Hi!

I got a little prompt to update here again (thanks Jennifer :)). Sorry it's been so long!

Clara is now 14 months old and a total bundle of fun. She started walking unassisted about a week before her birthday, and she hasn't stopped! She loves to be outside and especially loves finding leaves on the ground or on bushes. We anticipate much excitement with hunting Easter eggs.

She has a few words that she reliably says - uh-oh, mama, dada, nana (means banana specifically, but also means food in general if she wants more of something), amen. Occasionally we get a properly used "down" or "hi." She waves hi and bye; she loves to point out facial features, especially noses, though she can't yet find her own (but she can find her own toes and belly button). She can also point out things she wants (which is far better than whining until we guess correctly!).

One of her favorite activities lately is to open her dresser drawers and remove all the clothes, carefully placing them in the hamper. She spares us that pesky intermediate step of having to WEAR the clothes - straight from drawer to hamper! She generally loves taking things from one place to another, though; she's taken every book off the shelves she can reach, handing them to me so I can make a stack elsewhere. At church there's a container full of Jenga blocks, which she loves to take out and then put back one by one.

I'm sure there's a ton more stuff I could say, but I'll just move ahead to pictures.

Here's my little girl with her Daddy:

From 2010-03-09

Here are a couple of her in an outfit I made for her (my very first attempt at garment sewing!):

From 2010-03-29

Look at that curly hair:

From 2010-03-29

Interested in the grass (sometimes I have fun with the photos in Picasa):

From 2010-02-27

And a couple of videos...exploring outside:

From 2010-03-09

And then doing the clothes-to-the-hamper bit (we had just gotten the hat; we've taken the tag off since the video!):

From 2010-03-27 (just 1 video)

Clara's got her first tooth

From Clara's First Tooth

That is all.

Trip and Tear Ducts

It's been an eventful few days in our little world.

First, we decided to go to Augusta for one more visit before school starts up. We left on Friday and came back yesterday (Sunday), so it was a quick visit, but we enjoyed the time we got to spend with them.

Here's Clara with her Aunt Sarah (who, as of today, is in her sophomore year of high school):




Hanging out with her Nana, and waving to all her adoring fans (no, she doesn't actually wave yet):


Kisses from Papa:


And petting Izzie...Clara giggled so much at the dog!



We got back home last night with a tired girl and pretty much put her straight to bed. Then we woke her up at 5:40 this morning to head to the hospital. She has had blocked tear ducts since she was born. She's had cellulitis around her right eye twice (treated with antibiotics), so her pediatrician referred us to a pediatric ophthalmologist, who recommended that we go ahead and do surgery to fix her tear ducts. Thankfully, we were able to schedule the surgery for today, a full week before I go back to work and Clara starts daycare.

Here she is before the surgery in her little hospital gown. This would be before she got too terribly annoyed about not having anything to eat this morning.


The procedure was short - we were only away from her for about 15-20 minutes. The doctor said everything went well. She was VERY upset at the lack of bottle by the time she woke up, and she gulped down the one we offered her...and then proceeded to vomit all over Mommy. She seemed to feel better after doing so, though I don't know whether that's because her tummy was relieved or because she felt like she had gotten me back for putting her through the ordeal. Either way, though she's been sleepier all day than usual, she seems pretty much back to her normal self, as you can see in the picture below.


The doctor said that, by law, he is required to mark which eye he's going to operate on, even though there are only two eyes and he was doing both of them. That's why she has dots on her forehead in that picture. :)

So those are the latest adventures for us. Hopefully the surgery will be effective - it is in over 90% of cases. We have a follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks.

All Sorts of New Things (5.5-ish months old)

Clara has started to "army crawl" - using her arms, and sort of using her legs, but not quite. But she can move forward. Of course, every time I try to get a video of her doing it, she just stops and stares at the funny shiny thing Mommy's holding. However, between the army crawling and the rolling, she ends up in some interesting places...

Like under the piano bench:

From Weeks 24-25

Or under her jumper:

From Weeks 24-25

We're pretty sure she's teething, though we can't see (or feel) any teeth poking out just yet. She's always got something in her mouth.

From Weeks 24-25

From Weeks 24-25

Today, for the first time, I was holding her in a standing position and she let go of me and held onto nearby objects instead. So she didn't pull herself up in this picture, but she did maintain her balance this way.

From Weeks 24-25

She also has a fun new trick...click for the video (it's only 18 seconds long).

From Weeks 24-25

Another Trip to Augusta

Well, if I have the keys to this place, might as well post.

We had an unexpected reason to go to Augusta last weekend, Amanda's aunt, who had cancer, passed away.

The trip was about the same as the previous trip. Clara slept while in the car for most of the trip, but she didn't like being in the car seat for so long and so whenever we stopped for food, she would want to look around and squirm. Added about a half-hour or so to last time in March, which was about a half-hour or so from life BC.

