17 months

My monthly update...a week late.

17 months old. Claire is growing up so ridiculously fast.

Every single day she amazes me by something new she's saying or doing. I can't even begin to keep up with all these adorable new things. And I don't know how these updates could ever capture even the slightest glimpse of her brilliance and charm.

It's all about language development in this house. Words and phrases are flying out of her mouth. She uses well over 100 words regularly and she's using many 2 and 3 word phrases. (Just last night, I asked her if she was tired, to which she replied, “I go bed. Night, night."--and she headed to her bedroom!) Of course she still babbles constantly in her own little language.

And along with this verbal explosion, comes the labeling of everything. She loves pointing out and labeling things everywhere we go. Riding in the car, I hear "Bus", "Tree", "Wee" (airplane), "Snow", etc. And lots of words I have yet to figure out. At the grocery store, "Eggs", "Milk", "Apple", "Nanna"(banana), etc. She's so observant and notices things I never would have. And at home she likes to label things based on possession, "Daddy's", "Mama's", etc. You can't read a storybook without her pointing out and telling you what practically every item on the page is.

She knows the entire alphabet (upper case). She can point out any letter you ask with pretty much complete accuracy. And if you point to a letter and ask what it is, she can say probably 85% of them. She's also on her way to knowing most of the lowercase letters. She also knows numbers 1-9. She knows shapes and is starting to relate them to the "real world." She's known all of her body parts for many months, but now she also says the word as she points them out.

As far as gross motor skills, not much new to report. I suppose she can run a little faster and throw the ball a little bit farther (which isn't very far...she's not destined to be a baseball player!) She has started liking to walk up the stairs (holding your hand, of course) instead of just climbing them.

She still loves music and dancing. She knows a couple of simple songs and will sing them randomly throughout the day. There are other songs that she can't say all the words too, but she babbles the correct melody. She's also really good at keeping the beat by clapping her hands or tapping her knees.

Claire got a record of 10 days in a row with no messy diapers. Once we went out to S.D. with all the new distractions and different environment, she started going in her diapers again. But now we're back at home, and she's back to using the potty again. Yay! If she keeps it up, I might try bladder training in a few weeks and see how that goes. If it doesn't work, no biggie, she's still so young and I don't want to push her.

She's such a sweet and funny, charming and silly little girl. However, she is starting to become more independent, stubborn, strong-willed and opinionated. I don't know that I would go so far as to say "tantrums" yet, but definitely some serious whining when she doesn't get her way and lots of "No!"'s coming from her mouth. As much as I don't want to deal with the temper, I have to remind myself that it really is a good thing. I want her to learn to be independent and have her own opinions.

She's also becoming very possessive. Everything is "my" and "mine." And sharing is not a concept she understands yet. If you are playing with something of hers, she will shove you away and tell you that you're "Bad!"

She really is fun to be with. She's such a delightful child and I'm so glad she's mine!

Home Again

We've been gone for a week. We flew out last Friday morning in the midst of a near blizzard and landed an hour and a half later in 50 degree sunshine. We even saw one day of high sixties, so Claire and I got to play outside. She loved this play tent!
On Saturday, we had the big Easter egg hunt and on Sunday we had a big Easter dinner at my brother Ryan's house with lots of family. By the end of the afternoon Claire had learned to say everyone's name, which was so cute! I love her Easter dress, although I didn't get many great pictures of her. There were too many new things and new people to check out that she didn't have time to pose for pictures.

And Claire was in love with Ryan's new puppy, Shep. Claire is used to being around BIG dogs, which she doesn't really like--so to actually see a dog smaller than her was great. And he is just a tiny little thing, something like 2 pounds! Claire was asking for him constantly, she even dreamed about him one night and yelled "Pup" in her sleep! And when we weren't with him she would ask for "Ryan pup."
After spending 6 days in Rapid City, we drove and spent a day in Aberdeen visiting some of Claire's great-grandparents. She loved this rocking horse she spotted at Great-Grandpa's house. ("Neigh, Neigh...Rock, Rock")

Claire seems happy to be home and excited to see her cats and toys. I'm really hoping she falls easily back into her routine here.

