Fun With Mikaela

Martin Luther King Day weekend one of my friends from college, Auntie Mikaela, came to play! She got there late Saturday morning and Clara was very excited to see her. We had been talking about Mikaela coming to visit and Clara had chosen a seat for Mikaela at the table (right next to her of course) and liked to point out her seat each night at dinner. We had lunch and then while Clarita took a nap, Mikaela and I took a tour of Fresno (very exciting). Her mother had lived in Fresno the first nine years of her life so we saw the house she grew up in as well as all of the other exciting locations in Fresno.

Clara loved playing with Auntie Mikaela and as soon as she woke up from her nap requested "Mikaya." On Sunday we headed to the mountains so Mikaela could see the big trees. She was sufficiently impressed and Clarita was excited that she got to sit next to Mikaela in the car. We spent the morning in the park and then drove home while Clara slept. She woke up as soon as we got home and although her nap had been quite short, there was no way she was going back to sleep.

Los Tios and Bailey came over for dinner and Mikaela got to meet Bailey and get some snuggles in. Much to Clara's chagrin she had to go to bed early while the adults (and Bailey) played some games and relaxed. 

On Monday Clara, Mikaela, and I went to breakfast and had some yummy Swedish pancakes. Clara was more interested in playing with the salt and pepper shakers and the sugar packets than eating. We toured Kingsburg on foot (also lots of excitement) and Clara collected more rocks than she could carry. She got in some more snuggles with Mikaela before she had to head back to San Diego. 

"Pictures Clara"

Mikaela was a big hit with Clara and the little Wiggle was very disappointed when she woke up from her nap and Mikaya was gone. She kept asking for her and I don't think she believed that she was not coming right back. We can't wait for our next visit during which I will obviously need to take more pictures!

22 Months

Clara is more and more like a little girl and less like baby every day. She continues to talk up a storm and now speaks in sentences. She has started using pronouns correctly and even uses past tense! She has become obsessed with singing this month and will sing "Happy Birthday", "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", "The Wheels on the Bus" (Tio says toot toot in reference to his farting!), "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Ring Around the Rosy", and her favorite "ABCs". She can get all the way to "J" before her letters get garbled. Her new favorite popular song is "All About The Bass" which she requests to hear all the time. She sings, "all bout the bass no tweble" and it is ridiculously cute! She found her first book to be obsessed with this month and insisted on having it read to her a million times in a row over a week. I was definitely tired of it and was not sad when she moved on!

Cake for breakfast!

One of the little Puff's favorite things to do is point out the colors of everything. She gets genuinely excited about colors and is able to point to most colors if you ask her in English or Spanish. She will correctly point out things that are green, blue, red, yellow, orange, black, white, and pink. She almost always says pink and black in Spanish and will tell you how to say blue in Spanish if you ask her. She still gets confused between brown and black and tends to say brown things are black. She also loves counting and can count to 10 in English and Spanish (and actually count this amount of things). She often skips seven and gets really excited about eight. In English she can count to 20, but sometimes gets confused around 15.

Such a good helper

Who doesn't dump weeds in the alley?

She continues to love people and especially ninos. It is amazing how quickly she learns people's names and remembers them after we leave. Her favorite friend right now is Reedcito and she talks about him and Kierito constantly. We had a "double date" with Reed, Kieran, and Bailey while the Dada's played games and Clara loved it (and I failed to take a single picture)! The next day she talked about everything they did and declared seats at the table to be for the people who had sat in them the night before. We made a Reed-friendly cake and now whenever Clara hears the word cake she says, "Reedcito?" and is sad when we say that he is not coming over! We also had a fun night with the Kauks. Clarita loved playing with Daylyn and Cambria and was so excited to take a bath with Day!

Clarita continues to love Bailey and becomes concerned if Bailey cries. She brings her a pacifier and pats her. Clara has started declaring various things to be her babies (stuffed animals, bubble containers, etc) and rocks them while patting them on the back and saying "shhhh." I assume she watches us do this to Bailey and has decided she should take care of her babies in a similar manner. She also has begun nursing things. One day she said "milk" and I said "where?" to which she replied, "aqui." When I turned around she had her pacifier at her nipple nursing it! I almost died laughing. She now tells us that Bailey and pacifiers drink milk!

Teaching Bailey her mad piano skills

Practicing her head holding up skills

Clarita's Stats

Weight: 22.6 pounds 

Height: 33 inches 

Head Circumference: 18.5 inches

What Clara Wears

18 months clothes and size 5 shoes fit perfectly.

