Gatlinburg

We took advantage of a few open days in Jeff's schedule for a last minute family getaway to Gatlinburg.  We left the evening on March 13th and came back up on the 15th.  We thought we'd be good on the drive up: we'd stop and get dinner about half way through for a break and then Claire would drift off to sleep around bedtime.  Well, she did eventually fall asleep.  But only for about 45 minutes.  She woke up around 9 and cried and cried.  We discovered that she would calm down if one of us held her hand.  So Jeff and I took turns wrenching our arm into the back seat to hold her little hand for 45 minutes or so.

We had booked a king suite at the Sleep Inn because it was supposed to have a bedroom and a separate sitting room.  The hope was to put some separation between us and Claire for sleeping since we all sleep better that way and we could still talk or watch TV after she went to bed.  This was not what we got.  Apparently those rooms were all full.  So our king suite was an in-room (literally) hot tub, next to a king bed, next to a sofa.  The front desk was not terribly accommodation so Jeff paid a little more for two adjoining rooms, which was what we had tried to avoid in the first place.  It just seems so indulgent to have a room just for a one year old. 

Our first day there we explored the town of Gatlinburg.  We enjoyed the aquarium, and the little shops, and the aerial tram up the mountain.  Jeff enjoyed the Ripley's Believe or Not museums.  I was thrilled that Claire napped in her strolled!  We weren't sure if she would since she hasn't done it since she was 6 months old.

Looking down at the town of Gatlinburg

Checking out the fishies!

Just chillin out on the glass

Look at those teeth!

Jellyfish

Saying hi to the diver feeding the rays 

 In the evening we went to a dinner show in Pigeon Forge.  Jeff vetoed the ones featuring horses.  Apparently he has bad memories of a visit when he was younger to the Dixie Stampede show and not being able to breathe much due to his allergies to horses.  I know, what a lame excuse!  :)  So we chose a lumberjack show. I was nervous about how Claire would do, but she did okay until near the end.  She started getting restless and it was near bedtime so we had to get up and walk a little bit.  She did enjoy the food.  Especially the baked beans.  And since the high chair / counter top setup put her mouth right at counter top height she could suck them right off the edge!

Ready for food

Watching the show

Lumberjacks!  Yo ho!

The next day we explored a little of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Lunch time!  Claire just wants to play in the rocks!

We drove to Cade's Cove.  It's a green valley nestled in the mountains, first settled in the early 1800s.  An 11 mile loop road features multiple historic buildings.  So we saw some old houses, churches, and a working mill.  It was nice to drive a little bit, stop to check out a building, and then drive a little more to cool off.  Claire didn't seem to thoroughly enjoy it though.  Probably too much car time for her.

We left the park by way of a primitive road.  Which is just code for dirt/gravel road in rough shape, drive at your own risk.  I was sitting in back with Claire trying to keep her happy on the car ride home.  Jeff was up front having the time of his life, driving through puddles, powering up hills, and hugging curves.  That road let us out on the "tail of the dragon" road so I was feeling a little green by the time we were out of the mountains.  

Cade's cove

Wildlife

Heading to a historic home with Claire on my back

I wanna walk MYSELF!

Pretty!

Grist mill.  Who wants corn meal?

I'm free!

All in all a very good family trip!

12 months!

Claire is approaching her 13 month birthday, so here's a recap of her at 12 months.


Feeding: made the transition from bottles and formula to sippy cups of milk.  Still working on timing but right now she gets 3-4 5 oz cups of milk.  Morning, afternoon with lunch or before her nap, and one at night before bed.  Sometimes she gets one after she wakes up from her nap, especially if she didn't get one before her nap.  Or if she's a real grump.  I also introduced some squeeze pouches of pureed fruits/veggies.  I avoided them before now since I didn't see the point.  It just seemed like baby food in a more expensive package.  But she loves them because she can hold them and eat them herself.  It has a small, straw sized opening at the top so she can just hold it to her mouth and suck the stuff out.  It's nice to have a convenient, portable fruit/veggie option to keep in the diaper bag for when we are out and about.

Sleeping: She's made sleeping through the night a fairly regular occurrence.  Woohoo!  She has figured out the transition to one nap and settled into a pattern.  Timing was a little all over the place for a while but lately she's been going to sleep around 1 or 1:30 and sleeping for 1.5-2.5 hours.

Development:  I posted before about her handing things back and forth and helping clean up.  She has also learned how to go down stairs backwards.  She loves to work on that skill!

Language: She's got a variety of "words."  Some are used appropriately, some are just repetitions of what she hears.  But I can identify: hi, all done, uh oh, thank you (gah goo), and bye (maybe). These are not used frequently or all in one day.  She says mama and dada but I'm not sure she uses them to mean Jeff and I.  Dada maybe, but definitely not mama which is said very infrequently.  She'll kind of go in phases with one word. It was hi a week or two ago and now it is uh oh or thank you. Both are sometimes used in context, sometimes randomly.  It cracks me up that she has "learned" thank you because that is what I say as I'm taking something out of her hands that she shouldn't have.  Which happens all the time!  I can totally see her in the future stealing another kid's toy and pleasantly saying thank you as she does it!

One year stats

From Claire's doctor's appointment today

Height: 29.5 inches - 60th %ile
Weight: 19 lbs, 12 oz - 30th %ile
Head: 45 cm (17.7 in) - around 50th %ile (I think)

I would have bet that we had broken 20 pounds! 

Everything was great, except Claire's iron was a little low.  So we have to start a supplement for that.  I did bring up that Claire isn't pointing at all, which is a skill typically shown by now.  But since her motor and language development are otherwise good, the nurse practitioner wasn't concerned.  We ended the appointment with 3 shots, which Claire wasn't thrilled about. 

New skills!