South Dakota

We're still out in S.D. Of course I always have issues uploading pictures with my parents' very old computer...so you'll have to wait a little longer for some cute Easter pics. It's always nice to get away, nice to have extra help with Claire, nice to be able to read a book or two (that don't have pictures!), and to spend time with my family. However, Claire doesn't do as well away from home. All the extra stimulation and different surroundings lead to no naps, restless nights and a little extra crabbiness. Oh well. I don't think Grandma and Grandpa P. mind the little bit of crabbiness, as long as they get to spend time with her! Claire's been enjoying all the wildlife out here at Grandma and Grandpa's house...deer, turkeys, rabbits("hops"), and birds, especially the crows ("caw, caw".) She's also got to spend some time with her cousins, Ella and Owen ("Alla" and "Owna")

Hunting for Eggs

Claire had her first Easter egg hunt today. She joined her 2 cousins Ella and Owen and all of their other cousins. There were about 10 kids running around finding eggs. Claire actually had more fun picking up sticks than eggs, but it was still fun. Happy Easter!

Love bite?

Yesterday was our last day of our Early Childhood class for the winter session. And let me just say, it was not Claire's day! Her friend that she always hangs around, a little 19 month old boy, was just trying to say hello, or show that he was happy to see her, but OUCH! He just took Claire's little chubby cheek and pinched HARD. We had to literally pry his little fingers from her cheek. Needless to say, Claire started screaming and her face instantly got swollen. I iced her cheek and got her calmed down and let her go off to play. After just a minute or two, I glanced over at her just in time to see another of the kids come over and shove Claire to the ground, jump on top of her and BITE! Thank goodness she didn't break the skin, but Claire got the little girl's full dental imprint on her cheek! I don't know how well you can see in the picture, but it's a clear imprint of 4 top and 4 bottom teeth (and this picture was taken 4 hours after the incident!) So Claire spent the rest of her last playtime in my lap with ice packs on both sides of her face and tears pouring down her cheeks. And when we finished the day with circle time, which is normally her favorite part, she was very apprehensive about getting up and being with the other kids. She just stuck right next to me. My poor baby!

Wordless Wednesday

Random updates

I know I haven't been very good at taking pictures this week, sorry!

We met with a realtor this morning. We are finally getting around to getting our house on the market...well maybe! He had some not so great news, basically that with the market as it is right now, we would probably have to take a loss to sell our place. Our neighbors down the road, with the same layout and square footage are trying to sell their place at almost $30,000 less than they bought it for 3 years ago...and still haven't had any offers. Although we would love to move closer to Mankato, we aren't desperate to sell. Not desperate enough to lose money anyway. He thought it would be 3-5 years before the housing market got back on an upward swing. So do we want to continue living here for 3 more years? Well we have a lot to think about and decisions to make. Oh yeah, and we did buy a house in Arlington. It is Nate's grandmother's house and we got a reasonable price for it. It's still up in the air as to what we are going to do with it, especially if we can't sell our place.

And regarding my last post, Claire is still on a roll. She sometimes tells me she has to go when it's only gas, which means a few wasted trips to the potty. And we also discovered last night while visiting the Newlyweds, that she won't go in a strange place, so we still have some kinks to work out. But I've been doing a lot of reading and statistics say that 10% of kids are entirely potty-trained by 18 months. I've also heard from several people that their kids or kids they know successfully potty trained really early. That gives me encouragement so I think we're going to go for it. We will be traveling and away from home for several days for Easter, but as soon as we get back, I think we'll give it a go.

Le Poop

This just may be embarrassing to Claire someday...but oh well! (at least I promised her I wouldn't accompany this post with a picture!)

Claire pooped on the potty chair! Now what makes this even more remarkable, is that this is day 4 in a row of her pooping on the potty. Day 4 of no messy diapers. Day 4 of her telling me she has to poop, BEFORE she goes. She says what sounds like "Le Poop," which makes it sound a little French. I don't know if Le(lay) stands for I or for Claire, but whatever it is it works for me.

I bet you didn't even know that I was potty-training her. Well...I didn't know it either! About 2 weeks ago, she started telling me AFTER she pooped, which I thought was remarkable in and of itself. But then one time I went to change her diaper after she had said "le poop", but it wasn't dirty. I rushed her to the potty, and sure enough she went. So now when I hear "le poop" we rush to the potty and she does her business. Did I mention it's been 4 days?!

