road trip!

claire had her first road trip this last week, from logan to reno. 8 hours in the car, plus food breaks. it was a party.

claire had never been in a stroller without her carseat before, so she wasn't quite sure what to make of the experience. she enjoyed kicking her legs, but got rather frustrated when arching her back and wiggling didn't result in freedom.
we put a blanket over her to keep her from getting sunburnt, making her look like a tiny pink ghost. if you look closely you can see her trying to eat the blanket.

then she slumped and passed out, as is her way.

we took her blanket off for a picture by the sundial, and you can see her squinty-eyed and drunken attempt to get her fingers in her mouth again as she partially wakes up.

in an effort to expose claire to knowledge and stuff, we took her to the planetarium, where she was singularly unimpressed with touching a fallen star. she probably would have liked it better if we'd let her suck on it.

we went to a showing of "extreme planets" which also failed to impress her, and she fell asleep about 30 seconds in.

her favorite part of the day was trying to eat her fingers, something she does determinedly on a regular basis. she often cries when she gets the wrong fingers in her mouth, or when she momentarily misplaces her hands. 

she also got to meet her cousin tori, whom she enjoyed yelling at. 

 she was remarkably well-behaved, considering how long she was trapped in her carseat, and either slept, squawked at her giraffe, or gazed at herself in the mirror while we were driving. she did enjoy being free whenever we stopped, which she expressed by wiggling her little tongue around like a chubby and not terribly mobile snake.

actually, she kinda looks like one of those toys you stick on car windows with suction cups, like bill the cat. we're just glad everything went so well, since we're taking another road trip in 2 weeks!

all about claire

Claire's been having a lot of firsts the past few weeks, including her first time sleeping in her own room, in her crib,  

getting her first haircut (she looked like a balding old man with a mullet from the back), 

sitting in her Bumpo (she likes to sit and look around like she's on a tiny throne...but after 10 minutes or so she starts to get tired and slumps over and starts crying), 

discovering herself in the mirror (she gazes at herself for hours at a time, and often falls asleep doing so. The first day that she did it, we got Chinese food that night and discovered that Claire is the sign of the snake; our placemat said that snakes tend to be stubborn and rather vain.),

learning to scoot around (she scoots backwards until she hits something, usually the corners of her play gym, or the head of her bassinet, and then she gets stuck and cries. She also likes to turn in circles, usually at complete 90 degree intervals.),

and her first ponytails and pigtails (she's so darn cute and she has more hair than most small children),

 and the discovery that her arms belong to her. She'll just hold one arm in the air and stare at it for ever. She also wears mostly 3-6 month clothing now and even fits into some 6-month stuff. She has multiple arm and thigh rolls, and even wrist and ankle rolls. why is fatness on babies so cute? She also made friends with the baby on her diaper box and will often spend the whole morning chatting it up with his little bald picture, ignoring her parents completely. Kinda sad when we can't compete with a picture on cardboard.

I left the room for two minutes and she wiggled around so that she was lying in the opposite direction--apparently she wanted to gaze at her best friend from a new angle. 

And, drum roll please, she finally turned completely over for the first time yesterday, after days of taunting us by rolling onto her side and back. 

She hated it and hasn't done it since. 

She also laughed for the first time yesterday, but refused to keep laughing when we tried to record her. It's a good thing she's so darn cute.