It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve updated, so I thought it was time for me to sit down and actually spend some time writing about sweet Clara.

The months leading up to her second birthday were exciting because I absolutely love celebrating her birthday. Aunt Crystal came to visit, just like last year, and we were thrilled to have her here again. We celebrated Clara’s birthday with neighbors and friends and took off to DC the next day. Crystal got to do a little exploring, and we all had a pretty good time despite the freakishly cold weather. We had pea coats on! In March! Not weird for some parts of the country, but definitely weird for Virginia.

Clara wasn’t talking as much as I thought she would be by the time her birthday rolled around, and I of course worried more than I probably should have. She was communicating just fine but wasn’t putting two words together very often (which is the milestone for 2 year olds). Then Mother’s Day came around, and we were out to brunch. Clara was eating a scone with honey butter. Once the scone was gone, she was just eating the butter. And hey, we totally let her because she was (then) in the fifth percentile for weight. When it was time to go, I moved the butter so I could wipe her off. She very clearly said “more butter.” I was thrilled. Less than a week later, she was saying three word sentences like “sit down, Mommy.” Now, she’s saying five or more word sentences like “brown eyes on Abby dog.” It is crazy how fast it changed, and I feel like a fool for worrying so much (typical).

Now that she is talking nonstop (except around strangers; she’s still so shy), Eric and I have actual conversations with her. It kind of blows my mind. She has such a great memory, too. Last week, Clara and I met my friend Nicole and her family in Newport News. We went to the Virginia Living Museum and saw dinosaurs, turtles, and plenty of other animals. Clara is still talking about it, saying things like “see turtles, see dinosaurs, see friend Char Char (Charlotte) and mommy.” She’s also been talking about our trip to Alabama last month. Pretty much anytime we get in the car now, she says “short car ride,” and we assure her we will not be making another drive that long again anytime soon. She frequently asks to go to the mall to see the train and to go on a “mall walk.” I just love hearing her sweet voice.

She’s gotten so tall, especially the past few weeks. She also learned how to open door knobs, so that’s been fun. I have to remember to take my keys outside if I run out to the garden because she’s also learned how to lock the door.

Some of her favorite things right now include: running fast, Hello Kitty, Mooshka dolls, books (always), looking at pictures on our phones, trains, dinosaurs, being outside, helping us cook and helping start the washer and dryer. This is such a fun age, and we are having a blast with her. It’s so amazing to see the little person that she’s become and to see her personality shine through more and more.

I’m behind on monthly updates because things in the Champion household have been insanely busy. Lots of fun things have been happening here. September involved a work trip to Charleston for Eric, and Clara and I tagged along to see my dad and meet up with my friend Nicole. We had a fantastic time with them, and we loved spending time in downtown Charleston. In October, we started a kitchen renovation that we are currently in the process of finishing.

That, sadly, went well into November and December, but we still managed to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas and even made it to DC to see the National Tree. Our Christmas was low-key since it was just the three of us, but we still had a fantastic time. We had some of our neighbors and their kiddos over on Christmas Eve, and it felt amazing to have so much noise and laughter in our house for a few hours. The little ones got to play while all of the adults got to catch up. We were happy to spend Christmas at home again, and we had a leisurely day making and eating waffles and then watching Clara open her gifts and play with her new toys.

Now that we’re in another year and Clara’s second birthday is two months from today, I figured it was time to catch up. The past three months have involved some of the best moments with Clara. Her affection is showing even more now, and it melts my heart. She is always ready to give a hug, kiss or pat on the back – to us, the animals and her babies. In the past few weeks, she’s started puckering, which is ridiculously adorable. I can hardly stand how cute it is.

She’s really into dancing and loves to run up to us, grab our hands and then start spinning in circles. As you can see from the picture, she still loves reading, and we spend a lot of our days doing just that. We’re still enjoying our family story time each night, and we’re about halfway through The Two Towers right now.

Over the past couple months, but last month especially, she has become increasingly vocal. Her current favorite words are “baby” and “brrr.” She’s also very into making animal noises, which is really amusing for us.

The past few months have been filled with so many special moments with Clara that it’s hard to use a single blog post to encompass all of them. Her loving, thoughtful personality is really showing through, and I love spending every day with her. Even though things have been crazy here, the three of us have been enjoying ourselves, too.

We already picked a date for Clara’s party, and I’m super excited about it. I can’t even believe it’s right around the corner! I know we’re going to have so much celebrating with everyone, and even though Clara won’t remember, I know she’s going to have a lot of fun, too.

