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A day after the US Men's Soccer Team failed to advance beyond the World Cup round of 16, Clara celebrates her own sweet 16. She was born 16 months ago today, at 2:46 in the morning.
She was just shy of 8 pounds then. She's nearly 22 now. She was about 21 inches long then. Now she's 31 inches tall. She had a big noggin then. And as the pediatrician pointed out two weeks ago, she's maintained in the 95th percentile for head circumference ever since. All those brains.
Other notable additions to her vocabulary: cracker (wow! where did that one come from...we can hardly say it), Ada (as in her friend), dad-O (not technically a word, but she enjoys saying it after hearing her friend Dean use it), oh no (a more dramatic version of uh-oh), nose, toes, book, ...
...and, among our favorites, "1-2-3" as in "ready-set-go!" This is garbled -- really, it's more about the cadence -- but she actually holds up her fingers while doing it.
Oh yes, she has actually become quite familiar with the letters "o" and "s." She can pull them out of a line up of magnetic letters, her alphabet books, or these little bath sponge letters she plays with. Her parents are very impressed.
We recently went through our fourth or fifth sleep training. We're keeping our fingers crossed, but this seems to have worked better than any of the others we gave up on. We've had over a week of Clara sleeping from 8 (ish) pm until the very late hour of (nearly) 6 am. Given that we've resigned ourselves to the fact that Clara is simply not a sleeper, we're thrilled that she gets 10 hours and we get between 6 and 8.
Other news & information:
Clara is officially a Red Cross certified level one swimmer. Which means she can get in the pool while her parents clutch her protectively. That required a four-week course, which we completed yesterday.
She resembles her parents in her bookishness. Each day she picks a few moments during which she empties her cabinet of nearly every book, flipping through dozens of them for 20 or 30 minutes at a time.
...and, among our favorites, "1-2-3" as in "ready-set-go!" This is garbled -- really, it's more about the cadence -- but she actually holds up her fingers while doing it.
Oh yes, she has actually become quite familiar with the letters "o" and "s." She can pull them out of a line up of magnetic letters, her alphabet books, or these little bath sponge letters she plays with. Her parents are very impressed.
We recently went through our fourth or fifth sleep training. We're keeping our fingers crossed, but this seems to have worked better than any of the others we gave up on. We've had over a week of Clara sleeping from 8 (ish) pm until the very late hour of (nearly) 6 am. Given that we've resigned ourselves to the fact that Clara is simply not a sleeper, we're thrilled that she gets 10 hours and we get between 6 and 8.
Other news & information:
Clara is officially a Red Cross certified level one swimmer. Which means she can get in the pool while her parents clutch her protectively. That required a four-week course, which we completed yesterday.
She resembles her parents in her bookishness. Each day she picks a few moments during which she empties her cabinet of nearly every book, flipping through dozens of them for 20 or 30 minutes at a time.
She takes great pride in remembering where we parked, and she can pick out her Mama's car from a full lot and from a surprising distance. Clara treats this as a game and has begun combining it with some of her hide-and-seek favorites. Sometimes, after she has clearly spotted the car, she puts her hands (palms upward) in the air with an interrogative grunt ("where is it?"), trailing us along her deceptive path for a moment or two before revealing that she really knew where it was.
Finally, Clara is spending much more time with her father since he made a career move. It means Paul is primary care-giver (frightened anyone?) on Monday and Tuesday afternoons while Kate works. Paul is very much enjoying no more business travel and the additional one-on-one time it provides with his daughter. But rest assured, we are watching Clara closely for any signs that junior varsity parenting is leading to any mental regressing. So far, so good.
Finally, Clara is spending much more time with her father since he made a career move. It means Paul is primary care-giver (frightened anyone?) on Monday and Tuesday afternoons while Kate works. Paul is very much enjoying no more business travel and the additional one-on-one time it provides with his daughter. But rest assured, we are watching Clara closely for any signs that junior varsity parenting is leading to any mental regressing. So far, so good.
