Happy Halloween!

Claire's first Halloween stats and facts:

• Costumes: two (indoor and outdoor)
• Halloween parties: one
• Halloween-day extended visit with good friend (Marianne): one
• First house to trick or treat: neighbour Jim and Ethel's
• Total houses visited on Halloween night: six
• Number of admirers: countless

Take candy from strangers?! Are you sure about that?

Okay, I'm ready to party!

Ta da: here's my outdoor outfit!

Why am I the only one dressed up?

Kindermusik and beefdip

We're currently enrolled in Claire's third Kindermusik class (this one is the longest yet at 14 weeks), and she continues to love it like crazy. I have to confess that I love it too to see Claire in an environment where she really thrives. At other places like the playground or various playgroups, she often hangs back and is more tentative. However, at Kindermusik, she is the highly engaged child we see at home. She loves doing the motions along with the songs and often does the moves ahead of the lyrics. Here she is doing one of her latest favourites.



By the way, the motions she does with her hands when we're counting is something she picked up when Paul first introduced her to counting. He was showing her how to count the fingers on her hands but she somehow fixated on pointing to her palm. Ever since, that's been her counting motion.

Here's another video of Claire declaring her love for various family members. Dorian, if you're watching, you're Uncle Beefdip in case you didn't already know!

Mini-reunion part two: lunch at Beth and James'

Helena, acting as big sis to all three toddlers (Ava, Helena, Claire and Caia)




Bubbles!


And more bubbles!




The group that blogs together stays together! (Beth is showing Shea her blog post from our get-together on Monday.)

I've never seen such lethargic Wiggles-watching!

Mini-reunion part one: Galaxyland

Our travel-mate Shea is in town with her daughter Caia to look after her cousins while their parents are at a conference, so Shea, Beth and I planned a visit with our girls for today at the mall. We met at a food court where the girls stuffed themselves on noodles, and then we hit Galaxyland for some rides.

Ava and Claire were kissing bandits today, and did their best to warm up a shy Caia with big smooches. I'm sure the kissing and hand-holding will continue at part two of our mini-reunion on Wednesday at Beth's house. Pucker up!

Uncle Geoff stops by for a visit

My brother Geoff from Vancouver stopped by for a couple of days this week on his way back home from Saskatchewan. This was Claire's first real chance to get to know Geoff (there were so many people around at Thanksgiving when she met him for the first time), and it was obvious she adored him. He really helped me out a lot too: he played with her while I made dinner and did things around the house. The whole time they played, I could hear her squealing with delight and then laughing deep belly-laughs.

There are very few pictures of me as a kid where Geoff is not in the picture also, with an arm around me. As a kid, I always loved his attention (and luckily, I got a lot of it!). I'm grateful that Claire now gets to experience the fun of Uncle Geoff, just like I did.

The photo of Claire and her Uncle Geoff was taken at the beautiful new Chinese garden here in town. We explored it the other day and Claire totally loved it!

Me as a toddler with big bro Geoff.

Ice ice baby

Yesterday we finally got the chance to take Claire skating! We went to nearby West Edmonton Mall where of course it was super-busy. When it's full-blown winter outside, we'll be able to take her to our neighbourhood rink, only a block away.

We're not quite sure what Claire thought of her skating adventure. She was pretty solemn about the whole affair, and after about ten minutes said "all dee", signalling to us that she had enough. Once we got our skates off and exited the "paid" area, she then said "again". So, maybe she did like it. Hard to know!

Here's a short clip of her experiencing life on skates:

We really had to hold Claire tightly; I wasn't sure what kind of support she would need and it turned out to be a lot. (Perhaps her helmut, the smallest we could find, was affecting her balance too.) I think she will need a lot more experience before we'll be able to even just hold her hands for gentle support. It's a pretty exhausting activity for Paul and me as a result, so I'm sure we'll keep our skating adventures short and sweet for the time being.

I love how our feet look next to each other!

Eighteen months old today

It's hard to believe that our girl is a year and a half old today. It's a significant milestone to us - she's definitely turning into a little girl, and the baby we had is fading into memory. As if to emphasize that point, Claire began emphatically answering "no" (unprompted) to some of my questions today. We've been trying to get her to say no for a long time now (I know, we'll come to regret it), but she would only tease us with a soft-voiced "doh" while shaking her head back and forth. Today, she said with real conviction and clarity: "No". As icing on the cake, she gave a polite smile as she said it, as if she somehow knows that a smile softens a negative response.

