9 months old

Our baby is growing up so quickly. She continues to get more snugly and likes to cling to the clothing of the person holding her. I love it! She also likes to "play shy" by diving her head into my shoulder and then peaking back at the person she's playing shy from. She's making slow progress on the crawling because she can now get up on all fours and rock. Now that she understands this rocking in her hips, she likes to "bop" while she's sitting. We're trying to teach her how to wave and she's done it a few times randomly. She is getting to be quite the card when we go out: smiling at strangers, grabbing for things, and making little noises (she's learned how to smack her lips). She is still a great eater and is ravenous when she sees fruit. Her favorites are Mandarin oranges and blueberries. Our biggest news is that Claudia is now sleeping through the night! She's been doing it for a few weeks, but I didn't want to announce it until I was sure. She sometimes wakes up a bit between 8-10pm, but once she is in her room after we go to bed, we don't hear from her until morning. Yay! Her statistics from her 9 month checkup are 17 lbs 14 oz (25-50%) and 27 inches long (25-50%).

With Grandma and Auntie at Alta last month.


Claudia's first time in the snow.


Go Huskies!


Helping mommy with laundry.


Play date with friends.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

The holidays were fun and fairly stress-free this year. After getting snowed in last year, we were on top of our Christmas shopping, and we're lucky to not be responsible for hosting any events or flying anywhere. Leading up to Christmas we had two holiday parties in one weekend for Glen's work, one for his lab at Four Seasons Hotel and one for his department at Salty's Restaurant, so we got spoiled by lots of good food. I also made it up to Bellingham that same weekend for my friend Jenny's baby shower. We were busy! I was fighting off a cold that weekend and crashed the next day and got very sick with a viral infection that turned into a bacterial sinus infection. My body is not able to recover well because I'm still on various drugs to treat my ulcerative colitis. So being sick was a bummer, but I had lots of happy distractions with the excitement of Christmas.

We spent Christmas Eve with Neely and were able to Skype with Glen's family and then attend church. Claudia was full of beans and was hard to wrangle at church because she got all excited seeing the people and music; she was quiet at least, just hard to hold on to! Then on Christmas day we had a relaxing morning together with Glen making breakfast before we headed to my parents' house for the gift exchange extravaganza and a yummy dinner. Surprisingly, Claudia understood the concept of unwrapping and getting new toys. She started hollering when I helped her unwrap this dump truck toy and I couldn't get it out of the packaging fast enough. Her favorites right now are the dump truck, the Little People bus, and her baby doll. I've held a few out to introduce later. With the help of the bus toy and her classic favorite, the shape sorter, she's now learned to put toys back into a container, not just dump them out. This makes the activity last a lot longer and doesn't require as much help from an adult.

For New Year's we spent the week at Alta Lake along with my parents, Neely, Gina & Jeremy, and Dan & Diane. Glen got some needed down time from work and we both got to go skiing for the first time in two years. We went to Mission Ridge on a snowy cold day and had a ton of fun. We rung in the new year with adult beverages and fireworks. Also to start off the new year, Claudia started in a new classroom at daycare called Smurfs. She is now with all the crawlers, so hopefully that will encourage her to start herself. Her first day was rough being with new teachers and she cried every time she saw her favorite teacher from the infant room through the window, but I hear they adjust quickly and that it's harder on the parents than the kids.

Some of her early Christmas gifts -- a big teddy bear and Ugg boots.


At Four Seasons Hotel enjoying her highchair on wheels.


My Dad played Santa and passed out all the gifts.


Claudia's red Christmas dress. She had her hands in her mouth the whole day so it was hard to get a good photo.


Playing with her dump truck.

December milestones

I'm a little behind on posting, so I'm going to write a post about December even though it's already January. Claudia was 8 months old in December. We thought she would crawl by the end of the year, but it's slow going. She is able to twirl around on her belly and push herself backward, but she hasn't figured out her legs yet. She continues to amaze us with her love of all food, especially anything she can put in her mouth herself. She is really starting to understand "object permanence", which means that if a person or toy is out of sight, she knows they will come back and she can even anticipate it. This makes peek-a-boo especially fun because she giggles and gets so excited. She has discovered her tongue and likes to stick it out constantly. We haven't seen any teeth yet, but she has been gnawing on her hand and toys a lot, so it might be soon. Lastly, Glen has been working hard on teaching her to clap her hands by singing "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands" and she finally worked it out and now loves to do it, especially when we celebrate and say "yay" when she does. Most of her antics have been fun, but two have not. One, she gets constipated a lot and does gigantic poops, so she's always grunting and hollering when it's time to go which is frustrating and painful for everyone! And second, she is really challenging us with sleep. She has never been a great sleeper, but once we got over the hump of no nighttime feedings, we thought things would be better, which is not the case. She seems to wake up even more now trying to get our attention and wanting to be held. That girl has a strong set of lungs and "cry it out" is not always an option when you live in a condo.

Big toothless smile.


Look at that belly. This girl likes her food.


See, she can scoot backward.


Backed into a corner.


Yay, meal time again.