Creating Clara-ty: Meatball Nose

My baby! She has changed so much in the last month. Why does it all have to go so fast? I don't want her to grow up, but I love watching her do it.

Okay, enough with the cliche sappiness. Let's get into the fun Clara details!

When she sees that either Daniel or I has a diaper in our hands, she crawls away quickly to try to escape the diaper change. She's smart!
She pulled herself up to a standing position for the first time on July 30th.

We were pretty sure she was saying "ah da" to mean "all done," but we weren't sure. But then one night everyone but her was upstairs, so she went to the bottom of the stairs and tried to crawl up. She stood there leaning on the second stair for awhile, watching all of us moving around up there, and then she said, "Ah da," and sat down and crawled away.
She started doing this thing where she pretends to blow her nose, and it absolutely kills me. She even makes a blowing sound!

Daniel tried to teach her to put her cup back on her tray instead of throwing it on the ground when she's done taking a drink. As she finished a drink, he would tap his finger on the tray a few times to indicate she should put the cup there. She started copying him when he did it, so we thought she understood. But then she started doing it when she wanted more of whatever food we were feeding her. Oh well; it's still cute!
She likes to use paper towels to wipe down her tray and the table. She's such a little mimic!

Speaking of being a mimic, one night I read her a book with animals in it, and Aubrey made the different animal sounds for her. She particularly liked the horse, and she started copying Aubrey as she did it. Hehe.

She always pulls the kitchen hand towel down and rubs it along the floor. She also loves putting it on her head and crawling around with it balancing there. Needless to say, we have had to change the towel often, and now we're hanging it out of reach.

She has not been a fan of whole milk. We tried to switch her to it a couple of weeks before her first birthday, and she was not having it. She wouldn't drink more than a little bit, and she stopped having wet diapers. So we quit the cold-turkey approach and started cutting the milk with formula again. We're finally back to all milk again, and she still doesn't love it. But she does drink most of it now, so I'll take it.
Some of her favorite foods include Ritz crackers, graham crackers, peanut butter sandwiches, and scrambled eggs. When I hold them up and show them to her, she gets very excited. Sometimes she claps. She also loves baby puffs/yogurt melts, strawberries, bananas. Swedish pancakes, and yogurt.

One time she picked up a baby doll and hugged it to herself while saying, "Mmmm." It was the sweetest thing ever! I nearly died from cute overload.
She has gotten very into giving hugs. I LIVE for these hugs. All I have to do is say, "Hug?", and she will lean her head onto me. And sometimes she will just crawl up to me and lean her head on my leg, both when I'm sitting on the couch and when I'm standing in the kitchen making dinner. I gope she continues to be affectionate with me.

She has started standing up on her own and smiling so widely as she does it. I love how proud she gets of herself! She will stand there for as long as she can, fall down to her bum, and get back up again. It really feels like she's practicing.
She started using the walker, and she loves it! She's even better with it now than she was in this video, but this is one of the first times she used it, so it's special.

When she's on the couch, she likes to crawl over to the armrest, stand up, and fall back down to her bum on the cushion. It always makes me nervous, but I of course never leave her on the couch alone; I'm always there. And it's cute how fun she thinks it is.
She loves turning the pages when we read to her, but lots of times she just wants to turn the pages before we've even read the words. And she definitely has book preferences. Some books she loves, and others she tries to take out of my hands and throw on the ground. She's so discerning! Haha.

She has four teeth so far. She likes having them brushed (the bottom ones anyway), but she hates it when anyone tries to look in her mouth. She was really not a fan of her first dentist visit.
When we tell her no, like if she's trying to do something dangerous or gross, she just looks back at us and waves with her little fingers flapping up and down. It's like she is hoping her cuteness will distract us. There was one time when Daniel told her no (as she tried to grab dirty dishes from the dishwasher, which she loves) and she burst into tears. That was equally funny and cute.
She actually has really good motor skills. She can put the coins in the piggy bank. She figured it out fast! And her proud little face.... oof, I love it!

She very often insists on feeding herself. She does not want us to do it for her anymore. It's both cute and annoying. She makes a big mess and never gets as much food in herself as we do, but we also can't force feed her, regrettably.