Claire is lucky that she is looking more and more like Jen every day.
Coloring with her different colored pens. What she really does though is take the caps off, scribble a bit, put the caps in one area, and then put the caps back on. Repeat...
Claire and Parker are slowly learning their boundaries. He's very good around her but likes to lick her face. I'm not sure when kids typically learn to push the pedals on a bike but we figured the longer she's around it the more likely she'll be to figure it out.
She likes to do things on her own. Like opening the blueberries, taking one out, eating it, closing the blueberries, then repeating....
Claire is a bit of a daredevil in some aspects but reserved in others. She feels the need for speed.
It was Jen's birthday on Friday so we went to dinner to celebrate.
We celebrated her birthday with Claire on Saturday evening.
Some of Claire's favorite things at the moment are her Play Doh, coloring with pens or crayons, her bike, her friends at school, her froggie, sea horse, and nemo, LeapFrog alphabet and numbers videos while in the car, and her piece of chocolate each night after bath.
She's growing, but isn't quite filling out my shoes yet.
She's still a big fan of black beans, avacado, and cheese.
The Zack family came to visit us this weekend. Claire got to spend some quality time with her BFF Piper. Here they are at Discovery Place Kids in a Ford Mustang.
They climbed up the stairs, crawled through a tunnel, then went down a slide all by themselves after we showed them how to do it the first time.
This was a failed week on my part. Things were hectic since it was back to work and a short week. I don't think I took any photos and don't recall anything from the week. Claire, if you are reading this when you are older....I apologize for your gap in history.
All of the kids in the family. Summer (10), Savannah (6), Claire (~2), Ben (2.5), and Holly (~1).
Family photo for xmas 2011.
Claire loved playing with her cousins. Summer dancing, Savannah running, Ben biking, and Holly standing.
It was action packed. Frogs on heads, gymnastics, eating at big kid tables, and playing the piano.
Coloring, being pushed in cars, and dancing.
Playing with her new frog, sea horse, and nemo toys. Summer by the fire. Summer dancing. Savannah running.
This week Claire decided it was time to jump out of the crib and after doing it once she seemed to want to do it again so I had to take off the railing and turn it into a bed. Luckily we bought the Jaxx Foam Bean Bag chair for her room a couple of weeks ago so we just lay that down next to her bed at night. She has rolled onto the Jaxx multiple times already so without it she would have fallen out of bed onto the floor.
Claire's personality can be summed up like this: she is sweet like Jen most of the time but has her moments when she is fiesty and she doesn't shy away from taking risks. We wouldn't have it any other way. This weekend Jen went into her room to remind her that it was nap time and she answered by hanging onto the corner of her crib with her feet in the air and made a monkey sound while smiling. I wish I would have been there for that.
On Sunday we went to watch the light show at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Jen got nervous while driving on the banked part of the track. You wouldn't know if from watching on TV but it is a decent grade.
Claire's fascination with chocolate began on December 1st when we pulled out the advent calendar. From then on, every morning she would wake up and say "Chocolate" and sometimes she would say "Chocolate, Mouth" and point to her mouth. We then had to remind her that we only have the chocolate before reading books at bed time.
We tried on the snow suit that Melissa gave us in preparation for our trip back to the Midwest in late December. Surprisingly, it still fit Claire. She was sweating bullets when we took it off.
I haven't done a great job of taking photos lately. I've also fallen a few weeks behind on the blog and have forgotten what we did during this week. I've started playing quite a bit of basketball lately and have really been enjoying that. The addition of Parker has been great but it is also quite a bit of work in the early stages. He's a great dog though.
On Thanksgiving we visited three of our different friends' houses. We first stopped off at Norm & Shirley's place and then went to Brooke & Anne's place and ended off the night with Steve & Amanda. It was great to see everyone and enjoy some great food together. Claire got to play with various dogs and kids so she had a great day as well.
Claire's hair is starting to get pretty long.
Supporting Marquette basketball wearing her MU t-shirt.
Playing kickball in the front yard.
We went to Monkey Joe's on Sunday afternoon. Every time we drive near the Park Road Shopping Center she says "Monkey Joe's". That blur on the slide is us.
Claire is quite the helper. When Parker is done eating and she sees water in his crate she asks for a paper towel and cleans it up.
We got our tree on Sunday and Claire was telling me where to hang all of the ornaments. She loves looking at the lights.