Yet again, the last month has flown by. We love watching her grow and develop and can honestly say we are loving this stage. It kills us how cute she is and we can’t stop saying “she’s SO cute” and “she’s SO adorable” all the time.

From Day 1, we’ve been able to see little bits of her personality come out and now it’s becoming even more apparent. She’s definitely an easygoing and happy baby (when people watch her they tell us how easy she is) but she is also opinionated. She knows exactly what she wants and will let us know right away. Whether that’s wanting to stand up (being held by us, of course), get a change of scenery (sometimes hanging out in one room all day is too boring for her), or hang out on the playmat – she’s willing and able to let us know what that is (in her own adorable language).

Onto the usual course of business, here’s a rundown of her basic facts:

• Weight: As of right now, this is a mystery. We need to figure out a way to weigh her. She seems so much bigger!
• Loves:
  • Sophie la girafe.
  • Tummy time.
  • Eating her toes (this just started a few days ago) and sucking on her fingers. She also enjoys sucking on her thumb with the rest of her fingers pointing straight out instead of in a fist, it’s so cute!
  • On the theme of eating fingers and toes, she loves grabbing our fingers and putting them in her mouth. Apparently, they taste quite delicious!
  • This has been true for the past several months but I keep forgetting to mention it – she loves the noise of a hairdryer. If she’s having a particularly difficult time, we’ll turn on a hairdryer noise (I have an app on my phone) and it will instantly calm her down. Magic!
  • She also loves her glowing seahorse sooo much. We’ll put her down in her crib to go to sleep for the night and turn that on and she’ll watch it until it turns off. Once it’s off, she goes to sleep. It can also calm her down if the hairdryer noise isn’t doing the trick.
  • Her mommy and daddy. She’s started to notice when we leave the room and gets upset. She has also started reaching up when she’s in her bouncy chair and wants to be held. And lastly, she smiles when either me or CJ walks in the room. I can’t even explain how happy that makes me when it happens.
• Hates:
  • Being put to bed in the crib awake. We’re working on teaching her to fall asleep on her own so it’s been difficult but she’s getting more used to it.

Deep concentration

• Talents:
  • Last week she started to get up on her knees and, by the end of the week, she was able to get up on her elbows and knees. Over the weekend, it was hands and knees and now she sways forward and backward trying to figure out how to crawl. She hasn’t quite figured it out yet but she is getting soooo close. It’s so adorable to watch! We’ve been told that everything changes once they’re mobile and to soak up this time as much as possible but we can’t help but be excited for this new development!
  • I’m not sure if this qualifies as a talent but, hey, why not! Claire sprouted her first tooth last Friday! She wasn’t acting any different than normal so we’re grateful that it wasn’t too painful for her. That doesn’t mean future teeth will be as easy as #1 was. And I just discovered tonight that tooth #2 came in as well! She was a bit fussy last night so I’m pretty sure it was due to the pain.
• Sleeping:
  • She’s still a great sleeper (knock on wood). We put her down to sleep between 8-9pm and typically wakes up between 6-7am. Once we started getting on that schedule of always putting her down between 8 and 9pm, things have fallen into place really nicely. She sleeps better, we get some nice couple time before going to bed, and everyone’s happy. 🙂
• Other Random Facts:
  • We have solved the bathtub mystery! It wasn’t that she hated baths. She just hated the bathtub we had for her. It was cold, hard and uncomfortable. So, we bought the Luxury Spa Bath that I originally wanted to register for on our baby registry that has a fabric sling for her to lay in and a shower head to spray water on her and she LOVES it. We also got a bath time Sophie which she enjoys too. Now she just hangs in the fabric sling while CJ washes her and she enjoys herself the whole time. We’re SO glad we figured out that mystery.
  • People tell us quite frequently that Claire has the perfect head shape. It’s funny what comments you hear once you become a parent. We are quite flattered that people are impressed by her head shape but it is a funny thing to notice about a baby. We also get told all the time (from day 1) that she’s very alert. What does a child that’s not alert look like? I mean, if she’s awake, she’s awake… am I right?
  • I need to be better about taking pictures of Claire with family and friends when they visit. I tend to get so excited about someone visiting that I blank on the whole camera thing. This is my official request for any future visitors – please make sure I take photos!
  • We fed her rice cereal for the first time a couple weeks ago. She probably ended up with half a spoonful…the rest got all over her face. She wasn’t quite sure what to think about it. We still haven’t gotten around to feeding her again but we will soon! Things have been SO busy around here.

I think I might do a Baby Essentials Part 2 post with new items that we’ve fallen in love with. They also might be items we’ve had since Day 1 but have just recently become helpful or I may have just forgotten to include them in the first post. 🙂

If you made it to the end of this post, wow! I know it was long but I love writing these. It’s fun to see how she’s changed from month to month. I highly recommend it to any other mommas out there!