Well, another month has flown by and we’re having a blast. This month was a whirlwind and we’re hoping for things to slow down a bit over the next month.

Let’s talk about 22 month old Claire:

• Weight: About 25 1/2 pounds… I think. She’s really hit a growth spurt recently!

• Loves:
  • To try to convince us to let her do things by saying, “One time” as if she can barter with us. It’s hilarious and adorable even if we still say no. 🙂
  • To call her Nana (my mom), “Mom”. Since that’s what I call her, she thinks she can call her that too. The other day, we were at my parents’ house and she turned to CJ and I and said (with her hands stretched out), “Where mom?!?” Again, hilarious and so adorable. She calls her “Nana” too but it’s pretty funny that she thinks she can call her “Mom”.
  • To go on walks around the neighborhood.
  • To watch cars and trucks drive past our house. She also loves to wait out front for Daddy to come home from work.
  • To play with her Snapo toys. She calls them Legos.
  • To run across the house or around our couches… over and over and over again. She says “Gi-gi GO!!!!” before taking off.
  • To help Mommy fold laundry. It’s so hilarious because she saw me hold a sheet in my mouth once to help fold it so, now, every time she picks something up to fold it, she puts in her mouth first and then wads it up into a ball and sets it down.
  • To play with Mommy and Daddy. She’ll say to us, “Mommy come” or “Daddy come” and gestures for us to come to her. It’s hard to say no to that.
  • To play with her baby doll, carry her little purse around, and drive her red car.
  • To read books! She loves flipping through all her Dr. Seuss books (and others) and saying phrases she remembers from that part of the book or pointing out her favorite characters.
• Hates:
  • Getting her hair washed. She absolutely hates getting her head wet!
  • Bedtime. She would stay up all night if she could!
  • Being interrupted in the middle of a task or being rushed. That doesn’t sound anything like me! (Sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell 😉 )
• Talents:
  • Talking! She has so much to say!
  • Dancing. She has the best moves. I’m sooo excited to start taking her to dance classes when she’s old enough.
• Sleeping:
  • She normally sleeps from 8/9pm to 6am. Every few nights, she wakes up around 3am and wants to snuggle with us. We’re trying to be better about keeping her in her crib but every once in a while we cave and bring her into our bed.
  • Her bedtime routine takes forever!! We have to read at least 5 books before putting her down in bed and then have to read her at least 2 more books.
• Other Random Facts:
  • She is sooo polite. For example, when she doesn’t want to do something, she says, “No please.” If she accidentally does something that hurts us (like throws a toy and it accidentally hits us), she says “Sorry” right away without us asking her to. She’s also very good at saying “Thank you” when it’s appropriate.
  • Highlights from this past month: Celebrating Daddy’s birthday by going sledding up by our family cabin (she loved the snow!!) and Grandma visiting for a weekend and baking a cake for Daddy.
  • Lowlights: She was sick three times over the past month (a cold, pink eye and hand foot and mouth). Her potty training sort of went south this last month. She is still doing pretty well at daycare but we aren’t pushing it as much at home. We want to be consistent and make sure she makes progress but, with all her sicknesses this last month, it really made it harder to stay on it. She started to refuse to sit on the potty and, because we want it to be a positive experience, we didn’t push it if she said no. We’re planning on spending another weekend going back to the basics to get us back on track.

Every day, we wake up and are astonished at how much older she seems. We feel like we can see a difference in how much older she’s getting every day. We love her more than we could have ever imagined.