Balls, Books, and Elephants

Claudia is doing so much cute stuff lately. She is now 16 months old. She has really started to enjoy board books and now has the patience to let Glen or I turn the pages and read to her. Her favorite thing is to point at objects on the page, say "uh", and have us tell her the name of what she is pointing at. She mostly points at the animals, which I know she likes because they do a lot of learning games at daycare with animals. She came home one day, saw a picture of an elephant, and made a noise and motion with her arm for elephant! Now she can "make an elephant noise" if we ask her to. Her other tricks are stomping her feet in place, walking backwards, puckering up and sometimes giving out kisses, running away when you pretend to kiss her, and waving her arm up and down for "stinky". And cutest of all, she will nod her head "yes" if you ask her a question. If she knows what you're asking and she doesn't want it, she will shake "no" or just stare at you, but the default if she doesn't know the words you're using is a yes nod.

She has started to throw mini-tantrums when she doesn't get her way. She arches her back and flops on the ground and sometimes head butts, but she does it very gently, so it's more like a tap. We can usually diffuse each situation very quickly -- distraction is the key!

We have done a lot of fun activities in the last few weeks. Many of our friends have birthdays in late July and early August, so we went to several fun BBQs celebrating adult and child birthdays. We broke a heat record last weekend with 95 degree sunny weather. Glen went golfing in the heat twice, once with friends and once for the Edgar Martinez Muscular Dystrophy golf tournament at TPC Snoqualmie Ridge. While Glen was golfing, Claudia & I had a family extravaganza, visiting both Aunties, Grandma (for her birthday), and Great Grandma & Grandpa. Auntie Neely also babysat Claudia one morning and took her to a park and they went down the slide. Over, and over, and over again! We also all went in the swimming pool a couple times and Glen practiced dunking Claudia and trying to teach her to hold her breath. I think she did well for her first time dunking and didn't seem upset by it.

Claudia loves to throw balls.


And carry them around.


She is even throwing another one here, but I cut off the ball when I took the photo.


She will sometimes walk from the car to our building now, but she still likes to be carried.


Glen and Claudia like to go to the park together.