Potpourri

Claire is a major cookie monster these days. Her sweet tooth is enormous! She asks for cookies at all times of the day, and I've been known to give her a cookie for dessert at breakfast. She needs the calories, after all!

Thankfully, Claire's appetite in other respects is good at the moment too. Some favourites lately include soup, noodles, sweet potato fries, shrimp, cauliflower, broccoli, mixed veggies, corn, cantaloupe, strawberries, grapes, oranges and pears and anything she can dip in ketchup.

Claire plays with her food a lot. Sometimes peas get stacked to become snowmen, other times pears get pushed around as squealy cars. On Monday, she tore up a piece of ham and said it was a puppy. With another tear, it became a fish. After another twist of the ham, I said, "What is it now?". She looked at my wrly and said, "ham". Like duh, mom.

In our downstairs playroom right now, we've set up one of Claire's fantastic Christmas gifts from her godparents: two playtents connected by a tunnel. Claire loves her tents but I think Kitsya likes them just as much! Claire can spend hours ripping up pieces of newspaper and rolling into kitty toys which she then throws into the tunnel for Kitsya's amusement.

One of Claire's exciting new developments is that she'll finish a line for me in her books. It occured to me the other day when I was reading to her that I should ask her to finish the line. After all, she hears the same stories over and over again that I was quite sure she knew the words. Wow, does she ever! In doing this, she is now saying words that she hasn't said before, which is always wonderful to hear. Although I ask her to repeat words after me frequently throughout the day, maybe she just needed new motivation to say more words.

For the last month or two, Claire has been big on identifying things in the house as "Mama's", "Dadda's" or "Baby's" (she insists on calling herself "baby" despite our protests that she is a big girl). I was surprised when she started using possessives. Other times, she identifies objects as being a Mama, Dadda or Baby. Or instead of identifying "who" something is, she'll simply state its colour as she goes about her merry way. She knows pink (it comes out as "pimp"), purple, orange, blue, yellow, green, brown and grey (I think). She doesn't seem to get the idea of red - she always identifies it as pink.

We're taking a break from Kindermusik and have been in gymnastics instead since mid January. I regret not keeping her in Kindermusik, though, because she loves it so much. Gymnastics not so much. She does a lot of the same activities at home with a huge smile but maybe the gym or all the kids overwhelm her. What is certain is that she loves seeing Ava at gymnastics. It's been really nice seeing Ava and Beth there each week, even if we don't get a lot of time to visit.

Claire is showing her independence more and more. You can tell she is really proud of herself when she puts on her own pants (even if the back isn't comletely pulled over her tiny bum), shirt, sweater and socks. Unfortunately, she loves undressing herself just as much. In the kitchen yesterday, she suddenly stripped down to her diaper and didn't want to rectify that situation for at least an hour. She also loves dressing up in all sorts of gear. I have lots of play clothes for her but I really need to clear out a trunk I have so that it can provide easy access to her play clothes. Here she is in one of her latest getups.

Claire is still wild about the Backyardigans. She has seen a couple episodes of Ni hao, Kai Lan - a new show about a Chinese girl of that name. She seems to enjoy it but I probably enjoy it more.

Outdoors, Claire prefers to walk on the snow or ice, even if there is a nice dry patch of sidewalk right beside her. Yesterday while out for a walk, she decided that the snowbank would make a nice bench.

With the warmer temperatures, ice and snow have melted to form puddles which Claire can't stay away from either. I just have to find some rubber boots small enough for her. I'm off to Walmart later this week to check out their selection, since I've checked out most of our other options already. If I do find a pair, I'll be sure to post "splashy" pictures in a month or two!

A big "hi" and hug to Paul who is out of town on business for a couple of days. I hope these posts - two days in a row! - have given you a bit of a Claire fix.