Claire's development of new skills is really picking up speed.  In the past few weeks she has developed the following skills:

Giving something to me/back and forth
Holding something up to show me
AND
Cleaning up!

She can help pick up some of her toys!.  She can put her blocks back in the bucket and other toys in our storage totes.  She's long been great at making a mess, so it's nice to get a little help cleaning up too. 

Today she also she repeated the word Uh-oh!  All done and uh oh?  Two word phrases?  She is advanced, people!  :)

The end of an era

Big changes in Claire's food world!

She had her last (successful) nursing session on her birthday, her last breastmilk a few days ago, her last bit of formula today AND, unexpectedly, her last bottle was yesterday.

Yes, that's right, we finally found a sippy cup she would drink milk out of!  We tried multiple different kinds with no luck.  She would take a few sips out of her straw sippy that we've used for water.  But after a few sips she was done.  Finally I picked up the sippy cup version of her straw cup.  And success!  She took it with no hesitation.  I think the different was that the spout is all silicone and soft like her bottles, whereas the others were a little firmer to downright hard.

So farewell to bottles and formula.  Hello sippy cups and milk!

Sippy time!

First word!

Ok, I'm going to call it!  Claire's first word is ........


HI!

(Or "Haaa" as she says it.  And accompanied with enthusiastic waving.)

She's been doing it for a while so I can't say when the first time was.  But it's only recently that she's done it in the right context with enough consistency for us to be sure it was really a word.

She also has started imitating the sign for and verbal phrase "all done."  The sign for that is to hold your hands palm up, and then flip them inward to put palms down.  Claire's version is more like little flapping hands with the phrase "Ahh Dah."   Freaking cute!  She doesn't do it on her own yet, but if I ask if she is all done (while sitting in her high chair) she will often respond. 

Combine that with her ability to correctly (well, sometimes) use the sign for more and imitate the sign for milk and we're getting somewhere!  (Also, notice how it's all food related. Big motivator there!)

Claire's First Birthday party

We had a nice family party at our house on Saturday, Feb 25th to celebrate Claire's birthday.  The food and cakes I made turned out great, which made me very happy. (Although I later discovered the chips that never got put out.  Whoops!) The decorations came together nicely as well.  And we had great company!  Claire seemed to enjoy her day.  I know her Mommy and Daddy sure did.

All the photos are at this link.  Scroll down for the highlights.

ONE!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

At 5:38 this morning, Claire was officially one year old!
(Fortunately, we were all sleeping at the time)

One year ago today, we were at the hospital awaiting her dramatic arrival.  My how our lives have changed.

Pictures from Claire's "cake smash" photo session

11 months!

Claire turns one tomorrow!  Here's a look back at her 11 month old self.

Feeding: Nursing in the morning and 3 bottles during the day (6 oz).  3 meals a day.  She eats a lot of things including olives and pickles.  Pasta and peas are still favorites!  She makes a cute mmm noise when she's eating something yummy. 

Sleeping: She sleeps about 11-11.5 hours a night.  Most nights she sleeps through, but there are still plenty of late night wake-ups that are no fun.  Bedtime is between 7:30 and 8.  Wake-up is usually between 7 and 8.  She has just recently started transition to one nap.  When it was two naps, she'd go down around 11 and again around 3 or 4 and sleep 1 to 1.5 hours at a time.  We're still figuring out the one nap thing.  She seems ready to go down between 12:30 and 2:00.  On a good day she'll sleep 2 hours but usually it's more like 1-1.5, which doesn't seem to be enough.  We're dealing with a good bit of crankiness.

Development:

Motor - We are up to 5-6 steps at at time!  She prefers crawling to get around and is very speedy.  She also loves to climb up the stairs, but is no good at coming down!  

Communication - Definitely an increase in vocalizations.  She finally said ma ma!  It doesn't mean me yet, but at least she can say it.  Da da is old hat, but she doesn't seem to associate it with Jeff just yet.  She babbles with increasing inflection.  She has a lot of "sh" sounds in her vocabulary.  "She she" or "shish shish" are frequent sounds.  She can imitate the sign for "more" and is getting closer to using it appropriately.  Right now she is over using it but at least she'll make it independently.  She can also imitate the sign for milk, but not "all done" just yet.  She has mastered waving and clapping.  We tried working on blowing kisses. She doesn't do any motions, just make the mmwha kissing noise, which is totally adorable.  Especially when tucking her into bed at night.  She knows her name and understands the word no (not that she always listens to it!).  She loves peek a boo and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.  She'll even try to the hand motion for the spider.

Play - Her interests and skills are much the same.  She still loves to pull stuff apart - the ring stacker, a bin of toys, the tupperware in the cabinet - it all needs to become a jumbled mess.  Occasionally I'll call her Captain Destructo.  She loves her Fisher Price Learning Home and playing peek a boo with Mommy in the little window that goes up and down.  Or getting mail in the mailbox.  She is no longer afraid of the busy ball popper that her aunt and uncle got her for Christmas.  However, she'd rather just grab the balls instead of letting them cycle through the popper.  She likes balls of all sorts and will sit for a minute or two to roll a ball back and forth.  She will even attempt to roll it back a few times before she gets impatient and just comes at you to get it.  Something that is rather recent is an interest in books.  She loves to flip the pages.  Touch and feel books are a big hit.  Those actually allow us to get through a story, rather than just flipping through the pages quickly.

Playing "bongos" at the park

At the zoo with Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma Schulze

I like to climb in the toy basket

Help!  I'm stuck in this one!

Hanging with Uncle John and Auntie Jess

Mmm, Super Bowl snacks!

Go Patriots!

Who needs the sides on this thing?

Stole Mommy's ice cream cone!!

"Reading"

Happy Vaentine's Day!

I'm a big, standing girl!!

Honey, I'm home!