Clara turns 1!

Clara turned 1!  And such a cute 1 year old she is. 

As a 1 year old she:
walks (and continues to make vast improvements), babbles, recognizes Stephen’s voice over the phone (and exclaims “DAA!!”), feeds herself finger foods, is weaned (yay!), drinks Almond milk, dances to music, loves anything with buttons, loves her sister, still has a head full of brown hair, loves to cuddle and is 30.5” tall and weighs 20 lbs 1.5 oz

As Stephen had class on her birthday we postponed our celebration until Friday March 4th.    We went to Olive Garden (mostly because I was tired and couldn’t think of anything to make), and Clara downed a bowl of Chicken Gnocchi soup.  We also picked up a cake from Byerly’s, which was free!  So this was a total non-stressful celebration.  She can have a party when she has an opinion about it and friends to invite. :)

We actually got home pretty late from the restaurant so both her and Samantha were borderline cranky.  But we did the obligatory singing, blowing out the candle, smashing of cake, and opening of presents.

Clara got 3 presents.  An outfit from her great-grandparents, an outfit from my parents, and a baby doll from us.  Clara LOVES baby dolls.  She was always taking Samantha’s, so I knew it would be perfect.  She wasn’t terribly interested in opening presents (which is surprising because she LOVES ripping up paper), but when the doll came out of the bag, she got a huge grin on her face and I couldn’t undo the twisties fast enough. 
When she got it, she just put the baby over her shoulder and started patting it’s back.  It’s amazing what they learn (or intuition they have)

As soon as Clara opened her baby doll, Samantha ran off and got hers so they could play together.

Clara’s favorite part, by far, was putting the hat on (and off and on and off).  It was cute.

    

Clara’s happy dance: