Claire's Updates

Here are some fun and things happening with our girl! :) Tomorrow marks 23 months old and pretty soon we'll start talking years instead of months. Does that really signal the end of babyhood?

FYI...this may only be interesting for die-hard Claire fans! ;) Read on if you will!

• Claire has started giving the BEST hugs and you can't ask for this kind! She wraps her arms around my neck like she's never going to let go. I know these won't last forever...I close my eyes with each one and cherish the moment!
• Don't say anything around Claire that you don't want a toddler to say! She is repeating everything these days. They're usually three or four word phrases or parts of our sentences. The most current one I can think of was with Opa... "geht wieder weg (going away again)" in reference to the cat, Mopar, going away again. I think she's a cat lover, though she likes dogs too.
• Some of her favorite phrases to use on her own are "I do dat (I do that)" or "I find it."
• Just this week, she started taking stairs (a couple) very slowly without holding on to anything. She will decline my hand and carefully do it herself. This feels like 'big news' to me!
• She loves to play independently with Legos now! She has been doing this for at least a month, but she'll very carefully choose her blocks that are all alike (tall and slender) and puts them together into a tower. She can do this for about ten minutes, I'd guess, before she needs 'backup' to help.
• Our morning routine goes like this. "Mama!" and then several more times of calling me if I don't answer or come into her room right away. We then take the diaper off because "Grosse Maedels brauchen keine Windel. (Big girls don't need a diaper!)" and cuddle on the couch with a basket of books. She very much likes to choose which books we read and we read for quite a while to wake up slowly (she's much more like Mami in this sense...likes to cuddle and wake up slowly for the day, unlike Daddy who is a burst of energy right off the bat!). After books and cuddle time, it's breakfast.
• This week we've also started talking about her dreams first thing in the morning. Now, I'm not sure she really remembers her dreams at this point. Usually I start her off by asking "Hast du suesse Traueme gehabt? (Did you have sweet dreams?)" and she'll tell me "ya." I will ask her "Was hast du gemacht? or Was ist passiert? (What did you do? or What happened?)" and she'll give me a word. She gives me words here and there an I piece it together and ask lots of questions (like I said...don't know if she remembers anything but it's fun conversation and fun to imagine!). The most "vivid" dream from this week is this... Claire climbed a tree. A cat was also in the tree. There was a goat eating straw. There were some more details that I forgot, but we talked about this dream a long time! So fun!
• We are potty training! I'd say she makes it about half the time. She is getting much better at telling us when she has to go, but sometimes we still don't make it to the potty. I have an "all or nothing" philosophy on this which is sometimes a pain. It means that we don't put her in a diaper unless she's napping or sleeping...no diaper for playing outside, walks, to the zoo, or runs to Target or Trader Joe's or TJ Maxx (all stores she likes to say...lol). We bring plenty of extra shorts and wipes along for accidents. We've tried several different things...we started having her sit on the potty often and for long periods of time, but go figure, that got boring. We have used "incentives" (not bribery, people!) like getting a pea or a grape or a cracker or something (healthy and tasty) for sitting on the potty and trying or succeeding. Now we are on to asking her frequently "Musst du Pipi oder Poopoo machen? (Do you have to go peepee or poopoo?)." She tells us no most of the time, but sometimes yes! She also thinks she's funny and will tell us "no...ya...no...ya...no!" I have to admit it's cute!
• She makes me laugh! It brings a smile to my face knowing she is doing something clever or 'making a joke' or whatever. This evening we were outside playing. She requested a "wasserfall (waterfall)" because we learned what they were yesterday at the zoo. So we filled a bucket and made waterfalls, then she decided she wanted to water the flowers. (Hopefully they're not waterlogged...the soil was definitely still wet from last time! Maybe she has her mom's ability to kill the easiest of plants, but let's hope she has Omi and Opa's green thumb!) We refilled the bucket a couple of times and then she told me we needed more water again. It wasn't empty, so I told her "Wir muessen den Eimer nicht auffuellen. Es gibt noch Wasser in dem Eimer. (We don't have to fill up the bucket. There's still water in the bucket.)" at which point she dumped the water out, showed me, and told me "mehr (more)." Smarty pants!
• I mentioned she likes to read books by herself now. We still read a ton together, but sometimes she gives me a book to read and then takes her own book (that's a polite way of showing me her preference!). I was getting ready in the bathroom the other day and she was in her room, sitting in her new hippo chair from "Grandpa" as she puts it (it's from Grandma too, Claire!), reading books from a basket. She said "krabbeln (to crawl)" and I figured out she wanted her book with the crawling baby. When I was back in the bathroom I heard her 'read' the book "krabbeln...sitzen...weinen...tragen...tanzen (to crawl/sit/cry/carry/dance)." Then it was the cutest thing, she started asking questions like I ask her "tanzen?...no...tanzen?...no...tanzen?...no...TANZEN! (dancing?...no....dancing?...no...dancing?....no....DANCING!)" and I could just picture her in her chair going through each picture until she found the dancing baby! Now THAT was cool! :)

That's all I have time for tonight...I will edit by adding as needed! I had more updates, but they've slipped my mind anyway! :)