Silly Goose Update

On Sunday before Christmas, we took a little family picture. My skin neck fat is not cute, but it was the best one of Jasona and Clara. I also tried to get the "perfect" picture of Clara in her "Christmas dress" (aka a hand-me-down from Rachel. It's actually the dress Emma wore at our wedding, but I'm glad I had one for her to wear). Instead I captured plenty of Clara's personality. When the lights on the tree are on, Clara can't resist crawling behind the tree to the extra lights that are in a little pile on the floor. She moves super fast and than once she's behind the tree, she turns around to smile at me.
Clara is very showy. She will do things then look around to smile at anyone around her. In church, she just will sit and smile at people, waiting for them to acnkowledge her. She gets so proud of herself when she reaches up and makes noise on the piano.

She often sticks her lips out and sometimes it's accompanied by scrunching her nose and breathing in and out very quickly.
Clara has always loved lights. Anything shiny or that has lights will surely captivate her.
And of course she's quite a silly goose. She really has a hilarious little personality and keeps us laughing. Lately she's become obsessed with books that have a spiral or comb binding. She'll sit forever and turn the pages and once there are no more pages to turn, she turns it around and starts all over. Also, today in church she would start to crawl away and if I grabbed her leg, she'd crawl backwards and go into sitting position. Her goofy little smile makes me laugh harder because of her teeth. I still am getting several comments that Clara is busy. I don't blame them, she never stops moving, but it keeps me entertained. She loves my hair and while I am feeding her she'll pull my hair in front of my face. She giggles so hard when we tickle her LOVES her blankets and pillows. She lays on them, loves them and buries her face into them.

She crawls the normal way 95% of the time, but still slithers sometimes. She doesn't seem to have any desire to stand without hanging on to anything, let alone walk. This morning I tried to get her to walk while holding just one hand and she wouldn't move the foot on the side of the hand I was holding, she just moved the opposite foot so she ended up pivoting in a cirlcle. It was awesome. She dances to music and rocks by herself on her horse. She gets very frustrated when I don't know what she wants (or she doesn't get what she wants) and I try not to laugh at some of her expressions when it happens. She squeals, grunts and sometimes will make two fists and stiffen her body so much she shakes (that's the funniest one). She can sign "more" and "finished" in sign language, but they look very similar. She loves to read and often has such a determined expression on her face. She says daddy, ohhhh and ah-oh. She loves dogs and can finally clap. She doesn't do it unless we do it, but she can. The day she decided to clap was the day she decided to finally start signing "more". Something must have clicked with her coordination. She loves to kiss and will even pucker sometimes. Sometimes I think of how long a year is and I wonder if I did enough. I wonder if I took every opportunity to teach her and enrich her life. So here's the Silly Goose herself in all her silliness.

Totally different subject: Amy introduced me to Tostitos flour tortilla chips and my goodness, they are so good. They are on sale at Fry's right now so I bought some for the first time and it's a good thing I don't have any cheese dip to eat them with, otherwise the whole bag of chips and the whole bottle of cheese would be gone. YUM! Maybe I'll go buy some tomorrow. :)