Claire — Life Beyond Walking

With all the obsession over Claire's walking and other motor skills, I realized I haven't posted in a while about all the other things she's been doing lately. And yes, she does do other things!

First of all, her vocabulary has been expanding at a rapid pace. She's certainly not at the level Elsa was at this age, but she's holding her own. (Elsa could identify every letter in the alphabet, plus say an animal that started with each letter, at 18 months, so it doesn't even seem fair to compare these two in that area.) And Claire's pronunciation is still relatively unclear—some of her words don't sound anything like they should, but there's no doubt they are what they are. Here are some of the recent additions to her vocabulary. There are probably more, but I just can't think of them at the moment:

Animal
Lion (she also roars when asked what a lion says)
Elephant (eh-na-na)
Cow
Sheep (plus "baa")
Bear
Duck
Monkey
Woof
Walk (She holds out her hand and says "Walk!" when she wants to walk. I keep telling her if she's old enough to tell me when she wants to walk, then she's old enough to do it on her own, but to no avail.)
Elmo
Ernie
Toy Story
Buzz
Jessie
Eyes
Mouth
Nose
Ears
Teeth
Toes
Belly button
Shoes
Milk
No
Up
Off
Yummy
What is it?
Stop it! (She yells this at Belle when Belle is barking.)
I got it! (When she catches a ball.)

Claire is adorable when she plays. She's very good at pretend play already, and has been for months. She loves the dolls, especially Elsa's doll Carol. She will feed Carol a bottle, put her to bed, and take her for rides in anything with wheels (scooching along behind). The other day she even bounced Carol in a sitting position on top of Elsa's princess ball—a direct imitation of her physical therapists, who bounce Claire on an exercise ball to build up her stomach muscles!

And Claire just worships the ground that Elsa walks on. Anything Elsa does, Claire wants to do it too. (Unfortunately Elsa is really into markers lately. This is not a fun situation for Mommy.) When we go pick up Elsa from school, Claire walks into Elsa's classroom, holding my hand and yelling, "Elda! Elda!" and she laughs like a maniac when we catch sight of Elsa. And sometimes, when Claire and Elsa are playing together on the floor, Claire will suddenly just lie back onto Elsa's lap and rest there for a few minutes (see the photo above). It's the cutest thing and I just love seeing them like that.

Finally, Claire has been making some non-walking-related progress in motor skills. She now sometimes gets up onto her hands and feet in a position that reminds me of downward-facing-dog in yoga. So clearly she's trying to stand up on her own, and is about halfway there. It's progress, so I'll take it. And several days ago, she suddenly decided to crawl across the family room (a real, up-on-her-knees baby crawl). Elsa started shrieking, and when I looked up and saw what was happening, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My seventeen-and-a-half-month old is crawling! Yippee?

Claire has only crawled two or three times since, and always because I asked her to. So butt-scooching is still the locomotion of choice. However, yesterday the physical therapist brought me a delightful torture device pair of shorts for Claire: the legs are sewn together. The idea is that these will keep her from scooching, hopefully forcing her to crawl, which will build up her arm strength. The therapist said as she handed them to me, "These might make her mad." Really, they might? What gave you that idea? I am so looking forward to trying them out.

So that's Claire's latest. She continues to be a handful, with her demands to walk and her insistence that she can't do it without me, but she also continues to be pretty amusing and adorable in her own right.