Claire is an amazing little person. She is walking (toddling) pretty steadily now. When you ask her, “What does a snake say?” She replies, “SSSSSssss.” If she sees a picture of a snake in a book, she’ll point to it and make the sound. When you ask, “What does a rhinoceros say?” she responds by sniffing hard through her nose (we do it when we read Boynton’s Moo Baa La La La). And when you ask her what an elephant says, she lifts her arm up like a trunk and makes her best approximation of an elephant sound (imitating me).

She is applying the sound ca to cow, cat, milk, clock, and truck. She is obsessed with clocks and will point them out everywhere. Da is for dog. Tee is for any green bushy thing like a tree, bush, flowers, and see is for sheep. She says “Hi!” and waves at trucks, people, cats, dogs, her mirror image, the decorations on her bedroom wall, and especially in the morning when I get her from her crib. Mama and Dada are increasingly applied intentionally to the correct person. She points to other babies and says, “Bay-bee! Bay-bee!” If you tell her to go get Teddy, she will retrieve him. She adores soft, huggable, squishy toys.

I asked her to point to the blue fish in one of her books, and she did! I happen to say, “I see” many times a day in conversation with Claire, and she has started to copy me. I’m sure she doesn’t really know what it means; it’s simply a fun sound to make. The list goes on. She is also having me read the same few books about three dozen times in a row daily. How many times can you read Baby’s First Counting Book or The Jolly Barnyard without going insane? I’m pushing the envelope on finding out.

Lastly, she flatly refuses to eat pureed foods and baby cereal now. She eats green beans, lots of different fruits, toast with jelly, and tiny pieces of chicken, fish, and ground beef. Every day is different. I’m trying to let food be food, and find it a challenge. Must not make food a power struggle!