Six Months Old

(By Aubree)

Clara had her six month well check yesterday. Here's where she's at:

weight: 17lbs. 4 oz. (about 90th percentile)
height: 26.4 inches (about 75th percentile)
BMI: 17.59 (more average than it has been, she's been on the lower side)

Here's what's new:

-She can now get pretty much anywhere she wants to by rolling and scooting. She's just not very fast yet.
-Her hair is starting to thicken a little bit, thus getting rid of her bald spot, slowly but surly.
-When she scoots she pushes with her feet and puts her head down on the ground, so she doesn't get very far because of this. She hasn't quite discovered her arms in this process.
-Her naps are becoming even shorter, and less frequent, but she is still doing well at night. (About 10 hours)
-She loves scratching everything, I think that's just how she feels and gets to know the world around her along with tasting everything.
-She loves paper, including scratching paper and that's one of the worst sounds in the world to me. I've discovered if I let her at a glossy magazine, it doesn't bother me and she's happy as a clam.
-Along with paper, she would rather play with the tags on her toys rather than the toy itself.
-She doesn't like church, especially the last hour. It's becoming very difficult.
-She babbles by saying dadada a lot and when she's mad it sounds like she's saying mom, but we don't consider either one her first word yet.
-She's been a lot happier now that she is able to get to toys and such on her own.

The doctor said that if she wants to get involved in eating by grabbing the spoon and we don't get her involved, she will lose interest. So I have a spoon and I put a little bit of food on the end of another spoon and she thinks she's feeding herself. I've only done it once, but she seems a lot more interested in meal time.

I finally got her sucking on her big toe on camera. She does this often when I'm bathing or dressing her.

Clara's been doing this crinkling of her nose when she smiles sometimes. It's so cute, but it makes her look like an evil elf sometimes!

Fourth of July Weekend

(by Jeff)

For the Fourth of July weekend, we headed down to visit my sister Ginger and her family. They were blessing their baby Hannah on Sunday, so we figured it would be fun to go down a few days early and have some fun on their ranch.

We got to Aurora on Thursday night. I went golfing in Richfield, while Aubree and Clara took a trip to the park. We learned a few weeks ago that Clara really loves the swings, but none of the playgrounds in our neighborhood have swings for little kids, so Aubree was excited to that the Aurora park had swings for Clara. That night, we enjoyed a great dinner at El Mexicano, one of our favorite Mexican restaurants.


On Friday, Aubree and Clara headed up to the ranch, while I went golfing in Ferron. Aubree had fun with Ginger and Katelyn. Katelyn's favorite activity was floating boats in the creek. Later that night we went to Aurora's Fourth of July festivities, including a dutch oven dinner and fireworks.



On Saturday, we all headed up to the ranch a full day of fun. We tried to find a hat for Clara to keep her from getting sunburnt. We tried this hat first . . .


But Clara kept grabbing onto the brim of the hat and turning it sideways. I think she wants to grow up to be a gangsta.


Since that didn't work, we tried a cowboy hat. Clara loved it!



We went of a family four-wheeler ride. Clara really liked the sound of the engine and the wind in her face. In fact, she liked it so much, she fell asleep.


Here's some pictures of the ranch we took during our four-wheeler ride.





Jared and Ginger just bought a new pony for Katelyn to ride. We put Clara on the pony for a few pictures. She was a little hesitant at first, but then got comfortable with it. Maybe next year she'll be big enough to go for a real ride.




After lunch, we went on a short hike.



That night, we went back to Ginger and Jared's house. Ginger noticed that Clara likes to scoot around on her belly, so she suggested that we put Clara in a walker that she had to see if Clara would walk around in it. So we took Clara and the walker out to Ginger's dance studio where there is a big wood floor, and let Clara loose. She loved it! You could tell how excited she was that she could move herself around.



On Sunday, we attended Hannah's blessing and the lunch afterward, and then headed home. Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of Hannah in her blessing dress, but here's a few pictures of Hannah and Clara together.