From Aunt Elaine's Funeral

Clara's thoughts on long trips in the car

From Week 23

Clara trying to get out of her seat at McDonald's

But Clara got to see lots of familiar faces. Most important of those is Aunt Elease (at least that's what Elease said).

From Aunt Elaine's Funeral

(Elease wanted to make sure she had some happy pictures of her with the baby since she gets jealous of pictures of Uncle Brian with the baby.)

From Week 21

More pictures of our trip to Augusta can be found as always at Amanda's Picasa site (and Derek has some pictures on his, though they're mostly repeats).

At around 5.5 months, Clara is doing fine. She's able to roll over, but she can only roll over in one direction. You might think this means you'll always know where she'll end up, but she's able to rotate herself so unless she's right up next to a wall, she could head in any direction. She's also able to sit up on her own unassisted, which is really great.

She's eating some solids now. We've been giving her rice cereal for a while, but we've started mixing in some 1st foods. Bananas and peas have been all so far, but we've got others to slowly introduce.

So that's the status report. Now I can say I've posted. w00t1

About 4.5 months old

Sorry I'm horrible about updating this thing. I'm going to set Derek up with permission to post here, and then you can all be mad at BOTH of us for never updating. ;)

Anyway, Clara is about 4.5 months old now. And today I put her in 9-month clothes. The child is huge - 90th percentile or higher on all measurements at her 4-month checkup. But she's healthy and happy. :) (However, I am now thinking that the Christmas clothes I got in size 12 months at the end of last year might not have been such a great deal, as she'll have outgrown them by, you know, Thursday.)

She's a total and complete delight for her Mommy and Daddy. She loves her activity mat, anything made of fabric that you wave in front of her face, and books - she tries to devour the written word. Of course, she tries to devour everything else, too. Hands and toes are among her favorite munchies. She enjoys hearing herself make noise, so she does quite a bit of babbling.

She smiles at us readily - especially if we sing to her - and giggles at us too. She isn't as likely to smile when there are a lot of people around (like at church), because she's in "focus and study" mode with lots of faces to process.

She's been rolling from back to tummy for about 6 weeks. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to roll in the other direction, and her tummy isn't her favorite place to be, so we played a lot of Flip the Baby...until yesterday, when she finally figured out how to roll from tummy to back! There was much rejoicing in our house last night.

Speaking of nights, she's a pretty good sleeper. I think I can count on one hand the number of "bad nights" she has had. She wakes up and needs us to replace her pacifier once or twice most nights, but she rarely needs a bottle in the middle of the night. She generally takes about four 40-minute naps during the day. I'd love to get her to switch to two longer naps, but she doesn't seem interested.

There's probably a good deal more I could say, but my time is limited for posting, so I'll just move along to pictures now.

Happy, happy girl:

From Weeks 19-20

Why, yes, I am incredibly cute:

From Weeks 19-20

(If you're wondering about her eye - she had a little infection that was related to the blocked tear duct she's had since she was born. It's cleared up now.)

Mmmmm...feet!

From Weeks 19-20

First time in this seat with the toy tray added on:

From Weeks 19-20

And click for a video of her trying to hold her own bottle:

From Weeks 19-20

(By the way, I *do* update the pictures on the Picasa site pretty regularly.)

A Trip to Augusta

We had a somewhat unexpected trip to Augusta earlier this week - my grandmother passed away on Saturday, so we went up there on Sunday and got back home Wednesday night. She had been in poor health for a while and was in a nursing home, and she spent 2-3 weeks in very poor health before she passed away. She will be missed, but we praise God for the hope that we have through Christ, so that death is not victorious in the end.

Anyway, Clara did great on the trip - slept most of the time we were in the car (just one stop halfway through the six-hour drive for feeding) and slept just fine in the hotel's portable crib. She got to see lots of people, many of whom she'd never met before.

She finally got to meet Aunt Elease and Uncle Matt!


She also met my cousin Mike, his wife Kerry, and their daughter Serena (who turned 3 on Thursday).


She got to meet all of my aunts. I have individual pictures of Clara with each of them, but to save space, here's one of my grandmother's four daughters - Elaine, Phyllis, Becky (my mom), and Tina.


Here's one that I'm sure will embarrass Clara when she's older - her first time eating at Dairy Queen:


And one that expresses her distaste for the burp cloth that has fallen down onto her head:


When we got back to Tallahassee, we had dinner at Derek's parents' house with them, Derek's brother, and Derek's Uncle Joe & Aunt Margaret, who were in town from Indiana. Here's Clara with her great-uncle and great-aunt:


And I don't have a picture of it, but Clara was SO happy to be back home. When we got back to our house Wednesday night, she had fallen asleep in her carseat. I took her out to change her clothes & diaper, and she woke up and looked at her changing table, crib, and wall...and she just gave her room the BIGGEST smile ever. She might've just been in an "I feel like smiling" mood, but I think she recognized her room and was happy to be home. :)

Oh, and a couple of notes: I changed the name of the blog, just because I felt like doing so. I've also started using Google Reader to keep up with other people's blogs, so hopefully I will be better about commenting on your posts. :)