Cute Clara

There wasn't a lot going on this week, but I still wanted to blog about some of the things Clara has been up to lately so I that I can remember years from now what she was like at this age.
Clara is a very cuddly girl. She will come sit on my lap anytime I decide to sit on the floor. She also has now become great at giving hugs. She wraps her little arms around my neck and squeezes tight. It makes me feel so loved. She will give me a hug anytime I ask her to and even a lot of times when I don't. She is good at getting kisses. When I ask her to give me a kiss, she gives me her cheek so that I can kiss it. It makes me laugh! Anytime I'm on the floor, she has to be right there with me. One day I laid down on the floor after I was done reading her a book. She grabbed the book, handed it to me, and then crawled on me, then laid down on top of me so that I could read her the story laying down.Clara loves to be tickled and chased. When I put the two of those together, I can't ever stop without her getting mad. She loves to run behind our couch and wait for me to try and get her. When I can't, she giggles and runs out. I then chase her around the apartment on my hands and knees. When I finally catch up to her, I tickle her neck or sides. She laughs and laughs. When I move out of my crawling position, she tries to move my arms and legs back into a crawling position.
When Clara can't do something she wants (like try to get me back into crawling position) she makes fists with her hands and grunts in frustration. I have taught her not to get mad, but to say please when she wants something instead. So now she squeezes her fists tight, grunts, and then quickly follows that with a very calm and happy, "please." It makes me laugh every time she does that. Who changes emotions that fast?
Clara is very expressive. She can now get me to understand what she wants almost always. Which means there are less tantrums. However, when she does have a tantrum (mainly when I tell her no to what she wants) it's a huge one. I can't believe how loud and flexible she can get!
Clara loves to watch TV. That is the source of most tantrums. She'll ask to watch TV by saying "T" and pointing to the screen. I'll usually let her the first time she asks in a day, but when she asks for it after she's seen way too much already in a day, I tell her no and try to distract her with something else. Most often the distraction doesn't work and she throws herself on the floor with her arms flailing and screaming at the top of her lungs. It's scary how much she already loves TV. She can sit and watch it for hours if I let her. In a way, it's a good thing because then I can tutor without her interrupting. But she gets very engrossed in the cartoons and can ignore everything else around her. Her favorite thing to watch is a DVD we got for free from a Little People toy she got for Christmas. It's a claymation of little people doing silly things.Clara loves cars. I'm not sure if she likes them because that was the first word she made the connection that objects have a name, or if she learned the word first because she likes cars. Either way, every time she sees a car (toy or real) she gets a huge smile and excitedly says, "car." If it happens to be a moving car, she will then say "bye-bye" to it as it passes by. She also calls any vehicle a car now. If I try to tell her it's a truck (or what ever else it really is) she gets a really confused look on her face and then will say car again, as if she's trying to correct me.
Clara can also say the word "me" now. She says this when she is playing with other kids and they try to play with the toy she is playing with. She also does this when they have something she wants to play with. She is not very good at sharing anymore, but that is definitely something I'm working on with her.
Clara can say the first part of the word scriptures. We read 1 verse with her every night before putting her to bed. She always gets so excited to read the scriptures. As soon as she sees them, she excitedly says "scri" and sits right down to be read to. Clara can look at any picture that has Jesus in it and can point Him out. She has also gotten to where when she sees a picture of Him, she says, "Je" and points Him out to me. She also folds her arms and closes her eyes when we pray. She doesn't make it through the whole prayer yet in that position, but she is getting better at lasting longer and longer. When my visiting teachers came last time, she was throwing a pretty big fit. She cried non stop the whole 45 minutes they were here. When it was time for the closing prayer, she stopped crying and folded her arms. She kept her arms folded and was quiet the entire length of the prayer! As soon as the prayer was over, she started crying again. That has been the one and only time she has made it through an entire prayer with her arms folded.
I love watching my little Clara grow and learn. I couldn't imagine my life without her!

April?

So I began to wonder if it was really the middle of April when I woke up to this yesterday morning. All the weight of the snow made the branches bend enough to make the tree 3 - 4 feet shorter than normal. Normally you can walk right under this tree without hitting your head. However, this morning you had to duck to make it past without hitting your head. And once you made it past the first set of branches and were standing next to the trunk, this is what you saw. That's right, our car was covered with all the branches! As the snow started to melt, and thus got heavier due to the water weight, several branches broke on this tree. One of them was broken right on our car! My wonderful downstairs neighbor got out his very small ax and cut the broken branch for me so that I could drive my car. Thanks Jon! Since it was way too crazy of weather to go out side and play in, Clara had to be creative inside. She decided to try and get Addi to give her a horsey ride. Addi didn't move once Clara got on, but at least both girls seemed to enjoy it.

