14 Months

At 14 months, little Claire is very active and into everything she can get her hands on!  She loves walking around, opening up drawers and pulling everything out, bringing us books to read, and being picked up.  She only wants to be held for a few minutes though, then she starts saying she wants down, which sounds like "wan dahn wan dahn wan dahn wan dahn". 

She has added many words to her little vocabulary this past month including cheese ("eeze"), truck ("uck"), teeth ("eeth"), and quack ("kkkk").  She calls Matt "dada" and always immediately wants "up" when she sees him.  She put the words "bye bye" and "dada" together for the first time.  She now calls Brooks both "cat" and by his name ("buh").  She still doesn't call me "mama" despite the fact that she can say the sounds and will point to me when someone asks "Where is mama?"  She instead calls me "ba."  "Ba" has a number of meanings these days including drink, what a sheep says, bye, ball, and wall.  She has a few words where she very clearly emphasizes the ending, "up" and "truck" included.

Sometimes Claire is very quiet, like when she meets someone new or is in a big crowd.  Other times she can really chatter, sometimes quite loudly.  When I vacuum is one of these times.  She fluctuates between chasing the vacuum and trying to get away from it, babbling at the top of her lungs the whole time.  I never knew I could enjoy vacuuming so much!

She still has twelve teeth and a healthy appetite to go along with them!  Favorite foods include fish sticks, chicken nuggets, cheese, yogurt, bananas, grapes, watermelon, peas, carrots, corn, and of course puffs or any form of bread or crackers.  We have Vacation Bible School at church this week.  While I'm attempting to herd a group of 26 first graders, she is having fun playing in the nursery.  So far, she had learned that if she looks adorable and signs "please" then she will get lots of goldfish crackers.  Her teachers told me that they have fallen in love with her this week.

Claire has recently flip flopped when it comes to brushing her teeth.  A few weeks ago, she refused to open her mouth, and we were lucky if the toothbrush came in contact with a few teeth.  Now, she gets very excited, exclaiming "teeth teeth teeth teeth!"  She still would rather do it herself, but I'm able to do a much better job now.  After I finish, I let her "brush" for awhile, which basically means she chews on the toothbrush.

We drove through the night to and from Michigan a few weeks ago.  Claire was great about sleeping in her carseat.  Since we've been back, we bought her a new carseat because she was getting too tall for the other one.  She is still rear-facing but now much more upright.  Sadly, she can't turn her head to see us anymore, but if we turn around she can see our reflection in her mirror.

Claire is in 18 month summer clothes and size 4 diapers. Most days she only naps for about an hour and a half around lunchtime, but sometimes she will take another short nap in the late afternoon.  One day last week, I was pretty tired and still recovering from the drive from Michigan.  Claire woke up after a very short nap and I still needed to rest for a few minutes.  I let her play with her toys, and I laid down on the couch.  I actually drifted off for a minute (not easy for me to do) but was abruptly awaken by being hit in the face by a book.  Claire had come up very quietly and whacked me with one of her books hoping I would read it to her.  I still don't find this story particularly funny, but Matt seems to think it is, so I guess I should include it.

On another note, the pregnancy is going well.  I'm 18.5 weeks along.  Baby is approximately 5.5 inches long and weighs about 7 ounces.  I've had some rough days these past two weeks with exhaustion and nausea, but overall it hasn't been too bad.  We have an ultrasound scheduled for June 23 to find out if Baby is a boy or a girl!