Claire's verbal skills seem to be taking off again. For about a month, it seemed like she had forgotten most of her words and didn't want to repeat new ones. Now, she's going for it again. Her favourite words lately are "ice cream" (sounds like emya), "again", "dis" (this), "happy" (for what happened? and also for happy) and "colour" (sort of sounds like yellow). There are more, but I haven't been as good lately about jotting them down in my notebook to help me remember.

Claire went through a spell where she didn't have patience for her books, but she's back into them with full force now. She's even sitting now for slightly longer stories. She really loves stickers and colouring lately; as I write this, she is sitting on my lap drawing away and playing with some old address stickers for added fun.

One of my travel-mates blogged recently about her daughter's love for routines. At first, I didn't think Claire had noticed our routines but after my travel-mate mentioned it, I realized that Claire does do certain things as we go about our day together. Here are just a few that come to mind:

• when we prepare to leave the house, Claire points to the keys, says "dis", and then makes beeping sounds along with the house alarm;


• everytime we go past the spot where we keep her sunglasses, she says "dis" (see a pattern here?) and we then have to put them on and laugh while looking in the mirror;


• she often goes to put the safety gates in place before I even get the chance; and


• when we run her bath, she points to her tub toys up high and says "dis" until we put them in the tub.

Another thing Claire has been doing lately is trying to pre-empt activities she doesn't like by saying very fast: " all dee, all dee, all dee" (all done). She says it when we begin shampooing her hair, and she did it yesterday when I took her for blood tests (just follow-up HIV tests and others now that we've been home more than six months). Very clever attempt to convince me that the disagreeable task is done, I think.

That Claire is becoming a little girl was obvious last night as I tried a few fancy dresses on her that we received from friends and family as shower gifts. I hadn't tried them for some time and thought she may be close to fitting into them (not yet - maybe Spring). Anyway, with each new dress, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and admired herself: turned this way and that, twirled, smiled and practically curtsied to herself. Paul and I had a lot of fun watching her watch herself that we had to hold back laughter in case she thought we were laughing at her (which I guess we were but in a good way!).

I don't have many new pics to post - just one from yesterday with a Clinique bonus bag on her head as a lovely hat, and one from today outside our house on the way to the playground.

Our first Thanksgiving together

With so much to be thankful for this year, we were happy to be able to celebrate Thanksgiving with our families back in Saskatoon. Claire's grandparents hadn't seen her since the July long weekend; just imagine how much attention she got all weekend long! She loved every minute of it, and although she is happy to be home, I think she misses all the people who showered her with so much love and attention (in addition to our own of course!).

Favourite moments:

• Claire and her Great-Grandma Pauline admiring each other's pearl necklaces;
• Claire enjoying her first pumpkin pie ever while visiting Great-Grandma;
• Claire and her cousin Liam stopping play every now and then to kiss or hug each other;
• watching Claire trying to stuff herself into Grandma and Grandpa's new magazine rack;
• seeing Claire devouring her meals like she'd never be fed again;
• Claire finally meeting her Uncle Geoff and Aunt Marlene (my brother and his wife from Vancouver);
• Stu building elaborate towers for Claire to destroy; and
• both of our families (separately) singing the ice cream song (I scream, you scream ...) to Claire to see and hear her little scream at the end.

Claire and Grandma W.











Claire with Daddy, Grandma W. and Great-Grandma Pauline
















This is Claire trying to climb up that chair!











Claire with cousin Sonia and Auntie Marlene














Grandma K. with the grandkids in town for Thanksgiving: Sonia, Liam and Claire

Baby skates!

Paul came across a web site for baby-sized skates recently (www.babyskates.com), and never one to pass up an exciting purchase, I ordered a pair for Claire, along with all the safety gear. We received the package today and we are sooo excited for Claire to try her beautiful new skates out. I'd take her skating tomorrow afternoon but since Paul will probably want to be there for the inaugural 'skate', it'll probably be the weekend instead. Watch for photos next week of the momentous event!

ps - in case you are wondering, I don' t have aspirations of Claire being an Olympic skater - I'm just trying the skating thing early because I think it would be one more fun activity for us to do together.

From hair to toes

When Grandma W. calls, she often asks Claire where are her eyes, ears, nose, and so on. We describe to Grandma that Claire is now pointing to her eyes, and now her ears, and now her nose, etc. but we're sure she'd like to see it in person. So here's a little sneak preview of what Grandma will see this weekend when we visit for Thanksgiving ...