Pictures pictures pictures

I am doing pretty good on my goal to take more pictures. I haven't succeeded at one a day, but it is usually three or four times a week, and that makes me happy. So here are a ton, mostly starring the cutest girl in the world. (No, not me, Claire.)


Claire and Daddy were sweeping together. If she sees the broom, she runs over and grabs it and carries it around, even though it trips her. If she sees the vacuum, she tries to push it around. She loves to help. She carries things for me all the time, sometimes whether I want her to or not. The other day she carried a little step stool from the kitchen all the way to her bedroom.

She is also kissing EVERYTHING right now. The cat, the dog, us, toys, random strangers. Here she is kissing her singing box. Weirdo.

Daddy was eating chili and chips for lunch. Claire wanted some.

As long as she could do it herself.

So happy about chili and chips for lunch.

Playing with Tanner. I wasn't home, but Alann said that Tanner was unsure about it, because he knew this wasn't his toy, and he would get in trouble for playing with it, but Claire kept shoving it in his mouth.

I gave her some corn for lunch one day. She wanted the bowl. This is how she ate the whole bowl of corn. At least she ate it. She has been on a random hunger strike lately. Doesn't want anything except formula. Even old favorites are being passed over. I think maybe we are giving her too much formula, so she isn't hungry for real food, but I don't know. I'll ask the doc about it at her one-year check up next week. (Can it really be a year already?)

And this is why she should have been a younger sister, not an older sister. She is constantly giving toys to the cat, trying to play with the cat, or us. She still plays well by herself, but also enjoys other people (and animals) too. Things like this make me grateful to have the boy coming along so soon.

She has discovered she can pull the keyboard tray out of my desk. Mommy is not happy. The keyboard is not safe. Anyone know a good program I can use to keep her from say rebooting my computer willy-nilly? She also loves to pull out the printer cable and my usb drive if I have it in there.

My new February tablecloth! I love it. It isn't quite hearts, so it isn't really Valentines, but it is kind of sweet and romantic. I love the dark purple too.

I made pizza dough one night. It was ridiculous. The recipe said it made two baking sheet sized pizzas. I got enough dough for 6 14" rounds. That's my hand. The thing was monstrous.

Uh oh. Houston, we have curls!!

They mostly show up when her hair is wet, but some days they are there when it is dry as well.

Reading to herself. Her favorite activity is to pull all the books out of the bookshelf and then walk on them.

We were all together, so we took a family picture.

This is why we were all together. Claire was playing with the cat in this random box. It still makes me laugh at how much the cat and Claire like the same toys. They are constantly fighting over toys.

Om nom nom.

Close the box, open the box, close the box, open the box. A neighbor girl came to the door while we were sitting here playing (this is right inside the front door) and looked at us really strangely. You could tell she was thinking "do you weirdos always sit in front of the open door playing with a box?"

This was when we were taking apart the jumpy. She just HAD to play in it. She saw it again today in the garage and wanted to play with it. Hasn't touched the thing in a month.

"Look, you sit here and spin the duckies like this. See?"

Mom, make sure you tell Jeannie that Claire LOVES these silly dinosaurs. Just loves them to pieces. She plays with them at least once a day.

I tried to pose them all for a picture. Someone kept messing it up.

She is also starting to feed herself from larger pieces of food. Sometimes. Othertimes, she rips it into small pieces and then eats it. And most recently, she rips it into small pieces and throws it on the floor.

A few Claire stories:
Alann cut a few cardboard templates to help position and install the new bathroom mirror. He gave one of these to Claire afterwards to color on. Two weeks after she got it, she found a crayon in her toy box. She toddled right over to her cardboard coloring mat and started coloring on it. How smart she is just amazes me. The things she knows just make me so proud.

Claire cut her first tooth! It was last night, Feb 6, though I didn't realize until today. We were at Leatherby's for a light dinner and some ice cream. I was playing with her while she sat in her high chair. I tickled her and she evaded- with her open mouth going right onto the edge of the table. She started crying immediately, so I picked her up and held her, then she wanted Daddy, so I passed her over. I noticed my shirt was wet, but my shirt was red, so I thought it was just spit. I tried to give her an ice cube and she spit it back out. I noticed a light brown spot on the table, but the spot on my shirt still just looked like spit, so I didn't think anything of it. There also wasn't blood running down her face or anything. She calmed down and ate and we had a good time. Later that night, as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed that there was indeed blood on my shoulder. So this morning, I checked her out. I couldn't find any source of the blood, no cuts or fat lips or anything. So I ran my finger over her gums. Sure enough, the little nub of a tooth that we noticed two weeks ago had cut through. You can't see it at all, but she HAS a tooth. I am so relieved. Of course, it is a top left, because she is difficult and a rebel and can't cut the bottom teeth first like a normal child. But I don't know that I want a normal child.