Things Clara Loves

Mama and Dada, going for walks, naked baby time, pacifiers (especially her monito), reading books, people, playing with her toys, animals (especially her cats), eating, playing peek a boo, running,  Baby Signing Time DVDs, stuffed animals (especially Momo, Bafa, and Pigo),  being swung through the air, swinging, sliding, being outside, water, blowing bubbles with Aba, dancing, shoes, esnugles, baths, letters, coloring, crafts, anything related to music, trains, looking at photos, singing

Things Clara Does Not Love

Being helped with anything or having someone else do something for her that she wants to do herself (brushing her hair, teeth, etc.), being woken up from a nap.

How Clarita Sleeps

She's still taking one two and a half to three hour nap and goes to down between 1:00 and 2:00. At night she has been going down around 8:30 and getting up around 6:30. Clara sleeps in her sleep sack with Momo, Bafa, up to three pinguinos her chuponcito, and now two blankies which often get kicked off in her tossing and turning.

Nicknames

Clarita, Snugglepuff, Snuggles, Wiggle, Baby/Bebe, Munchkin, Birthday Twin, Loquita, Pipsqueak, Wigs, Loqs, Puff  

Talking

She now says sentences like "I need bloqueador (sunscreen)" and sings all the time. She can sing entire versus of songs but hasn't quite gotten a full song down yet.

Teeth

Still ten, four top front, four bottom front, one top molar and one bottom molar (I keep thinking the other two molars are going to pop out any day, but they are apparently as stubborn as Clara!).

Monthly Exciting Events

January 9, 2015: First double date with Reed, Kieran, and Bailey!

January 3, 2015: First time sledding

December 21, 2014: Clarita attends her first professional football game

December 20, 2014: Clara has juice for the first time (thanks Tio Robert and Tia Erika)

Monthly Pictures

"Cheese!"

Cabin Fever

Dada and I took January second off and went snowboarding with Fafa while Clarita played with Abuela Sheri. After a day of snowboarding, we dropped Fafa off, picked up the Puff, and headed up to the cabin to play in the snow.

We weren't sure how Clarita would react to the snow since she was so little when she saw it last year in Michigan. Turns out she loved it! She was very excited to put her botas on (which she now argues that Tia got her since we picked them up from Tia's house) and insisted on walking in the snow. It was pretty icy by the time we got there, but Clara thought it was hilarious every time she fell down or my foot fell through the top layer of snow.

The cabin was freezing so we had a picnic pizza dinner in front of the heater while we attempted to stay warm. The cold didn't bother Clara and she ran around collecting all of the bears and other stuffed animals (and there are a lot). We took showers since the water was warm (and we were dirty) and then Clara proceeded to run around some more. I was exhausted and fell asleep in front of the heater while Clarita ran around me (I guess we know where she gets her sleeping skills). We let her stay up until 9:30 when we deemed it finally warm enough for her to get into bed.

We didn't wake up until 7:30 the next morning and after a delicious breakfast of waffles and fruit that Dada made, we headed outside. Dad had bought Clarita some little skis to get her used to them and she loved wearing them at our house. However, at the cabin, Clara was adamant that she did not want to ski so we took a walk to the visitor center and store. She liked looking at the different animals and pictures and requested milk and cheese from the store. She of course had to eat them right away in the freezing cold! When we got back to the cabin and Clarita still wouldn't put skis on we decided to go sledding. The little Wiggle absolutely loved sledding on the "barco" and kept requesting more. She squealed in delight the entire way down even when we went down a pretty steep hill and she got covered in snow.

Look, skiing is fun!

Dada taught me how to throw snowballs

After lunch and nap time (during which we relaxed and watched a movie!), we headed out to play in the snow again. Clarita once again refused to put on her skis so at the risk of making her hate them even more, we strapped them to her kicking and screaming. As often happens with this little girl, once they were on and she was "skiing" she loved them! Dada skied her all around and she laughed and requested to put her skis back on when they fell off. We did some more sledding as well.

Helping Dada fix the water

Esnuggles!

I hate skiing!

Actually, it's pretty fun!