Old Students

At church yesterday, I saw 5 former students. Each seemed so happy to see me. 3 of them were there because they are related to a baby in our ward who was blessed yesterday. The other 2 are now married to each other and are in the ward that meets after we do in our building. He was a student who always treated me well, but would never do homework. He did end up getting his GED, and even served a mission. I was so pleased to hear he had been married in the temple. He wasn't making the best of choices in High School. Him not doing homework was among the least of his problems. I was elated to see him back on the right track and so happy. I talked to those 2 students for quite a while. The whole rest of they day I kept thinking about them and smiling because of how happy I was to see them doing what is right. I was so excited about it today that I decided to blog about it. It really makes me wonder how our Father in Heaven feels who loves us so much more than I would love a student. I am so grateful for that love. I am also grateful for the love of our Savior who sacrificed all just to give us a chance to live with our Father in Heaven again. He even did it knowing that most people would not use His miraculous gift.

Easter

The Easter Bunny comes on Saturday at our house. Clara LOVED gathering up the eggs. We had a ward Easter party that morning, where Clara learned that eggs go in a basket. When we got home and she discovered all the eggs at her own house, she went crazy. She ran from one egg to the next to the next. Once again, she was so excited that it was hard to get good pictures of her. Jeremy ended up taking 53 pictures! It made me laugh. But that is why I had him do the camera work. I would have given up at 10. Once Clara discovered there was candy inside, she held on to one egg and wouldn't put it in her basket. Once all the eggs were picked up, she sat down and said, "Please." Who couldn't resist that. So I set aside the clean freak issues and let her have chocolate right there on the carpet without a bib! The next day, she carried her little basket of eggs around everywhere. She would sit down, dump some eggs out, open the ones she could, stand up, walk to a new spot and repeat the process. Oh the joys of plastic eggs!

Mom's Graduation

My mom and brother in-law, Korth, graduated from BYU-Idaho this last weekend. I'm so proud of them! Since they had different ceremonies at the same time, I went to Mom's and consequently only have pictures of her. I drove up on Thursday and returned on Friday. It was a very short trip, but worth the drive. Clara did really well both on the way there and on the way home! That was a huge blessing! Here are some pictures of the proud college grad: Sorry these next few are so dark, a flash can only go so far on a camera. I'm just impressed with how well they turned out considering how far away we were from the podium.For this last picture, I'll give 100 points to the people who can correctly name the person in this photo. Telling me she is a speaker at my mom's graduation doesn't count! 1000 points go to the people who can say how I know her. (Angie, if you get either of these questions wrong, you get negative points.....:) )

Projects

I have done some projects these last few weeks that I'm proud of and wanted to share. I had a couple of baby showers that I needed to get gifts for. One of the best things I got was a home made hooded towel. It's bigger than the ones you can buy at the store so you can really wrap your baby up for longer than a few months...... I've never made one before, so when it turned out this cute, I was excited. I just looked at the one I was given for a pattern. I only had to take out 1 seam too. I made 2 of them, but by the time I thought about taking a picture, the other one was already given away.Another project that I did wasn't hard, but I thought was a great idea so I wanted to share. I was looking at a friends "picture" book during sacrament meeting. She had a 3 ring binder with sheet protectors full of wonderful pictures that her kids could look at during the meeting. Upon further inspection, I realized that she had cut all of them from the Ensign. So this week I made Clara her very own sacrament meeting picture book. I can't wait for her to be able to use it. She loves looking at pictures, so hopefully that will help our sacrament meeting be more quiet.

Bean Museum

For playgroup yesterday, we went to the Monte L. Bean Life Science Museum at BYU. Clara loved it. She ran from one animal to the next pointing and making her excited growl noise. Once again, it was hard to get a good picture of her. She was so excited, she just kept running, so there was no time to pose for a picture. The best part about all this excitement is that the museum is free! Can't beat that. I came home and told Jeremy that we needed to go there for FHE more often! The most impressive exhibit to me was the elephant. That thing was huge! Clara figured out that if you press buttons, the screen lights up. THere were about 5 or 6 story boards that Clara kept pressing the buttons on. She just went from one to the next to the next and when she had gotten to them all, she started over again. It was fun to watch her little mind at work. At first she kept calling everything a dog (the only animal name she can say.) However, as I would tell her the correct name, she would try to say it. Those she could say became the next thing she would call everything. For example, when we first arrived, she called everything a dog until we came to a bear. As soon as I said bear, she said it. Then all the animals were a bear until we got to a duck. Once she learned the work duck everything became a duck, including the bear.... Oh well. It made me laugh. Maybe one day she'll get all those animal's names down. Let's face it. I don't have all those animal's names down either. If it weren't for me being able to read signs, I couldn't name all the animals in the museum either. This picture made me laugh too. Clara is touching the "Please Do Not Touch" sign. But those lions sure don't scare her!
There even happened to be a show while we were there, so all our little kids could touch a live snake if they wanted to. Only 2 were brave enough to do it! Clara just wasn't interested in sitting long enough to wait for her turn, so I have no idea if she would have been brave enough or not.

My little girl

My Clara is no longer my baby, but my little girl. It makes me cry some days and other days I'm so proud that Clara is learning so much. She can now say more words than she signs. We only taught her about 10 signs and she is now saying over 20 words. The words she says that are most clear is "car" and "bye-bye." The other words are just the first sound or syllable, but at least I can understand her.
The growing up hit me hard the day I first put her in pig tails. She looked so cute and so grown up all at the same time.