She makes some sounds that sound suspiciously like words these days. I’m not quite ready to call something her first word yet, but, for example, she makes a “hhhiiiieeee” noise when she sees someone for the first time. Often she’ll make a “doo” noise when she sees the dog and sort of clicks her mouth like “itty” when she sees the cat (kitty). It hasn’t been with enough regularity and consistency to say for certain that she’s using words, but it’s often enough that I’m pretty sure she’s trying hard to imitate our speech. She’s become such a little mimic lately. Any time J vibrates his lips, or makes a funny noise with his mouth, she’ll work on the sound until she copies it. Honestly, the kid makes complex noises that I can’t make. It’s pretty impressive. It’s sort of like Advanced Raspberry Blowing.

I had one of my first big “mommy guilt” moments this last week. We had a great weekend together, complete with a trip to the farmers market and a hike at Silver Falls. On Monday Clare was excited to see Mary and Gabriel and my mid-day update was that she was having a great day. When I picked her up at 5:15 I was met with a red-faced and puffy-eyed little girl. Mary said she had woken up from her nap a little fussy and hadn’t snapped out of it. Immediately she started smiling and laughing when she saw me and didn’t stop. I think my little girl missed me! Up until now I’ve said that Clare doesn’t miss me during the day, since she has such a great time with Mary. We are very, very fortunate that she is so loved and cared for so well. We miss her, but I’ve doubted that she even notices we’re gone because she’s having such a great time. However, Monday was the first day that I know that my little girl missed *me* and no matter how much she loves Mary (and she LOVES Mary), she wanted Mom and I wasn’t there. Sniff sniff – this parenting thing isn’t for the faint of heart.

It’s been a big week at our house (aren’t all the weeks?). Clare has started imitating gestures, like waving, patting and clapping. We’ve had a few moments of it before (an occasional wave, clap, etc.) but now it’s consistent, intentional, and she will even instigate it to get our attention. Of course when she claps, pats or waves we make a big deal out of it, clap back at her and everyone smiles, laughs and shrieks with joy. I mean, has there ever been a smarter baby? We don’t think so 🙂

Clare has also started getting up on her hands and knees regularly and rocking back and forth. It’s quite a sight – and it kind of strikes fear in my heart since I know that her stationary days are numbered. Not that she’s really stationary these days, but she generally is confined to a 5 foot radius when I step out of the room for a minute. Once she figures out how to crawl (and move forward) she’s going to cover that five feet in about five seconds. Look out world! Really, it’s look out pets. I think she’ll spend most of her time chasing around the dog and cat.

Clare is also starting to ‘say’ her first signs. She’s understood the sign for ‘milk’ for a while now, but she’s now started doing it when she’s drinking a bottle or nursing. We’re also working on ‘more’ (she’s struggling with the distinction between ‘more’ and clapping) and ‘all done.’ Lately Clare has been getting very opinionated while eating and I’d like to give her some more communication tools besides yelling her frustration or displeasure.

Lastly, our girl has turned into a little bookworm! She’s showing some partiality to specific toys (loves the stacking cups) and lately, books. At first she was just interested in turning the pages, but now she’s started looking and touching the pages. She has quite an attention span to sit through several stories, so we do a lot of reading. Being a bookworm myself, I love it.

Now that Clare is a few days away from her 9 month birthday, I want to write down a few things to remember about her eighth month.

• She likes to feed herself in order of her favorite food. For instance, if I put sliced ham, bread, cheese, and banana on her tray then she will eat every sliver of ham off both her tray and bib before touching anything else. Then she’ll move onto the cheese and maybe, maybe eat the bread and banana last. She’s quite the little carnivore and has a strong preference for ham, turkey, chicken and other meats.
• Besides meat, she loves blueberries. I haven’t given her the choice of either blueberries or meat, but I might just to see which she prefers the most. Fortunately for her, I make sure she has a more balanced diet than just meat and blueberries 🙂
• She has started to really laugh with us. The other day my parents and Jeremy were laughing (at me) and Clare joined in. Don’t know how I feel about my daughter laughing at my expense but I think I had better get used to it.
• Now that Clare is getting more mobile and independent (video below) she’s making a point to request cuddles and affection. Sometimes she’ll start getting a little fussy and a little bit of lap time and hugging puts her in a good mood. When I’m holding her on my hip (our usual position) she’ll snuggle in to engage a hug. It’s nice to have her initiating affection back.
• She’s so stubborn! When she doesn’t want to do something she’ll flat-out dig her heels in and refuse to budge. Being the vocal child, she also squawks and screams. At this point it’s fairly easy to distract her, but two-years-old should be interesting.

Lastly, here is a video I took of Clare a few weeks ago. She’s scooting around a little better these days but it gives you an idea of how busy she is and how well she gets around for not crawling.

We’re celebrating Easter in weekend in Bend this year with my parents. I completely forgot that it was Easter and haven’t really done anything for it – fortunately Grandma to the rescue and she bought Clare an Easter basket and Easter dress. Since Clare’s a little to young for egg hunts, and we’re not church-goers, we’re not going anywhere but Clare looks awfully cute in her Easter dress here at the house.
We also gave Clare another hair cut this weekend – this time a little more cut than her last trim. Grandma did it in the kitchen and we all got involved either supervising (me), distracting Clare (J), cutting (Grandma) and photographing (Grandpa). It turned out a little shorter than Daddy may have preferred, but it will definitely stay out of her eyes now (which was an issue before – see pictures below for evidence), and since it grows so fast I know it’ll be long again soon enough. Hopefully now it’ll grow out a little more evenly. before she had some really long strands over her ears and really short strands in the back.

Last weekend Pat, Dave and Rylee visited and we went to the tulip festival in Woodburn. It was crowded, but a really pretty day and so fun to see fields of tulips. Unfortunately Clare started to get crabby by the time we got to the flowers, so we didn’t have any photo ops of her in the tulips (darn!) but here are some pics of her trying out her new backpack for the first time.

Some of Clare’s latest tricks are that she’s getting incrementally closer to crawling. She’s pretty good at scooting backwards, and rotating around side to side. She can actually cover some ground when she wants to. She still can’t go forward though (unless she’s on a wood floor – then she pulls herself around with her hands… straight to the dogs food…). But up until a few days ago she was only using her arms, she hadn’t quite figured out how to use her legs to propel herself. The last couple of days I’ve seen her pull her knees up and even push herself up to her hands and knees and ‘rock’ a little bit. I don’t know how long it will take before she makes the connection to use that motion to move her body forward, but she’s a little bit closer.

She’s also really getting into dancing. Any music will make her bob her little body and sway a little bit (the cutest thing ever). She’ll also mimic our motions when we wave so we do a lot of waving hello and bye-bye.
Lastly, here are some pictures Mary took of the many faces of Clare. I like this one because if you look closely you can see her little bottom teeth! You can also see why Little Miss was in need of a hair cut. She was looking a bit like a raggamuffin. Unfortunately she’s also figured out how to pull out barrettes and pony-tail holders, so my only solution is to keep her hair trimmed short around her face.