Well, here we are at almost 2 years and I’m just now getting around to posting the 12-15 month update for Claire. Every parent will understand why the delay 🙂 I have notes on Claire and Emma that I’m determined to get organized here. Eventually I plan to create some cute photo baby books for them. Eventually. In the meantime, 12 to 15 months is a blur, but I’m happy for what we are able to remember. And I will add more pictures later 🙂

• We had a sweet, simple one year birthday party for her. Michael made a cake. My dad visited. We did cake with pink icing, a few presents, and lots of napping because I guess she was tired out by all the celebrating!
• crawled all the way up the stairs for the first time at my parents’ house in FL in July
• Michael brushed her teeth for the first time (not her first teeth-brushing, but the first by dada) – her first unofficial visit to the dentist!
• Says bye-bye, mama, dada, baba
• Gets excited when the phone rings and says bye-bye to people on the phone
• Recently started developing more affectionate behavior towards stuffed animals. Her favorite appears to be Mr. Rabbit, who Michael got her while she was still in the womb. She carries him around by the ear and rests him between her ear and shoulder when she is getting sleepy.
• Loves to take the toilet paper off the roll and throw it in the toilet. We think she might be an early potty-trainer. Also seems to bring us a clean diaper when her diaper is wet sometimes.
• Doesn’t quite dance yet, but loves it when Dada dances. She laughs and bounces like crazy!
• Loves the pool. Grandma took her in the water in her little baby floatie and she kicked her feet the whole time and loved it.
• She loves getting her teeth brushed. She gets excited when she sees the toothbrush and toothpaste. She opens her mouth expectantly awaiting the toothbrush and grape taste. It reminds me of how Griswold likes his teeth to be brushed, but she is much easier.
• She has all kinds of upper teeth coming in. She is handling it pretty well. The middle of the night wakings are still very infrequent and we so appreciate her 12 hour night sleeps.
• Loves to run all over the place! She loves to run through the house, babbling the whole way.
• She learned the sign for “all done” the other day (July/early August). When she seems like she is about to be done eating I have been saying “all done?” and swishing my hands back and forth in baby sign language. She loves it and no matter how bad of a mood she is in that usually makes her laugh. The other day I just asked her the question without doing the sign, not really thinking about it, and she started swishing her hands back and forth in frantic motion. She was very proud of herself and we clapped after. Now she knows a sign! And she is always proud of herself and happy after she does it and we clap together.
• Also seems to be adapting her own personal sign for “all done” of brushing off her arm and/or throwing her arms in the air
• for some reason, The Princess Diaries 2 is her favorite movie. She particularly loves the part where Queen Clarice enters for Princess Mia’s birthday party in the beginning of the movie, and the scene where the Queen reveals to the Princess her new closet. She is completely glued to the movie when it’s on, but isn’t that way with other movies – even cartoons. She just loves it, and I not so secretly love it too!
• The other day she made THE CUTEST new facial expression: she has an owl sound machine in her room that she recently started interacting with more. It has about 8 different sound settings. She pressed one of the buttons on the owl and changed the sound to music and went “Oooooohhh” and made the corresponding face, and looked at me. She did it twice. I tried to get her to do it again so I could video her but so far no luck. I hope I never forget that moment – I could see her doing that as a bigger girl when she likes something.
• Sometimes when she is just babbling in excitement she says “he ee ee ee” and michael responds with “Here ye! Here ye!” – I love it.
• She has a very vigorous bounce-dance going on.
• She loves running all over the house. Michael always says she has velociraptor arms.
• Michael was watching the new Peter Rabbit movie with her. She was intently, happily watching, and then came the scene where the gardener was angrily carrying Peter Rabbit by his ears. She became concerned and showed empathy for the rabbit, and didn’t even want to look at the TV. She then got up and went to her crib to grab her own stuffed gray rabbit, and brought him back to continue watching the movie with her.