guitar hero?

baby's first home video

cozy

will the slinky enthusiast please stand up?

clara's new room

outrageous flavors!

clara goes to visit cousin zaden in new york

more snow pea

Please excuse the shoddy cinematography.  It is hard to film the mythic Clarabear in her native environment without being discovered.

sweetpea and her snowpea

Things of note: wake of total tofu and cheerio destruction dinner, accidental color coordination of jumpsuit, bib and leftover dinner on face, the distinct impression of Clara caught in the act in the first picture.

percussion, bananas and cheerios

teething on bbq sauce

cheerios and bananas

Clara at 8 months

 Dear Clara,

Today, you are 8 months old! Happy birthday! When I wrote to you on your last birthday, I wondered what else I could possibly have to say a month later, because how much can a person change in 4 weeks anyway? A lot, that's how much.

In the last month, you learned how to do a lot of cool new things. You ate a lot of new food, including some tiny pancakes and a glass of water at a fancy party where you were the charmingest of all the guests. Your favorite seems to be the pear-pineapple puree and of course your beloved carrots, which we ran out of three weeks ago as a result of your zeal. You grew a second tooth, right next to the first one. This one was harder to grow than the last one, but you seem to have weathered the process okay and now have two little teeth right in a row. The exciting thing about having more than one tooth is that you are slowly but surely becoming more able to eat things other than fruit and vegetable slurry.  Last night, for example, you ate several spoonfuls of risotto, which was essentially one of your first experiences with actual flavor.  At first, you weren't sure what to do with the chunks, but then you got into it and gulped down a few more bites. 

In addition to your other accomplishments, this month, you met and conquered Santa at your daycare's holiday party. Other than that, the party was kind of boring, but you didn't seem to mind. We put up a Christmas tree in our living room, which you thought was really cool. You reached out to touch the needles and did your best to show us when something was hanging too close to the floor.

Your granny, aunt, uncle and great-grandfather all came over for Christmas, which you thought was amazing. You did not go to daycare for almost two weeks because you got to hang out at home with them. We played a lot of fun games, usually involving peek-a-boo or tickling.

You are laughing out loud a lot more than you used to. Your giggles are the cutest thing ever, and they used to be hard to come by. Now you laugh all the time and wave your arms around like a crazy person when I walk into a room.

You are also learning some new sounds. Your dad taught you how to blow raspberries and click your tongue and now you do that all the time. You have mastered a variety of consonants, and can now say "da da" and even though you clearly don't know what it means, your Dada's face explodes in smiles every time you do it. You and he play little call-and-response games with the raspberries and tongue clicking and da da-ing.

You are becoming increasingly more mobile. All the week we were finishing the kitchen remodel, I was hoping against hope that you wouldn't choose that week to start crawling in earnest. You didn't. You can crawl now when you put your mind to it, but you haven't quite mastered it to the point of full mobility. You are also getting good at pulling up on furniture (where furniture = my legs or the couch).

I love you, baby girl.

new year, new boots