Clara 10 Months!

10 Months!! 

I feel like we were just at 9 months. The last month has just flown by.  Probably since Christmas and New Years were thrown in there, but I just can't believe how fast our little baby is growing up.

Over the last month Clara has just been getting more and more mobile and comfortable with standing on her own, crawling, walking along furniture, and pulling up on everything.  She is so close to walking and when she is standing on her own you can just see her itching to take that step.  One time she was able to move her foot and rebalance, but it wasn't a step, more of a foot adjustment.  It's coming soon though!

When she wants to get somewhere or sees something she wants, she can really crawl fast to get to where she wants to go.  Her favorite place to try and get to is the bathroom.  If I forget to close the door and she sees it's open she crawls as fast as she can to get there.  She will crawl in and go lift herself up on the tub and stand there and "play".   I think she just wants to take a bath!

She loves bath time and gets so excited when she realizes we are doing a tubby.  She is quite adventurous in the tub so we have to be right there to make sure she doesn't just dive right in or hit her head on the tub or faucet.

Just the past two weeks she has started skipping her 3-4:00 wake-up/feeding.  It has been so nice to have a little bit more sleep!  She wakes up around 6 or 7 to eat.  Sometimes she goes back to sleep, but more often she is up around 7 for the day.

She takes a morning nap around 9 or 10 and then another nap when Calin naps in the afternoon around 1 or 2.  Most afternoon naps I'll lay down with her to keep her to sleep longer than 1/2 hour.  Sometimes I get stuff done on my computer or read, but a lot of the time I end up falling asleep and having a little nap with her.

She has become quite the little eater.  She loves food that she can eat with her hands on her own.  Some of her favorite foods are bread, peas, eggs, bananas, sweet potatoes, oranges, avocados, green beans, and mashed potatoes.  Lately though she has pretty much been eating anything, a mix of baby food and just table food cut up into pieces so she can eat it on her own.

She has been a little bit more stubborn lately about going down for a nap.  Most of the time she will just lay down and go to sleep if I lay down by her for just a few minutes, but occasionally she has been fighting it and gets mad when I try to lay down with her to help her calm down.

She is starting to like to read books more and more.  She got a book from Grandma Mielke for Christmas that she really likes to read. It's called "Baby Danced the Polka".  It's the first book that she likes to read over and over and over again!  She also has been liking a book from Aunt Becca called "If I Were a Poodle".  Cutest little girl book!  She also seems to really like books that have animals and animal noises involved.  However, a lot of the time she will only make it through a couple pages before she is wanting down to be off and running.

She likes animals.  When we walk to see the goats, sheep, and horses in our neighborhood she gets really excited and it seems as if she is trying to make the animals noises when we see them.  Sometimes she really does sound just like a sheep!

Right around when she was 9 months Clara started saying hi da da. She kept doing it quite a lot after that and when we would tell her to say it she would and even started doing it on her own when Robby walked into a room.  She knows her Dad!

She also babbles and chatters a lot.  She  also says "mom mom mom".  Sometimes it is clear she's saying it to acknowledge me, but then other times I think she uses it as "more" or is just babbling.

I think Clara is going to be a little social butterfly.  She likes to be around people and watch and take it all in.  She likes to show us what she's playing with and likes to be involved in what we are doing.

She does not like to sit on laps or be held much anymore.  She likes to be down on the ground exploring and playing.  As long as we are in the room with her she plays pretty well independently, but if we leave the room she crawls as fast as she can to follow us.

She has become quite the sympathetic crier for Calin. Or wailer is a better description.  It's not so much that she is "crying" but almost trying to mimic the sounds she hears Calin making.  She gets very concerned when Calin is crying and will often cry when Calin cries.  During our trip to Oregon we were having a rough night getting Calin to go to bed and he was crying and Clara just kept doing a loud scream/cry every time Calin let out a big wail.  She did the same thing when they were in the tub and Calin was upset about us washing his head off and was crying and so she kept letting out a wail every now and again too.  Its quite hilarious.

She still has no teeth.

She loves to be outside and really wants to be down on the ground running around.  It will be great when it warms up and the ground isn't always cold and wet so she can get down and explore a little more.

She has been learning how to play hide-and-go-seek with Robby and it is adorable.  Robby will put her by the fridge in the kitchen and then run into the living room and "hide" then Clara comes crawling to find him.  They played it one day while Calin and I were out playing with Alisha and Dylan and Robby said she wanted to get down and crawled into the kitchen, sat by the fridge, and then came crawling to find Robby.

She has been loving jumping on the trampoline with us all lately.  She loves being able to be "down" when we are outside and crawls all over.  She also likes to be bounced around or jump with us holding her.

Clara is just a sweet, tiny little bundle of joy and we just love her.  She is becoming her own wonderful little girl more and more every day and we just love watching her grow!