Sunday we headed out for more sledding and I finally convinced Clara to put on her gloves so that she could make a snowman with Dada. The snow was too icy for this so their snowman was very sad. She sledded more and then I taught her how to make a snow angel. She was a little reluctant to lay in the snow at first, but after she saw how much fun I was having, she plopped right down. The snow was really too hard to make a decent snow angel but we gave it a good try. We headed to the store where we got ice cream (she had a difficult time deciding between ice cream and yogurt) which she got to eat as a morning snack (all the rules go out the door at the cabin)! We had lunch and then Clara went down for a three and a half hour nap during which we watched another movie and packed up the car.

Sledding rocks!

This little table is pretty awesome!

Ice Cream!

"Sleeping"

Clarita was a little sad to say goodbye to the cabin and all of her animal friends, but she was excited to see "Dada car" and her car seat. We had the first relaxing weekend in a long time and enjoyed the snow and just being together!

Adios 2014!

(Note: I've waited to post this in hope of finding my camera with all of the pictures on it. However it appears to be lost for good so I will put the pictures that I took on my phone instead and half of them are blurry.Update: thanks to Sarah for sending me a few more pictures!)

As we have done for the past million years, we spent New Year's Eve at the McClarty's. Clarita has been obsessed with Reedcito and requests to see him on a daily basis to dance. She was very excited to see him and to eat pizza with him! The two took off once they finished eating and played with Reedcito and Kierito's new kitchen. They enjoyed filling the shopping cart up and driving their food all over the house!

Pizza!

Shopping

As more people arrived, Clarita became a little shy and wanted to be held. After awhile Sarah and I took the kids to Reed's room where they had a blast playing with all of his toys. Clara was really excited about all of the tractors and balls, Reed showed the little guys how to use everything, Kieran was excited about everything, and Eden was content to sit and watch the big kids run around.

Bailey doing what she does best

Now that everyone has kids, people started leaving early. By 11:00, Clarita and Reedcito had made it longer than most of the adults! Despite being tired, the two had continued to play together without any major problems or breakdowns. It was quite impressive. Clara chased Reed around yelling, "Reedcito, Reedcito" and when Sarah took him to go potty, Clarita ran behind yelling "wait!" She was very impressed with his potty skills, and kept telling me that he washed his hands with soap and water. Reed declared that he loved Clara as much as his soft sheep (can't get much more of a compliment than that!) and said that he didn't need to ask her to be his girlfriend because she already was! He also chased her around kissing her. Clara played hard to get at first, but finally gave in. I think the two are in love!

Cheers!

Late night snack

Tooth brushing party

Bedtime stories with Sarah

Jon, Sarah, los tios, Dada, and I managed to stay up to ring in the New Year. We left around 12:30 and Clara did not even wake up when I picked her up and put her in her car seat. She slept the entire way home and didn't wake up until 6:45 the next morning. That was a little too early for us so we put her in bed with us where she laid completely still and silent but wide awake for half an hour ( nothing short of a miracle) before Dada started playing with her.

We made it to midnight!

New Year esnuggles

On the first we had our families over for our second annual New Year's brunch. Everyone came except Tio Chino who was cooking shrimp for his family's annual gathering, and Tia Alyssa et al who aren't morning people. Dada made ebelskivers (aka pancake balls) and I made an egg casserole, and potato casserole. We had plenty of food and great company. Clara was excited about Abuela Sheri's fruit salad and the applesauce to put on the ebelskivers, but wanted nothing to do with anything else. She was super tired so she went down for an early nap while Dada and I took down Christmas decorations.

We thought Clara would be sad that the decorations were gone, but she took it with a grain of salt. I warned her and then as we walked down the stairs she said, "no garland" noticing that it was gone. We got downstairs and she said, "no Christmas trees, gone" and although she continued to talk about it, she wasn't sad. She had a lot of fun helping me to rearrange the living room and was a big help pushing the couches!

Around 4:00 we headed out for Tio Chino's family's annual New Year celebration. There was more food than anyone could eat and we spent the afternoon stuffing ourselves! Clarita decided that she liked the breaded shrimp and even ate some of the different spicy traditional dishes (she then requested milk because it was spicy). She had fun playing with the kids and she and Teegee ran around holding hands. We said goodbye to Uncle Karl as he was heading back to Washington the next morning and enjoyed the good company. Clarita was out as soon as we left and did not wake up when I took her out of the car. I ended up laying her down on her floor while I started getting my stuff ready to go snowboarding the next day. After a few minutes I hear laughter behind me and there was Clara standing in the doorway laughing like Chucky!

Tios locos