My 10-month-old baby is no more. How short a month is, and how much she changes and grows.
I've been meaning to do an update on Clara for several months now. I think I have at least three or four to catch up on! Hopefully before she turns one I'll manage to write about her doings and sayings (yes, meaningful sounds/words now!). She is so cute and such fun, as you can see from the photo above.
Over Labor Day weekend we braved the traffic (and were stuck in it, both up the mountain and down) to go to Flagstaff. Everyone enjoyed seeing the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins! We celebrated Emily's birthday and scouted out Seven West, the area Jeremy is assigned for elk hunting (on the border between the Coconino and Kaibab forests).
Grandma and the girls exploring
The view
Hiking with Grandma
Look! A fun ditch!
Scott taking aim
Lauren the sharpshooter
Dortha surprised herself by enjoying it!
Back at home, the kids have become obsessed with drawing. I don't object! (The only downside is the piles of treasured masterpieces that no one wants thrown away. I have to do the dirty duty at night after bedtime . . . and Lydia is still mourning and looking for her "picnic" that she drew on a piece of blue construction paper about six weeks ago.)
Abby drew mountains and then realized horizontal lines made them into A's!
Josiah especially has honed his skills in the last couple months. He loves drawing battle scenes, of course. As you can see from the pictures below, in early September his people were heads with arms and legs protruding. Since then he has progressed to more realistic-looking stick people, often accessorized with backpacks, hats, swords, bows, etc.
The extra protrusions from the arms are weapons--swords, mostly;
one guy here is in jail (see the bars?)
Here you see some landscape elements: mountains with snow, sun, little hovel/house
I believe that's a bridge spanning the mountaintops. The guy below is in jail.
Some guys here have axes, not just stick-swords . . . (I drew the knight)
The girls like to attempt to copy Josiah, but they haven't his battle-focused imagination, skill, or patience yet. They often draw meandering shapes and lines and then add faces: "Look, Mama! I made a Llama!" Abby told me after adding eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth to a shape (not pictured, sorry).
Some people floating around . . .
"Pa in Flagstaff" by Lydia (later she added a mustache)
"Grandma in Flagstaff" by Lydia
The artist herself with her portrait of Pa
My mom came for a short visit before she flew back to Dubai. She helped me get organized enough to start school with the kids after she left, for which I'm very thankful! Of course, she obliged the kids with lots of games--the "little lamb game" and the rabbit game (accompanied by the "In a cabin in the woods" song) were popular. She snuggled with the kids early in the morning, did laundry, babysat so I could run errands, let Jer and me go on a date . . . lots of good grandma stuff. :)
Outtake photo . . . Clara was done!
September here is usually quite hot still--thus all the indoor activity (drawing)--although we had a somewhat milder September this year, I think. The mosquitoes have been so bad in the back yard that outside play time was often abbreviated. But irrigation is irresistible! Josiah, Lydia, and Abby love playing in the water and in the aftermath of mud.
Lydia on the left, Abby on the right
Abby
Lydia
Josiah hosing down
Clara longs to be a big kid and join in their games. Every time they run out back and leave the door ajar, she tries to escape. She doesn't like crawling on the grass much (she does a funny crab crawl on hands and feet--keeping her knees off it), she does love to be pushed around in the coupe car! Josiah, Lydia, and Abby vie for turns pushing her . . . but they're speed-demons!
What would a month be around here without some sort of injury? Abby fell when balanced precariously to pick flowers. She smashed her face into a table. Thankfully the wound was below her eye! The bruising spread to her eye, though, and looked pretty bad for about a week.
Josiah always wants to play war games with PVC pipes outside
The girls long ago mastered the balance bikes Grandma and Pa gave them for the second birthday. They whiz around on those little bikes with superb balance and steering. Lydia developed an interest in Josiah's old blue bike, and she practiced pedaling around the yard. Abby tried it out, too.
One evening at the park, Jer decided on a whim to remove the training wheels and see if the girls could combine their balance skills with their newfound pedaling ability. Sure enough, they could! Lydia was initially more confident than Abby . . .
Lydia
Abby tries Josiah's bigger bike
After that initial foray into riding a two-wheeler, we found two more "bigger" bikes at Goodwill and on craigslist. So Josiah has a "new" green bike, and the girls use his old red one and the "new" pink one Jer found. They're doing so well riding--they've taken some falls, but nothing too terrible, and they're quite confident now. They have yet to learn to start by themselves, though, so the process is still dad-intensive.
Clara loved the swings at the park!
Bathtime got crazier in September when we added Clara into the mix! She loves being part of the crew in the tub . . .
Grandma and Kezzie came down for a few hours one Monday in September! Anna had a meeting here in Phoenix, so Dortha drove with her and did her conference calls from our house. The kids were thrilled to have Kezzie here! And Grandma got to spend some time with them when she finished her work. Here she has them enraptured with a book!
Can there be too many pictures of Clara? I think not. She took her first steps in September. She loves to cruise along the furniture and walls and is tentatively stepping from one object to another, though she can't take more than two or three steps before falling. She loves to be with me in the kitchen when I'm cooking. She pulls out the mixing bowls and metal lids to make lots of noise, and she pulls all the kitchen towels off the oven handle. We love this happy sweetie!
So--there's a little hop through some of our September!
