Randomness about Clara

(By Aubree)

I wanted to tell a little bit about what Clara has been up to lately. She is changing so fast, and I want to remember some things that she's doing.

Words she's saying:
Tha= What's that?
Sss= Cheese
Sh= Shoe
Behbe= Baby
Buh= Ball
Bup or up= Up
Dah= Down (She has only said this when I ask her if she wants down.)

Some funny things she has been doing.
-She does this stomping thing with her foot when she gets excited and sometimes it looks like she's doing a river dance.
-She had learned that before we eat we fold our arms. Sometimes she will randomly fold her arms and bow her head while she's playing and I'll stop and say a little prayer with her.
-She will do a fishy face when you do it at her.
-This isn't funny, but she's getting confident at going down stairs by herself which is kind of nice because she can go upstairs to her toys and then back downstairs if she feel like it without me helping her.
-She still gives her wide open mouth kisses on the cheeks. I love it.

I got excited when I realized that I can put her hair into piggy tails! It doesn't look very good yet, but at least her hair is growing. They kind of look like rat tails.

A couple of different friends have posted bathtub pictures and I realized that I hadn't taken any recently. So I decided to do the same.
Looking through these pictures made me really sad though. She looks so grown up in these pictures! It's the first time I've really felt like I'm losing my baby!

Crazy girl!

Pretty girl!

Her new favorite game is to line up all of her animal toys and knock them onto the floor. Yes it does make a big wet mess, but she loves it.

Puff Balls

(By Aubree)

Puff balls, pom poms, whatever you want to call them. Jeff calls them puff balls. My friend Laurel had pictures of these adorable little pom poms in her little girl's room on her blog and I had to ask her where she got them, or how to make them. She told me to go here to find out how to make them. They didn't turn out perfect, in fact I might re-do the dark pink one later, but I think they added pizazz to Clara's room!

New Sleeping Schedule

(By Aubree)


Clara and I have been trying to figure out a new sleeping schedule. She is starting to want just one nap instead of two which trying to figure this out has kind of messed up her bedtime and everything is just kind of chaotic right now. On Sunday she slept in my arms at church for about 40 minutes and you can bet she wouldn't go down for a nap later in the afternoon because she's stubborn like her mommy. Well when dinner time came around she would take a bite and then turn her head and kind of doze off, then I would try to wake her up and give her another bite, but it got harder and harder to wake her up. So she took a 20 minute nap in her high chair.

How can I be mad at this sleeping angel when she looks this sweet?!

Clara's Big News

(by Jeff and Aubree)

CLARA IS GOING TO BE A BIG SISTER!

Baby #2 is scheduled to arrive August 12th!!!

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!

Clara's First Birthday

(by Aubree)

Today was Clara's first birthday. We're having a party on Saturday with family and friends, but we wanted to have a little celebration of our own tonight. So we had Clara open one of her presents, then we had cake and ice cream.

Here's the birthday girl, patiently waiting to open her present.

Not quite sure what to do with it.

With a little help from dad, she opened up her Lullaby Gloworm.

She loves her little doll, especially because it plays music.

A big cupcake!

A little hesitant at first.

I don't think she ate any of the cupcake, but she sure enjoyed playing with it.

After a few minutes of playing with her cupcake, she decided she didn't like the feel of the frosting on her hands.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CLARA !!!!!

Christmas!!!

(by Jeff)

We had a great Christmas this year! It was especially fun to celebrate Clara's first Christmas with her. Although she was scared of Santa and only opened a few of her own presents, she still had a lot of fun (especially with all the boxes and wrapping paper).

On Christmas Eve, my extended family gets together for a party at my parent's house. Santa Claus came, but Clara wasn't too keen on sitting on his lap.


My Aunt Christie has apparently spent the last few months doing nothing but making hats, because she brought a bag full of hats and made sure that each of the girls got one.


After the party, Clara opened up her first present - - new Christmas pajamas.


On Christmas morning, we opened up the presents that Santa had brought us. He knew that I wanted a USU shirt to wear to work.


Aubree must have been a good girl this year, because Santa brought her jewelry.


Santa brought Clara a forward-facing carseat, clothes, and several toys.


Later Christmas morning, all of my immediate family came to my parents' house. We had a big breakfast and opened up presents from each other. Aubree was excited for the pressure cooker we got from my parents. Clara loved the big book of Mother Goose stories and the toy cars from Grandma and Grandpa Gittins.



These are two hats that Aubree made for my sister Wendy and her husband Chase.


We hurried off to Aubree's sister's house in Idaho to celebrate with Aubree's family. We had a big lunch and opened more presents. Clara loved the new dress she got from Grandma and Grandpa Larson. We also played some Apples to Apples--one of our favorite board games. Clara played as well, although her idea of playing was to carry one of the cards all around the house.

Our Christmas Season so far

(By Aubree)

We've had fun preparing for Christmas. A couple of weeks ago, we decorated for Christmas. This is only the 3rd out of the 8 Christmases we've spent together that we've had a tree, and it was especially fun to have Clara around for it. She was a "big" help!

Before

After

Our Lladro nativity set, guarded by the reindeer.

Our Fisher Price nativity set that Clara loves to play with, and that's good because it keeps her away from all of the other more breakable decorations.

Our little Christmas Village. We weren't able to put up our complete collection, but it's a really fun thing to decorate with.

Our lit Christmas tree.

Last Saturday we had our ward Christmas party. It was a breakfast and any kids under 12 were invited to wear their pj's. Jeff's sister Wendy and her husband Chase were able to go with us because they had spend the previous night at our house before they left for their cruise. (Jealous)

Santa came late, but we were able to steal a quick photo with him and Mrs. Claus before we left. Clara was too interested in his fuzzy sleeves to look at the camera.

She really enjoyed playing with the other kids and babies.

We hope you all have a safe and very merry Christmas!