Long Snowy Weekend Indoors

This past weekend we got our first real snowfall of the winter, about 8 inches between Friday and Saturday. The result was lots of traffic by our bird-feeders, Claire got to watch birds, squirrels and deer. She spend a lot of time looking out the windows at the snow.

She has also taken to looking at her books more, she pulls them out of the bin and sits and 'reads' her books. 

'If I stay low the deer cannot see me'

'Bye bye deer'

 

'At least I still have Mr. Moose'

11 Months

On Friday Claire turned 11 months, now we are less than a month away from her first birthday.
We have given up hope of her sitting still for these photo-shoots, rather we just try to keep up with her.

11 months:

• Walking!!!!  She took her first steps right before Christmas and now she is walking all over the place.
• Likes to carry stuff around with her when she walks.
• Really good at mimicking sounds and actions. We have made up different voices for her stuffed animals and other toys and she does a good job of mimicking the sounds.
• Understands simple commands like: no, up, out, and more -  whether or not she listens is another story. 
• Her favorite book "Animal Sounds", she giggles as make we the different animal noises. 
• Seeing her interact with her toys is so much fun - she rocks her baby; plays with the house; drives around the trucks & tractors (she makes a "vroom" sound while driving them), loves stacking rings ∪︀ and can throw & chase after balls.
• Now that she is walking she can see things on tables that are out of her reach and she will let you know when she wants to grab something.
• Likes to feed herself finger foods and makes the 'yum' sound when she likes something. 
• She understand how bottle caps and screw tops work, while she doesn't have the dexterity to open and close them she tries really hard to get them on and off.  
• Has outgrown most of her 12 month clothes and is wearing 18-24 months.   

A Monkey, a Moose and Claire

I was out of town last night and most of today for a meeting in Rochester, leaving Claire even for a night is hard. But there is nothing like picking her up at the end of the day and seeing her sheer excitement to see me.
She has a new game where she starts walking towards to you, we hold our arms out, and at the last second she makes a 90 turn to the right or left to fake you out (of course laughing after she makes her move). Today after dinner she played with her stuffed monkey and moose. She proceeded to walk around the family room for the next 10 minutes carrying them with her.

Mid-week videos

No photos tonight, instead we have several videos of Claire's cuteness.

More weekend photos

Just a little over a week ago I bought a new (used) car and the salesman sent us cookies and a balloon to say thanks. I think Claire liked the balloon as much as I like my car. 

Claire likes to pretend the intercom is a walkie-talkie

 We usually don't let Claire watch TV, but its the playoffs.

She spends hours playing with her house, usually pressing the same button over and over and over...

Lazy Weekend

Now that the holidays are over, we had absolutely nowhere to be except home spending time with Claire. We had a lazy weekend of playing with baby dolls, stuffed animals, and of course tractors. It seems weird that it's January and we still don't have any snow, but I'm sure it will come soon enough.

Claire had a very vocal weekend with almost equal 'Ma-mas' and 'Da-das'. She has learned how to shake her head no, we do not think she understands what it means yet, but she keeps doing it when we ask her to stop anything she shouldn't be doing. She is getting more steady at walking, and more confident. So much so that on Friday at daycare she decided to walk down the steps of the loft, needless to say we got another accident report. I think I'm going to start a binder of our adventurous daughter's tumbles.

Here are some pictures from Saturday. 

Claire and her baby doll

Zoom Zoom

'Ok, there is a camera...what am I suppose to do again?'

'That's right, SMILE!'

Junk mail is fun