Claire at One Year

Wow! Claire is one year old today. And there's probably nobody who is more in shock about that than me. Where did this year go? It seemed to fly by ... and yet, at the same time, it's difficult to truly remember what it was like before Claire was here. She completes us, in more ways than one. : )

Another thing that I had kind of forgotten (until now): Just how much fun it is having a one-year-old. Claire continues to get more interactive and full of personality every single day. She is such a delight!

Communicating
A few months ago, I thought Claire wasn't going to talk as young as Elsa. That belief was based on the simple fact that Claire wasn't making the same kinds of vocalizations that Elsa did before she learned to talk. Now, I'm wondering if Claire actually might talk even younger than Elsa.

At the moment, Claire's favorite word is "da." Almost everything she points at is "da," or some slight variation on that. Elsa and Claire will have "conversations" made up entirely of "da"s—Elsa says "da," Claire says "da" back, and they can go on and on like that in a variety of tones and inflections for an entire ride to preschool. However, for at least the past month, when I say words to Claire and try to get her to repeat them, she actually sometimes does, and quite clearly. She has, over the past few weeks, repeated back to me the words "frog," "turtle," "zipper," "cheetah," "book," "Dora," and more. So, these aren't even easy, simple words! I often doubted it myself when she first started doing it—I would wonder if I was hearing things, or think maybe it was just a coincidence, especially since she will often say the word one single time and refuse (or be unable) to repeat it. But this has happened so many times recently, I'm now confident that she really is repeating things back to us. Especially last night, when she said the word "turtle" to Bob and I at least three times in a row. There is just nothing cuter than when a kid first learns to talk!


Claire's other way of communicating lately is smacking her lips. She loves to do that, and especially loves it when one of us does it back. It's a fun game!

Scooching
As I predicted a few posts ago, Claire has refined her method of butt-scooting and is now all over the house. In fact, we finally dragged the baby gates back out a few weeks ago, to keep her corralled. When we first put them up, we didn't even have to shut them because she wasn't able to scooch over the 2-inch bar along the bottom of the gate. But that didn't last long, and she can now get right over the bar.


As you can see if you compare Claire's scooching to Elsa's, she has a very different style. If Elsa looked like she was hopping on her butt, Claire is very much a butt walker. : ) But it's getting her from point A to point B pretty effectively these days, so whatever works. (And yes, that's my other daughter singing Bon Jovi's "Who Says You Can't Go Home" in the background. I have no idea why, and I guess she's singing the "alternate lyrics.")

But is Claire getting close to walking? The answer there is a resounding no. Claire still doesn't even particularly like standing, although she is a little more willing to do it lately, especially if I catch her in the right mood. She always seems to want to stand on her tiptoes, which naturally doesn't work as well, and she gets really mad at me when I try to rearrange her so that she's more flat-footed. She still has shown no interest whatsoever in pulling herself up on anything.

Eating
We have had a lot of trouble in this area. We've also had a lot of improvement, especially over the past two or three weeks. But I haven't declared victory just yet.

In recent weeks, Claire has eaten and enjoyed the following items: Cheerios, Kix, freeze-dried bananas and apples, canned peas and carrots, bread (finally!), cheese (double finally!), pasta, meatloaf, and sweet potato fries. Unfortunately, there's nothing that's a guaranteed slam dunk on any given day. She gobbled a ton of peas and carrots the first day I gave them to her—then for three days after that, she wouldn't touch them. Then went back to eating them the following week. So I never know quite what to expect—even her all-time favorite thing, yogurt melts, sometimes end up just getting tossed to Belle. And even when she is willing to eat something, she usually doesn't eat much of it—generally only around 5 to 10 bites. But I do feel like we've made major progress in this area, especially the night of the meatloaf and sweet potato fries, when she unexpectedly ate a ton of food.

And I've established some rules for myself when it comes to Claire's eating:
1) She's far more likely to enjoy a food if I let her try it herself, rather than forcibly stuffing it into her mouth. (I guess that shouldn't be surprising). So I try to just put it on her tray and back off. If she eats it, great. If she doesn't, oh well.
2) It doesn't matter how many times she's rejected something in the past, it's always worth another shot. I must have given her bread at least 8 or 10 times before she finally decided she liked it.
3) Just because she doesn't want a particular thing today, doesn't mean she won't want it tomorrow.

In addition, Claire has now switched from formula to whole milk. She is also doing extremely well with the sippy cups and is now drinking from a bottle only at night, before bed (in fact, I've put most of the bottles away in the basement). I can't tell you how happy I am to have bottles and formula (mostly) out of my life!

Playing
There have been a fair amount of conflicts lately over toys, with the "drawing thing" (the Magnadoodle) being one of the most hotly contested items. I guess this is understandable, since Elsa is still in a drawing-obsessed phase, and Claire probably just wants to be like her big sis. It's actually really adorable. Claire also loves a lot of the "bigger kid" toys, like the Zhu Zhu Pets, Rocky the truck, and books with paper pages (board books aren't nearly as interesting!). This is kind of hilarious because Elsa still seems to love the baby toys. If only they would just trade, but of course it can't be that easy.

Claire is so sweet, fun and happy. We love her to pieces. Happy birthday, little girl!