutes!
• She likes toys that she can open and close.  
• Claire loves to pull items out of containers.  One of her favorite activities is pulling everything out of the diaper bag.  She also loves to pull all of her toys out of their bins and throw them all over her room. She does the same thing with her laundry too.  And every time I put my makeup on she has to take all of my makeup out of my makeup bag. 
• She has 2 toy phones and puts them up to her ear.  
• Claire really likes other kids.  Even kids bigger and older than her.  She is always crawling over to them to see what they are doing and wants to be right in the middle of it all.  
• She did not like Santa and cried when she met him.
• She knows the words "hair" and "nose" and will usually point to them.  
• Claire has started to pull out her books and look at them by herself, it's adorable.  She loves flipping through them.  She is also getting better at playing with toys by herself.  
• We have some play food in our basement and I was pretending to cut it and eat it and Claire copied me!  She made eating noises and all.  It was so funny.  She is getting pretty good at imitating.  
• A couple of times she has said "ba ba" for "bye bye".  She also says "pup" for "up".  
• Claire had her very first Christmas and got a walker, new clothes, textured balls, a big stuffed dog, books, and a lady bug ball popper. 
• The worst part of the month was when Claire got the stomach flu.  It was a sad few days.  

Claire is learning so much!  She is always surprising me with what she knows.  I really can't say it enough how much we love this sweet girl and are so grateful to have her in our family!  

Christmas

I know I am so behind on blogging!  Here are pictures of our Christmas.  We stayed in St. George and had a fun time spoiling Claire and seeing Dan's family.  I also went to see the movie Frozen with my mother in law and sister in law.  It was the first time I had been to the movies since Claire was born.  It was really cute too!

How perfect does Claire look in this picture???  Dan looks pretty good too ;).  Claire is showing off her new Christmas dress.  I'm sure the headband only lasted long enough for the photo to be taken. 

On Christmas eve we started a new tradition where we would try a restaurant we had never been to.  We went to this Chinese restaurant called Panda Garden.  We rarely get Chinese so we thought we'd do something different and we were pretty sure it would be open Christmas Eve.  We ended up loving it (and I rarely like Chinese so this is a big deal).  It is for sure going to be our Christmas Eve restaurant from now on (and probably more often than that).

After dinner we headed to Dan's parents for chocolate fondue, acting out the nativity, and opening Christmas pajamas.  

  

Family photo on Christmas eve!  I think Claire was waving.

Claire getting ready to open her pajamas.

She was pretty good at pulling the paper out.

In her new penguin jammies!

With cousins all in their pajamas.

When we got home that night we had one more gift for Claire to open.  We decided to start another tradition, on Christmas eve our kids will get a new Christmas book to read together in their new pajamas.

Claire reading her new book with daddy.

Claire went to sleep easily that night and woke up around 8 on Christmas morning.

Claire really liked pulling everything out of her stocking.

She likes ripping paper, so the unwrapping part went pretty well for her.

Checking out her new walker.

Yay Claire!  She doesn't really like pushing the walker too much, she just wants to play with the front.

We had a really great Christmas!  It was so much fun having Claire here to enjoy it with us.  I can only imagine it'll get even more fun as she gets older.  

10 months

I can't believe Claire is 10 months!  I've even started thinking about her 1st birthday!  Once Christmas is done that will be the next thing I work on.  This has been a fun age.  Claire is now very mobile and gets into everything.  She is extremely curious and loves to explore our house.

Look at those teeth!

Adorable!

10 months:

• Claire now says "ma ma" and "da da" and means it (most of the time).  "Da da" was definitely her first word.  When we walk down the hall Claire will point at our wedding picture on the wall and say "Da!"  It's so cute.  She usually just says "ma ma" when she is in distress and needs help with something. 
• Claire is now a pro crawler.  She figured out the real way to crawl and crawls everywhere.  
• She loves to crawl to our garbage cans and dump them over. 
• If I leave Claire in her room to go wash my hands or do something quick she will usually always crawl out to the hall and come looking for me.  Or if we're playing in her room and she knows Dan is in the other room she will crawl out there to look for him.  
•  She now pulls herself to standing on everything.  She stands in her crib a lot and she even likes to pull to standing on us!  I got her a cute little table with toys on it for Christmas and I ended up giving it to her early so she would have something to stand on.  
• Claire now points at things she wants, especially when we're eating.  It's kind of nice to know what she wants.  Of course she always points at what Dan and I are eating and wants a bite.  She will also point at which book she wants me to read her.  
• She loves her books that have flaps where she can lift the flap and see what is under.  
• Claire climbed 2 stairs this month!  She crawled to the bottom of our stairs and I wondered if she would try to get up them and she did.  After 2 she was done and wanted to be carried the rest of the way.
• This month she became a really good napper.  She finally started consistently taking two long naps each day and goes down without crying majority of the time (except when she's teething).
• She learned how to wave a while ago but kind of stopped doing it, then towards the end of this month she started waving again all the time!  Pretty much at everyone she sees, even random people at the store.  
• Claire always claps when we sing.  I love it.  
• A few foods she really likes are toast, scrambled eggs, fruit, beans, tortillas, avocado, anything sweet!
• Claire had her first Thanksgiving.  My parents and my sister and her husband all came here.  Claire had turkey, rolls, mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes.  She also loved all the attention she got! 
• Claire also got to play in the snow for the very first time.  She always seems happy outside, the cold must not bother her.  
• We took her to see lights at the temple and she loved it.  She also loves to point at the lights on our Christmas tree.  