I'm not really even sure where to go from here. I was not expecting this so young. I certainly wasn't "training" her by any means. Sure we had a potty chair and we would talk about it, but that's it. I realize that understanding the sensation of having to pee is harder and will take longer. (The average age to be fully potty trained is 30 months) But as with everything, I'll just follow her lead and go at her own pace. And maybe next week I'll have a post to say that this was all just a fluke and that she's never done it again, but it would be awesome if this was the real deal!

ABC's revisited

So I can now say that Claire knows the entire alphabet(upper case.) (Ask her "where is A?", she'll point to A) The only ones that occasionally trick her are the W and M. Understandable. She can also name probably over half of them (Point to A and ask her "What is this?", she says "A") Of course I'm impressed with her, but then again I'm her mom and I'm impressed with everything she does!

Mentioning this to other people and I'm given a lot of very skeptical looks. So I started wondering, is it really that unusual that my 16 month old knows the alphabet? Well apparently it kind of is. I found this at babycenter.com: "Most children begin recognizing some letters between the ages of 2 and 3 and can identify most letters between 4 and 5. This means that you can start teaching your child the alphabet when he's around 2 — but don't expect full mastery for some time."

I do think Claire is a smart girl, but I really think this has a lot more to do with personality. She's mellow and she has an incredible attention span for a one year old. She doesn't run around getting into everything. She would rather read a new book than play with a new toy any day, and has ALWAYS been that way. Most of her toys still look brand new, while her books are getting tattered and worn.

I started to think about how she came to learn the alphabet (and numbers 1-9, by the way!) I never pushed her. She is the one who first showed interest and I just went with it. This kind of thing is fun for her. I don't think I'm an "over-achiever" parent at all. Every child is different, has different interests and talents, and learns at a different pace. Maybe Claire will be a best-selling author someday and make her mom lots of money! :)

A tiger is just a big cat

Have I ever mentioned how much we love the zoo or how it's only 5 minutes away? Due to the mild weather yesterday, we actually got to visit the outside animals for the first time in almost 5 months. Claire likes making all the animal sounds and if she doesn't know what sound that particular animal makes, she does a sort of combination growl/roar. That probably works for a lot of them actually. Although we always seem to spend most of our time at the two aquariums, if you ask her what her favorite animal at the zoo is, she'll start making silly monkey sounds!


I was impressed to see the two tigers chilling out right next to the glass, but Claire could care less. She roared at them, then that was that. She was ready to move on. "But Claire, look how big they are!" "Aren't they neat?" "Please stand by the tigers for a picture." She just kept saying "cat" over and over to me, with a look like,"Mom, they're just cats, what's the big deal?" Needless to say, I wasn't able to get great pictures of Claire and the "cats."

Spring Sunshine

Soaking up some rays

Rex is helping Claire with her alphabet puzzle

Playing Peek-a-Boo with the curtain

Of course it's still not warm enough to play outside for very long, but the spring sunshine coming through the windows sure does feel nice!
(Claire is sporting a cute little spring outfit that was mine some 27 years ago.)

Terrible Two's

I love reading parenting/baby books. My latest book is "The Happiest Toddler on the Block."

It's basically about how to deal with temper tantrums and the type of behavior that just goes along with being a toddler. It says that the worst age for temper tantrums, or the age where toddlers are "the most rigid, opinionated, uncompromising, self-centered, and combative" is from 18 to 24 months. For most kids, the so-called "terrible two's" actually occurs before they turn two and this behavior starts tapering off shortly after their second birthday.

Claire is very mild-mannered and easy-going (what a change from her infant self!) She doesn't have temper tantrums. She doesn't get upset easily, she has a very calm personality. She will get a little feisty when she's over-tired, but that's pretty much it. Talking to other moms, I'm getting varying opinions. There are those who say she's just not there yet, her time is still coming. And there are those who think that she just might not ever go through it. (I'm hoping for option number 2!) Either way, I'm preparing myself for what could be some difficult months ahead.

