The Banks Family: She's a toddler now

I think we can officially call Claudia a toddler now that she's toddling. She's really good at getting herself up and down and walks best if she has a wide open space. She loves to back her bum into my lap, but then usually crawls right back out. It's hard to get her to sit still these days. Sometimes she's a wild woman, throwing toys and hitting or head butting us, or throwing food and her sippy cup off the table, which gets really annoying. We've been trying to say "no" to teach her not to do it, but she just laughs at us. Hopefully this phase will pass soon!

She now really likes toys that sing songs and make noise. One of her favorites is her jute box that sings nursery rhymes. When it plays Itsy Bitsy Spider, she makes the motions with her fingers of the spider crawling. Glen & I both hate spiders, so it's weird that this is the song she likes the most. Auntie Neely came over one night and Claudia crawled all over the living room showing off all her toys. Although it was chaotic to see her press every button and pick up every toy, it was also really cute to see how proud she was of all her possessions.

She had her first dentist appointment and she did well. The dentist quickly looked at her teeth and showed us how to brush them. She has two bottom ones and three top ones (2 on the right, 1 on the left). Ideally babies should have good spacing between their teeth, but hers are pretty close together, so she will probably have a little crowding with her adult teeth.

They're learning sign language at daycare: all done, more, and please. Claudia has been doing the signs randomly, but just today she did "more" when I said the word, so soon she should be doing them all appropriately. She has a book called Moo, Baa, La La La and she can copy the "la la la" sound, although it sounds a bit like "ra ra ra." This is about the only book she has the patience to sit through at this point.

Claudia sharing my lap with Pepper Face (my parents' cat).