Clara is more than 18 months old now, and that also means she has been breastfed for eighteen months (plus 11 days, if we’re getting technical). I’m insanely proud of all of us. Just like last year, we went to the Virginia Capitol to participate in a group breastfeeding event last month. Clara is much more distracted these days and didn’t want to nurse, which was totally fine. I still wanted to go since I figured this was our last year to do so. I try not to talk a lot about breastfeeding, other than with Eric and friends I know that understand, but the truth is I’m really proud of doing it this long. My goal before she was born was to make it to eighteen months, and we did it. She’s always weaned herself to less feedings without any help from me, so I’m letting her lead the way for now. I know a lot of people look down on breastfeeding in general, or doing so past the age of one, and I don’t care. I think it’s awesome, so humph to them.

At her checkup today, Clara was 31⅛ inches tall and 20 pounds, 1.5 ounces. Our little munchkin is still wearing 12-18 month clothes, and I recently ordered fall clothes for her in that size. She’s definitely gotten taller, but she’s still pretty petite. Lucky for us, she can keep wearing some of her current clothes into cooler weather. Of course, that didn’t stop me from buying her some adorable new things during Carter’s Labor Day sale. There were so many owl outfits. I couldn’t resist.

In mid-August, Clara cut her first canine. It was not pretty, and it’s still coming through. So far, I haven’t felt a second one, but I know it’s on its way. I know other kids that didn’t cut their canines until after age 2, but I guess Clara wants to get them out of the way now. Once her canines are in, she’ll only have her 2 year molars left.

Continuing with the past couple months, Clara is showing her affection in even more ways. She started blowing kisses last month and does it all the time now. It is unbelievably precious. Just this morning, Eric found her snuggling with a fox doll (her new favorite) when she woke up. She loves kissing her dolls, the animals, people, books, pictures of babies on our phones, etc.

One thing that’s really signified her entrance into toddlerhood is her clumsiness. She’s scraped a knee, her forehead and gotten some bruises. She’s no longer content with walking and does this almost run thing now, hence the scrapes and bruises. She’s not the most graceful, and we often have to remind her to look in front of her when she’s running around. Her language is coming along, and sometimes I feel like she’s thinking “Why don’t you guys understand what I’m saying to you?” because she speaks in such a conversational tone.

I bought some crayons and a big roll of paper for her recently, and she’s shown some interest in coloring for short amounts of time. She still loves reading and will now bring us a book and back into our laps if we’re sitting on the floor. I love it. She’s also tried to take books to Abby and sit on her, which obviously doesn’t work so well. We’re still doing story time every night before bed, and it’s still my favorite part of the day. Just the three of us enjoying time together every night. It’s magical.

Apparently summer is over, and our sweet girl is now 18 months old. Whoa. We’ve had a busy summer – a trip to Savannah, cookouts, a trip to Philadelphia and a food blogging retreat, birthday parties, an engagement party, a wedding, and a whole lot of cupcake baking.

A lot has been going on with Clara the past few months. The most notable thing about months fifteen and sixteen was that Clara started to really show affection. She willingly gives hugs and kisses when asked and has started to cuddle her stuffed animals more. It is so adorable, and she’s just so sweet I can hardly stand it. She loves petting the animals and is usually gentle with them. She loves Chloe because of all her fluff, and I’m so glad Chloe is finally getting used to squealing and toddling Clara. She’s also been really into waving at everyone lately, at the store or while we’re out walking, pretty much any time she sees other people.

We had a bit of a rough patch during month sixteen, and Clara stopped sleeping well, seemingly out of nowhere. It could have been a developmental growth spurt or a physical growth spurt, but I really have no idea. She did cut her first canine in August, so that very well could have had something to do with it, too. We made it through, though, just with a bit more coffee than usual.

She’s still very into “reorganizing,” and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I pretty much can’t find anything in the bathroom now because Clara has put it in another drawer or cabinet. It’s amusing, though, and doesn’t really bother us since she gets such a kick out of it. The desk drawers are another story, and I’m running out of places to put things like stamp pads and paint and glitter. It seems like Clara is going to enjoy crafting when she’s older.

Clara has changed so much over the past couple of months. In her thirteenth month, she learned the word light and has been pointing to them everywhere we go. She loves to look up and say “ight” over and over again. She really started getting into pointing to things she wants this month and that has become more frequent and exuberant this month. The most frequently pointed to item is probably food, which should come as no surprise.

After catching the flu and being sick for over a week, barely able to crawl or do much of anything, Clara started walking at around 14.5 months. She had been taking steps on her own since before her first birthday but would always stop and sit down after just a few. She is now walking all over the place, sometimes still hanging onto the wall or stopping to crawl when she’s in a hurry. She’s very into “reorganizing,” in the sense that she likes to take items out of one drawer (in the bathroom and the office) and put them in another. She loves putting her toys in the desk drawers. She also likes opening the kitchen cabinets and playing with the cookware she can manage to get out.

