Happy Birthday Party Clair!

Saturday we celebrated Clair's first birthday with some close friends and family. It has been fun going back through pictures of the last year and realizing what a part of our lives Clair has become. She is such a joy to love and take care of and she has brought such a dimension of love into our family. I look forward to the ways in which she will continue to shape who we all become in the future.

She's really not one until the 14th, but, just so I don't forget to post up some milestones...At one Clair can:

-say "Da-dy"

-say "mamamamamama" really loudly most of the time and sometimes quietly (one time she actually said "ma-ma" and looked at me. Of course, this was during the prayer at the Christmas Eve service so it was super memorable :) )

-"Da-ding" I have no idea what this means

-"Dah" for everything and she points at things when she says it

-She can crawl like a champ and take about 3 steps on her own

-She can effectively crawl up and down the stairs (up facing forwards on her knees and down facing backwards)

-She mostly eats gerber number two foods but also enjoys bananas and bread. She's had some avacado but doesn't really care for it. She's also had some chicken and though she loved it, it did not love her.

-She drinks formula. Doesn't like juice or water and hasn't really tried much of anything else.

-She squinches her hand together to show she wants milk...or food...or sometimes other random things. But, mostly it means she is hungry in some form.

-She smiles when she is happy, cries when she is hungry or sleepy, and is very serious when she meets people she doesn't know.

-She wears 12 month clothes right on the button and has this tiny little waist which causes me to have to pin up all of her pants.

-She loves her little purple dog from Hamilton and her blue plush blanket from Shawn.

-Her temperment is very sweet and she loves to belly laugh at all kinds of things.

-She shakes her head to cuddle or to see if we'll shake ours back.

-She likes to be the curious neighbor and check out everything behind, in front of or around the side of wherever she's at.

-She loves going for stroller rides and looking at flowers.

-She knows owls and likes to point at them.

-Her hair is starting to fill in but she still has a ring where it rubbed off in the back of her head. I have tried numerous times to put little clips or pretty barrets in her hair but they all fall out because it is so fine.

-She can wear a size 3 baby shoe but it's still too big.

-She like books...mostly because she likes to chew on their corners but she also likes to look at the colorful pictures and turn the pages herself.

-She knows how to thank Jesus for her food by folding her hands together before eating.

-She likes to try to stuff her wooden animal puzzle pieces into the holes of her block puzzle cube.

And, that's about it. I'm attaching a really long video of her birthday cake eating moment. She had a ten minute nap before I had to wake her up for her party so she was super tired the whole time but did really great and loved hanging around the other little kids and all the boxes and wrapping paper. She has this thing for small boxes so she carried around her baby ibuprofen box for like a half hour. Now that all the craziness has died down she plays pretty evenly with all her new toys. She's really great about that. It's looks like, so far, nothing will get too much more love than anything else.