Clara's Birthday Party!

(By Aubree)

We celebrated Clara's birthday with family on Saturday. I first wanted to say a few things about the birthday girl!

-She's a pro walker now. She took her first steps at the end of 9 months, but didn't really try every day until the end of 10 months.
-She likes cow's milk! Yay!
-She's a great sleeper, never wakes up in the middle of the night anymore. Usually always sleeping about 11 hours straight.
-We call her monkey, and she definitely lives up to the name, she is constantly moving and wiggling!
-She LOVES being the center of attention. This is cute, but can be really annoying at church when she won't hold still!
-She used to eat pretty much anything we would give to her, but lately she's been really picky! It's really frustrating because she's getting so skinny and I want her to eat!
-She loves when daddy's home. She'll just say "Da" over and over again. Sometimes she'll say it in a sweet, high little voice as if she wants something from him. She knows what she's doing, it will definitely come in handy when she gets older!
-She says "What's that?" which comes out "That?" or "Ustha?" and as she says it she point at random things with her index finger and thumb extended like a gun. It's so darn cute!
-She says Mama.
-She will sometimes say hi.
-She says "Nanana", which is nonono. :(
-She LOVES playing peek-a-boo. Last night I was playing it with her by putting a toy in front of my face. When I stopped, she handed me the toy, and would laugh so hard over and over again!

I say this time and time again, but I can't say enough how much we love this little girl! We waited so long for her to come, and even after a year, it's hard to imagine that she's really ours! She makes us so happy, and sometimes after she goes to sleep Jeff and I will say "I miss Clara!" She's so happy all of the time and just so entertaining!

I took her to the doctor yesterday and here's where she's at:
-30 inches - 90%
-19.8 lbs - 25%
-Her head is starting to get big! It's now 18.2 in - 75% . She has been average most of the time in the past.
-And as always she's really low on the weight vs. height chart. Long and lean.

This is the party group! We were so glad to see everyone and appreciate everyone making the trip to come down!

Clara had soooo much fun playing with her cousins, aunts and uncles, and Grandma and Grandpa! You can see there's lots of feet and hands in this picture and she just loved having so many people around.

I thought after Christmas Clara would be a pro at opening presents, but I still had to do all of the work. I think this picture is funny because there's toys all around Clara, but she found a receipt to play with!

This is how spoiled she got! We were trying to get her to smile for the picture and everyone was clapping, so she decided she wanted to clap too.

We wanted to make a monkey cake for our little Monkey, so we found this idea on parenting.com.

She still didn't get very into eating her cake, but she got a little bit messy again!