Claire at 18 Months

How the time has flown!  Claire is now a year and a half old!  I'm still amazed how much she's changed and grown.  I still think about my little baby I brought home from the hospital, and I can't hardly believe that this bouncing ball of energy is what she turned into!

Claire talks up a storm.  She is constantly learning new words.  She's had a resurgence in reading (for a while the books just got thrown).  And now when I read, she repeats the names of the animals or identifies characters.  She asks what things are and tries the new word out--that's how we learned "flower" and she can identify them every time.  She knows a bunch of body parts (most importantly her "lady bits" which she'll just point out at the most hilarious times).  She loves to sing, even though she doesn't really know the words, we can start to identify the "lyrics" based on the tune.  She sings the ABC song with me a lot, and honestly, half the letters sound just about right!

 

She goes through eating phases. I definitely have one picky toddler.  She really likes breakfast cereal bars (like Nutrigrain).  She also likes Cheerios, ravioli, chicken nuggets, popcorn shrimp, bananas, and peanut butter sandwiches.  And cheesesticks, goldfish crackers, and cookies.  But we try to limit the cookies.  She used to really like french fries, but those have stopped being something she gobbled down.  We honestly have trouble finding food she'll eat.  We try to share our dinners with her, but very often we're scrambling to make something from our above list because she suddenly doesn't like pasta or chicken or soup.  She even stopped eating yogurt!  The doctor said she'd be fine--in fact Claire being picky is just one way she's becoming her own unique person.  Of course that comes from a person who isn't stuck trying to figure out what to FEED her, but whatever.

 

Claire is very inquisitive and demanding.  She wants to know and she wants to know NOW!  At the doctor's office they had those round paper lanterns above the cabinets in the exam room.  Well, when the doctor was in trying to examine Claire, she saw them and immediately demanded to know if they were balloons or balls.  She recently learned what a balloon was (and she loves balloons!) and she knows the difference, but admittedly it was hard for her to figure it out.  I asked her what she thought they were.  She made her "deep thinking" face, looked at me, and then looked back, pointed, and yelled "BALL!"  The doctor loved it.  It was just one example of many of how Claire amazes us!

 

She loves going on walks and asks to go on them all the time.  She can ask for water, cookies, and asks to eat when she's hungry.  She also informed us this weekend she had to go potty.  I was so excited because I thought for just one second that Claire had woken up potty trained and it was just that easy.  However, after twenty or so minutes sitting on the potty and reading, it became obvious she didn't have to go.  But, later on I did ask her if she needed to go poop, and although she told me no very quickly, she ran around the couch, crouched down, and well... did her thing.  I had to laugh.  At least she was wearing a diaper!  We are going to start more seriously working on this over the summer when I can spend more time on it.  I am excited though that she seems very interested!

 

Claire talks all the time!  She has whole conversations with us.  Of course, we can't understand a word she says, but it's very cute.  She takes that into her pretend play and will talk with her toys, as well.  Sometimes we hear her when she wakes up yelling at her puppy and telling him no ("NO puppy, NO!!").  She's in love with the word no.  This kid will tell you no to everything, even if it's awesome like, "Hey Claire, you want a cookie?" she will immediately reply "no."  I think we made the mistake of laughing too much when she would do that early on, so now that's always how she responds.  Whoops.

Clearly we are in love with our little girl.  She makes us so happy!  I cannot wait until this summer when we can go have adventures and really hang out.  I think it's so fun to watch her change and grow and her personality is just so cute, you can't hardly ever be angry with her.  I can't believe she's going to be two in just six months!  Where has the time gone?

See you in six months!