We love you, sweet Claire!
 

Snow Day

We are having quite the snow storm in St. George today!  This will be our 4th winter here and this is by far the most snow I have ever seen.  It usually snows once or twice a winter about an inch and melts by noon.  I think we have about 6 inches outside.  They even cancelled church tomorrow because St. George doesn't own any snow plows to plow the road so they are telling everyone to stay inside and not drive anywhere.

Luckily I bought Claire boots and gloves this past week!  We decided to take her out for her very first snow experience this afternoon.  She was all smiles (except when I took pictures, haha)!

We walked up the street and saw our neighbors making a huge snowman.

They needed Dan's help getting it all put together!

Cute snow baby and snow dad!

9 months

Everyone is telling me this sweet little 9 month old is no longer looking like a baby :(  it's so sad!  I even had to buy 12 month pajamas and at Target they are no longer in the infant section, I had to go to the toddler section.  I was not ready for that!  Regardless this girl is still as cute as ever!

I love this photo, I wish it wasn't blurry!

9 month stats:

• Claire now knows how to clap.  It is so cute!  She claps at dinner, she claps in her bed, she claps when Dan plays the piano, she also claps when I sing "Popcorn Popping" or "Do As I'm Doing."  
• She has discovered door stoppers and loves playing with them!  I had to remove the white end part or it'll go right in her mouth.  
• Claire can give five.  If you hold her hand out she'll usually hit it over and over lots of times.  
• She can pull herself to standing usually on our ottoman.  
• Claire will use her little pointer finger to point at things, usually pictures in her book.  
• This past month Claire suffered her 1st ear infection.  It caused a few sleepless nights for us both.  Unfortunately she currently has her 2nd ear infection.  They are rough!  
• She has learned to army crawl and it gets her where she needs to go.  Sometimes she will get up on all 4s and attempt real crawling, but she seems mostly content with going everywhere on her belly.  
• Claire enjoyed her first Halloween and was a cute little bumble bee.  
• She likes to smack her lips and make funny sounds.  She also vibrates her lips (not sure of a better way to describe that).  
• One day I was talking to my sister on the phone and she climbed right up in my face and bit my nose!  I couldn't stop laughing.  
• She no longer smiles for strangers, she usually just stares at them.  
• Claire loves Costco muffins!  She wants to eat every last crumb and cries when I throw the wrapper away.  
• She is starting to eat more table foods and has become a little more picky.  She will no longer eat squash or green beans.  
• She "sings" along to the radio and Dan playing the piano.  
• Her cousin Calvin came for a visit (he's 6 weeks older) and they had fun grabbing each other's faces and hair and holding hands.  
• We got a trampoline and Claire really enjoyed bouncing on it with me.  
• For my birthday Claire got to ride the carousel.  She smiled quite a bit!  She rode it a 2nd time when Calvin was here, but was too tired to smile.  
• She also tried some of my pumpkin birthday cake and loved it!  This girl already has a sweet tooth.  
• Occasionally when she says "mama" or "dada" I think she is associating it with us, but still not quite sure.  The other day Dan walked in the room and she looked at him and said "dada".  But she tends to say those sounds a lot, so it's hard to know!  
• She likes playing with this Sesame Street toy that makes sounds, she also likes her nesting cups, her toy piano, and cars.  
• When she's not sick, she's a good sleeper.  She still takes 2 naps (totaling about 2 hrs each day) and sleeps from 7 pm to 6 am, eats, then sleeps til 8 or 8:30.  

Aside from being sick, we had a fun month!  Claire is always surprising us with her new skills!  We love her so much.