12.9.16 - More Clara growing up

The other night I was sitting on our teal chair in the living room when Clara stopped playing and climbed into my lap. So I put the laptop aside to hang out with her. She put both hands on my shoulders and then gently dragged them down my arms a bit, almost like she was petting me, and then lean in and gave me a kiss and cuddled me for a second. Then she sat up and repeated the process 2 or 3 more times. It was heart-melting.

Lately when I drive to or from the meeting point with Beth (nanny), I play the "Clara" playlist on my iPod, which is mostly Disney songs with a few others (Wizard of Oz, for example) thrown in. I gravitate toward the songs she is most likely to try to sing along. Right now she tries pretty hard on the refrain "allllmooooost therrrre" from The Princess and the Frog's "Almost There." She also has tried with parts of "He's a Tramp" (Lady and the Tramp) and others. I usually can't watch her because, well, I'm driving, but I just sit up front and smile and smile listening to her, and sometimes I sing along too.

Happy girl at the nanny's today.

Sometimes I sit on the couch and she crawls up behind me and likes to stand behind me and lean her head over one of my shoulders or the other, grinning maniacally in anticipation and waiting for me to sloooowly turn my head (eyes first, head follows) to then suddenly look at her and say "HI!" She laughs so hard.

Sometimes I lay the Marauder's map blanket out on the living room floor and she gets really excited and runs onto it and then alternates between sprawling stomach down on it and standing and stomping around excitedly in circles.

She's been a little better the last 2-3 days about letting me brush her teeth, mostly because we have three snowmen ornaments hanging in the bathroom to distract her. I stand her on the bathroom counter, point to each one and count "1, 2, 3!" Then I say "get you get you get you get you" as I brush some part of her teeth, and repeat. We've done it enough now that she instinctively opens her mouth at the "3" although she also still instinctively chomps down on the tooth brush to try to suck all the toothpaste off. But at least she's not breaking down crying like she was before. I'll have to figure out a similar trip when we go on Christmas vacation and when we come back and put the Christmas decorations away.

She keeps climbing on the table to examine the Christmas tree.

She gets fussy (in an impatient way, not a serious one) often when I lay her on the changing table, so lately I've tried distracting her by asking her if she can say different words. I've noticed most of them are two syllables (Mama, JaMa, GPa, DaDa) and she'll just say "Baba!" and grin. The one exception is "Mimi" two which she replies "Beebee!" This has only happened 2-3x. Mostly she just listens quietly while I ask her to repeat words and only responds for "Woof woof woof!" ("Woo woo woo!") and sometimes "Choo choo!" ("ooooooo") and "Tweet tweet!" ("twee twee!")

Just the other day I bought her a little wooden puzzle from Once Upon a Child ($2.50 instead of $10 for the original!) It is just cutouts of a dog, cat, bird, fish, bunny, and butterfly. She takes one piece out at a time and hands it to me and I make the noise of the animal (for the bunny I just say "boing boing!" and for the fish I say "glub glub!" and for the butterfly I say nothing but make it flutter around.) Once she gives me all the pieces, she takes them all back which often takes awhile because she wants to hold all six at once but keeps dropping some. She's very patient as she keeps picking them up until she haphazardly has them all, and then she half-squats half-walks around and drops them somewhere, only to hand them each to me again. Today she just realized she can put them back in the puzzle board, although she's only successfully done it with the biggest piece, her favorite: the dog. But she is very proud.