First Solid Food--2/20/2009

Tongue Trick Opera

This is the new gimmick of the week. She also moves her mouth like a mute muppet when you speak to her. She's still just limited to 4 "words" though: Mama, Hooma (Grandma), Uh-uh and Hi!

Claire's half year birthday is next Saturday--yay! I gave her a little green spoon to start playing with as a way to gear up for some solid food next week and she's very enthusiastic. She has already made it clear that she won't be allowing anyone (with the possible exception of Aunt Hannah) to feed her when she's perfectly capable of doing it herself. Last Saturday, Daddy let her suck on a contraband apple. According to Claire, it was "Weeeooww goobah!!!"

Chompitron 2000

Claire believes she is ready for solid food. She can drink water from a cup (she prefers to steal from my cup rather than to use a baby cup) and she

weilds a mean spoon. Last night, she decided to go for the gold and attack Daddy's dinner plate (since no one ever feeds babies around here). Her 6 month check up is on February 23rd, so I'll talk to Dr. Smith about whether we might get her going on the rice cereal train pretty quick here. Adam is wearing his teacher identification lanyard badge thing in the picture, fyi.

Claire meets Great-Grandpa Burch

We had a nice visit from G-Grandpa Burch the other day. He stopped by to deliver some freshly butchered lamb--Adam was delighted! Claire was happy to see Grandpa up and about. He's doing well with his radiation treatments. Claire was especially interested in his rough work gloves. We are WAY into textures right now.

Toes Beware

Claire figured out how to chomp toes on Sunday. She's always been able to get her shoes and socks off by "cricketing" her ankles, but now she does this with the intent to get at her toes. She's pretty funny.

Claire's New Year

We were favored with a fun visit from Uncle Mike and Aunt Sheri over the break. Claire is waiting in the warm car in this picture. It was roughly 26 degrees below zero that day with microbursts of 50 mph. The second picture is of Claire today--January 5th. I thought an absolutely up to date image would be nice. She's growing like a weed--the doctor says she's in the 90th percentile for height and the 30th for weight, so she's a tall slender (strawberry) blondie.

Claire's 1st Christmas: A Great Success

For Claire, Christmas was a wonderful collection of lights, music and most importantly, BEADS. She's quite big on gaudy Christmas tree beads and has claimed a few strand remnants as necklaces. It's apropos considering the dream I had just before I got Claire--she was a four year old girl with wavy strawberry blond hair who came speeding around the corner into my grandmother's living room drenched in colorful necklaces and exclaiming, "Look, Mama! BEADS!" In the dream, I responded, "Oh you are so pretty Claire!" and was then awoken by the surprise of acknowledging the little girl as my daughter. Interesting.

Claire was so excited for Christmas that she switched her normal night owl routine and gave me a "silent night." It was exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

The movie shows her reaction to the present frenzy of her uncles and aunt on Christmas morning and pictures include famous beads and a picture of Claire with her Great Grandma Regular. For the uninitiated, I named her "Grandma Regular" when I was in pre-school because she was the grandmother who I saw "regularly."