She's practicing her dance moves (she was singing too!) Of course I had to snap a picture before I told her no, and made her get down. This is obviously wrong and even dangerous, but when I first saw her, she looked so cute that it was hard not smile at her! --And yes, we have a plastic picnic bench in our kitchen. We got it to put out on the deck in the spring, but who knows when that will be!

Words

Claire's vocabulary increases daily. But it's funny which new words enter her vocabulary. It's often words that I have just used in conversation, sometimes words that I don't even remember saying, that she chooses to learn. The other day while I was picking out her clothes for the day, she grabbed a hanger and said "hango." Really? Of all the words to learn, she picks up hanger? And this morning, she came across a pile of coins on the table, and she said "quarter." It just reminds me that she's ALWAYS listening and absorbing. Of course things that I try really hard to get her to say, she won't say. Some of you know how hard I tried to get her to say "Mama" a few months ago. She'd repeat it, but never say it on her own directed at me. It's finally when I gave up trying to get her to say it, that she finally said it. You can catch me quite frequently saying to her, "This is a.... Can you say...?" But emphasizing a particular word or even getting her to repeat it, is certainly no guarantee that she will use the word on her own. So it's always a surprise when we hear new words come out of her mouth. You never know what random word it will be.
Going along with that, her sign language is already slowly disappearing. She can now say all the words that she used to sign for, so I stopped using signs and now she uses them only occasionally for extra emphasis along with the spoken word. I know I could keep going with them, and teach her new ones, but it's just not as important anymore. I never had the goal of teaching her the entire language, just a few signs to help her communicate and now that she is able to communicate verbally, there is really very little need for the signs.

Funny Face Friday

You'll just have to imagine what funny face lies behind the pinwheel. She was being silly and thought hiding her face was the funniest thing!

ABC's

The last few weeks, Claire has been obsessed with letters. We've been spending a lot of time going through her alphabet books. And she can repeat almost all the letters. She can even point out several of them. I haven't actually sat down and quizzed her, but I'm guessing that she knows a good handful of them. One day a few weeks ago, she was playing with her blocks, and noticed the letters on them. She got up with her block, walked over to the fridge (she has alphabet magnets) and she grabbed a magnet and handed them both to me. Much to my surprise and shock, she handed me the letter F block and the F magnet. Thinking this was just a fluke, I handed her a different block and asked her if she could find the matching magnet. And she did! She had to do this several times before I was convinced that it was more than just an accident. After a few days of this, we upped the game a little and moved the blocks into the living room. I'd show her a block and ask her to find the matching magnet letter. And she did--without bringing the block into the kitchen with her, just by memory. I'm still really amazed by it, actually. My mom bought her a big wooden alphabet puzzle the other day, and that is now her favorite toy. You can really tell that she's making the connections, as she gets excited every time she sees big letters when we're out and about. She doesn't notice the small print, like in books, but she'll notice any big letters in signs or whatever. I had been telling my mom about all this, and it was fun to actually be able to show her that Claire can do these things. Because I think she was thinking it was just a mom thing--you know, maybe I was seeing more than was actually there. So I guess it's time to start teaching Claire to read! Ha ha, I'm just kidding...I'll give her a few more months before we start that. :)

Go Claire!

We found out this afternoon that my Grandma had to go to the hospital, so my parents rushed out a little earlier than planned to be with her. But they did get to spend about 5 days here and I know Claire enjoyed her time with them. And boy did she get spoiled by them! She got lots of new toys including a vacuum, a shopping cart, farm animals, cars, and her favorite...a big alphabet puzzle. As you can see, the three of them spent a lot of time doing Claire's favorite activity, reading. Claire also entertained them with all her tricks, dance moves, and new words. And my mom taught Claire a new phrase, when she was trying to get her to finish her veggies at dinner...."Go Claire!" It's the cutest thing to hear Claire say it to herself!

A couple of times this evening, Claire asked "Papa?", "Nanna?" I think she misses them! We'll hopefully see them in a couple weeks for Easter. And my prayers are with my Grandma, who is scheduled for surgery tomorrow morning.

Papa and Nanna

My parents are visiting, so Claire has been busy playing with Grandma and Grandpa P. (or "PaPa" and "Nanna", as she calls them.)