She’s been nodding yes for quite some time and recently learned to shake her head no. She can point to her eyes, nose and mouth when we ask her to and is getting better at differentiating hair and ear. She also discovered that she can stick her finger in her nose (fun times) and belly button, though she prefers to lift my shirt to try to find mine. She’s recognizing more and more of her surroundings, and we may have heard her say Abby, cat and/or bath in the last few weeks. She’s also saying something that sounds like “what’s that” or “what’s this” when she points to objects. It’s not totally clear, but she consistently says it when she’s pointing, so we think that’s what she’s going for when she says it.

She doesn’t have another checkup until next month, but we think she’s put on some weight since her last one. She’s still petite but is eating a lot of food now. We actually had to order something for her instead of sharing our food at a restaurant last week. She ate all of it.

One thing she does that I absolutely adore is look out the window for Eric to come home. She will knock on the window or excitedly make her way to the front door when she sees him. It’s about the cutest thing ever, made cuter by the fact that Abby joins her. We joke that she’s like a nosy neighbor because she loves looking out the window when anyone is outside. She says something that sounds like “outside” when she’s at the window or pointing to it. Now that she’s gotten the hang of walking, it seems that most of her focus is on learning new words.

I’m so, so behind on updates. March was a busy month for Clara. Not only did she celebrate her birthday, but we also had two visitors from Alabama stay with us. First, Clara’s Aunt Crystal came to stay for Clara’s birthday party. We seriously could not have pulled off Clara’s party without her. She was a huge help and stayed up late with us the night before, even after a long day of travel. While we were cooking away, she was washing dishes and making room for us to prep and cook more food. I felt like I was scrambling the day of the party, but Crystal seemed to talk to everyone and refill food and do pretty much everything I should have done but was too frazzled to do. Once the party was over, we had a fantastic time hanging out with her and relaxing. It was a lovely visit.

A few days after Crystal left, our friend Kati arrived. We were so happy to have her visit for a few days! We showed her around Richmond, cooked some fun meals and just had an all around good time. We love having visitors, and it was so nice to have two so close together.

Clara was pretty small at her 12 month checkup, weighing in at just under 17.5 pounds and 28 inches tall. Our girl is pretty petite, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s still walking all around the furniture but only wants to take 3-4 steps on her own before sitting down. She’s eating more and more foods, and we finally found a food she doesn’t like – asparagus. While Crystal was visiting, Eric grilled steaks and Clara went crazy for them. We’ve started working on teaching her to point to her facial features when we name them. She’s learned where her nose is and also enjoys pointing to mine and Eric’s. I also picked up a few new books to add to our collection, mostly picture books to help her learn different items and simple words.

It’s official – we’re less than one month away from our little girl turning one! Her birthday will be here before we know it!

Clara is still working on standing/walking and has also been really into climbing lately. She recently discovered that the front door is magnetic, so she loves to crawl over there and stick her blocks to it.

Her hair seemed to grow out of nowhere. One day she woke up with bed head, and I thought “when did she get enough hair to have bed head?” Though it’s been so cold here that her pretty hair is often covered up with something warm, at least when we’re out.

Eric’s mom got us a membership to the Richmond Children’s Museum for Christmas, and we so excited to be able to take Clara there whenever the mood strikes. This is especially nice for days that are so cold we can’t/don’t want to do much outside.

Our munchkin is still eating wonderfully, but she did recently find out that Abby will come take food from her hands if she leans over as far as possible while in the highchair. Abby figured out quickly that Clara wasn’t the neatest eater, so she’s always nearby while Clara’s eating. We’re currently trying to decide how we’ll deal with this moving forward, because obviously we don’t want Clara to be encouraged to give food to Abby and we don’t want Abby eating a lot of our food. This will probably mean crating Abby during meal times, but we’ll see. It’s not a huge problem right now, but I see how it could be in the future.

Lately, Clara has been nodding her head up and down. It’s so amusing because she looks like a little bobble head. I think she figured out she could do it and didn’t want to stop because she enjoyed it so much. We can kind of get her to do it on command now, if we nod our heads. She’s also learned to clap and wave. It’s amazing watching her learn and discover new things, and I know that will continue for quite a long time.

Another month is gone, and this one is even crazier because we are less than two months away from celebrating Clara’s first birthday. How is that even possible?!

Clara is pulling herself up all the time these days and especially enjoys climbing on us. A couple of days ago, she attempted to move from one object to another while standing. She’s also really into letting go of whatever is helping hold her up, so I’m guessing she’ll be standing without support sometime in the near future. She falls almost immediately after letting go, but she just pulls back up and keeps going. It’s insane.

Though we can’t tell for sure, it looks like her top canines might be coming in. At the rate she’s going, her entire mouth will be full of teeth by the time her birthday arrives. Speaking of birthdays, I’m in full planning mode for hers. I’m seriously so excited to celebrate and have gotten a lot of menu and decorating advice from my dear friends. I’ve been working on her baby book so that we can have it out during the party, and I’ve got a long list of crafts that need to be done before then.