Our little dairy "queen"

Clara has started eating dairy for real. She started with cheese crackers, which admittedly, have very little cheese in them. But crackers are a familiar form of sustenance, so she took to them easily with no adverse reactions. Because she's had bad reactions to bananas and nuts, we've tried to be very careful about introducing new foods and being watchful for possible allergic reactions. So last week Clara had her first yogurt, and she loved it! Thus far, she seems to have tolerated it well. Exciting dairy-filled meal possibilities await!

Happy Valentine's Day

Clara and I spent Valentine's Day, strangely enough, with her Grandparents Bamford. They invited us out to the Bellevue Club for a mom and baby yoga class taught by Whitney Stern, who is the back-up doula for Mara Benedict, who teaches the parent and baby yoga class at Lotus Yoga in Columbia City. Small world! We had a private lesson since we were the only ones who came. Clara was teething something fierce, so we did a lot of poses where I could hold her or she could hold on to me. Despite not feeling well and having had skipped her nap, Clara managed the class and our lunch with the Bamfords very well.

Greg had a Strategic Planning Meeting at Overlake and subsequently was stuck in traffic, so Clara and I had a "romantic" dinner with just the two of us. To show how much she liked her dinner, she smeared rice in her hair and dumped a handful of it over her chair. She had a multi-course dinner of tofu and rice, kiwi, cheerios, raisins and applesauce. After not wanting to eat most of the day because of her mouth pain, she certainly rediscovered her appetite at dinner. We topped off the evening with a much-needed bath. Greg got home just in time to give her a good-night kiss.

I haven't taken any new pictures lately since Clara spends a great deal of time either in my lap or being held these days. You'll just have to make do with some oldies but goodies from a few weeks ago.

Busy, busy January

It's been 2 weeks since my last post, and here I am asking myself: How did January go by so fast? The best answer I could find is: We've been on the party circuit. We celebrated with 2 friends' birthdays 2 weeks ago: Henry, who turned 2; and Paul, aged 2 and then some. Clara loved both parties because a) she loves a party, and b)both accomodated her love for fun toys and goldfish crackers.

Then last weekend we had a special visit from Uncle Fun (aka Russell!) Clara was very taken with Russ, after she got over the initial confusion when he emerged from our basement Saturday morning. (She was asleep when Russ arrived Friday night.) We were blessed with the best weather we've had all winter, so it was out into the great outdoors for us. We hiked to the breath-taking top of Little Mt. Si on Saturday (only to realize the camera was down in the parking lot below us--2.5 miles away). We also went for a long walk along Alki Beach and while we didn't don our shorts, some brave joggers did. We had our share of downtime too, playing peanuts, watching Clara play with toys, and visiting our favorite novelty toy store, Archie McPhee. There, Russ was taken with a miniature cubicle set, and Clara enjoyed shaking a pair of maracas with the Star of David on them, but in the end we went home amused yet empty-handed.

I've also gone "back to work". Starting last week, Clara's Bamford grandparents are spending Fridays with her while I try to get my private practice off the ground. I'm focusing my therapy practice on postpartum and post-adoption families, so I've been networking, passing out business cards, and writing yet another blog about issues that affect families with young children. (Check it out at www.lifetransitions.blogspot.com). I'm excited to be "back to work", but it also means that I spend Clara's nap times working on the business, AND preparing meals, AND doing laundry, AND scheduling our busy activity calendar, etc. Our days were full before--how much more can we cram in?

So how do we make it through the day? Apparently, with a little help from Starbucks.