Here, Goat

We took another trip to Happy Hollow and to the petting zoo. Claudia is absolutely fearless with the animals. Here she is feeding one of the goats that she favored. If there aren't any goats near enough she starts walking towards them saying "Goat" to get their attention.

The horse named Buck

Mom and Dad brought this bouncy horse on one of their visits. This horse has had a good life and many riders: my sister, my brother, me, my niece, my nephew. Now Claudia gets to ride it. Dad gave the frame a fresh coat of paint and replaced the springs, and it was ready for the rodeo all over again. I don't remember it having a name when we grew up, but we have named him Buck. One evening after getting a bath, Claudia was running around with no clothes on. She tried to get up on Buck and I said "you can't ride Buck naked". No kidding! ;-)

Whadup, dawg!

She puts her hat on this way by herself. You can't quite see that she has a purse on her shoulder and is waving bye, as if she's off to go shopping. Can't imagine where she gets that...


So many words that it's now hard to keep track. But she likes to try multisyllable words. Her favs: broccoli, cauliflower, octopus, butterfly, bumblebee, elephant, rhinocerous and of course, Claudia! ;-)

The Little Lady Bug

Claudia the little lady bug. We went to a few of the neighbors' houses to trick-or-treat. At the 1st house the neighbor put some candy in her bucket, at the 2nd house she figured out to put a few pieces in her bucket herself, at the 3rd house she was asking for more, at the 4th house she was trying to give her candy to the neighbors. She did really well. She can't say thank you but she was generous with blowing kisses.
New words (it's getting hard to keep track!): pumpkin, octupus (though her version only has 2 syllables), moon, roll, lots of animal names, unfortunately tonight I think I taught her "mine".
She sings and acts out row row row your boat, the itsy bitsy spider, the wheels on the bus, if you're happy and you know it.

Farewell Poh Poh & Gong Gong

(Kelly's) Mom & Dad were here taking care of the three of us for the last month. They left yesterday to trek back to Kansas. We will miss them! Claudia was ok the first day - probably because of the excitement of trick or treating, but this morning she went looking for them in their room.

Claudia Longstocking? Pippi Nelson?

Somehow the teachers at school can get her to sit still long enough to put her hair in pigtails. I don't yet know their secret!
New words: elephant, hooray, meow, woof, roar. She's getting close to saying Poh Poh & Gong Gong (Cantonese for maternal grandma and grandpa).

A trip to Fisherman's Wharf

We went to Fisherman's Wharf for clam chowder and sea lions. No pictures of the clam chowder but here's Mom, Claudia and Dad and the sea lions in the background.

Riding along in my lemon-mobile

Mom & Dad have been visiting for a few weeks now. Dad took Claudia for a spin in her lemon. It's not at all a smooth ride but she loves it!

Uh-oh Spaghetti-o!

Spaghetti night at our house means lots of fun for Claudia and lots of clean up for Peter ;-). I get to sit back and watch it all happen!

New words:
yellow
hot
bless you (though it doesn't quite sound like bless you, she says it after someone sneezes)
apple sauce (sounds a lot like her version of airplane)
alligator (she said it once when Peter showed her the alligator from her deck of cards)

Eating with chopsticks already?

Well, she's getting there. We were eating lunch (a bento box from Sushi Boat) and she wanted her own set of sticks. She did a lot of poking at her food with them and general orchestrating and tapping on her tray. And then she figured out that she could put them in her mouth another way.

Miss Chatterbox

Here's Claudia telling us what's on her card. We bought some alphabet/animal playing cards. She knows which ones are the birds (there are a few) and she says "bir" when she sees them. She also knows the bear and says "ber". She knows the rhinoceros and this morning when I said the word she said "os os os".

She's babbling like crazy. On the weekends when Peter is making a latte, she raises her voice and talks at the coffeemaker. We're not certain if she thinks it's hard of hearing or if she's angry with it. Either way, it's hilarious!

New words (besides bird and bear):
airplane (she says it when she hears/sees one flying overhead)
belly (she likes to show her belly and pat it)
ready
up

Having a ball!

How much fun can it be to push a giant ball around the house? THIS MUCH FUN!








And how much fun can it be kicking a little ball around the park? THIS MUCH FUN!

The Shoe Pyramid

After we returned from a walk and collapsed the stroller, Claudia started collecting our shoes from the shoe rack and stacking them on top of each other. You can't see them all, but she stacked 4 pairs of shoes.

Food!

Dinnertime. We had corn on the cob the other night. She was so intrigued by the corn we had, so we cut off a piece for her. She held onto it throughout dinner.


Breakfast time. She's getting better and better at using a spoon and fork. She was actually dipping her spoon into Peter's cereal, as she lost interest in the shredded mini wheats and was going straight for the raisin bran. We had to keep grabbing the raisins off her spoon.
We're not sure if she's favoring a hand. She uses both hands for utensils, but lately has been using her right hand.

New words:
on (she likes to see the lights come on)
up

Playing in the toy box on a Sunday morning

Here's Claudia playing in her toybox. She likes to crawl in and out of things. She's got great Sunday morning hair, too!

Auntie Gina's visit

Gina came to visit at the end of August because Kelly was the best man in Gary's wedding. So we needed someone to watch Claudia for Thursday (bachelor party), Friday (rehearsal and dinner) and then Saturday (the wedding). The first thing Claudia did was show off her walking to Auntie Gina. I don't think I've ever seen her walk so much at one time!

A trip to the beach

Here we are at the beach. It was 100 degrees in San Jose, so it was nice to escape to the cool air and water. Claudia loves to eat the sand. She does it less so now, but her first couple trips to the beach were filled with sand-eating. Now sometimes she just does a face plant into the sand and gets it all over her face.

A trip to the zoo

Here we are at Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose. We took Claudia into the petting zoo area. She did pretty well while Peter fed the billy goats. In this picture, she had just touched the billy goat's nose.

Playing in the sandbox

We got this "sand crab" a few weekends ago. She likes to crawl in and out of it and of course dump sand out onto the ground. We bring a bucketfull of sand home from the beach when we visit, so hopefully we'll be able to keep up with her.

Miss Bean's words to date

She's been saying momomom and dadadada for quite a while now (her first words). Peter argues that her first word was eagle at about 3 months. But he says she was referring to a hummingbird...

She can sign and say milk ("muck").
She can sign and say more.
She can sign tubby.
A-na for banana.
Ball
Bubble
Out
Snoopy (but it sounds more like boop).
Uh-oh
Hi