Busy, Busy!

Claire has been busy in the past week! She's graduated from sitting and a sort-of modified Army crawl to a full-fledged crawl. She's fairly picky about what she deems worthy of crawling for - the leading contenders are her stacking cups and magazines (they are fun to chew on and tear up!). :) I have to admit to tricking her a little by putting these objects of desire just out of reach, and then moving them further and further away as she starts crawling for them. It's really cute! Mom and Dad visited over the weekend, and she really impressed them with her new trick.

We've also continued working on eating finger foods and transitioning from bottles to cups. She's having a hard time tilting the sippy cup far enough to get any liquid out, and doesn't really want any help. For the past couple of nights we've offered her a straw cup (it has a little valve that reduces some of the spilling), and last night she really seemed to start understanding how to use it. She would take a few bites of her pancake, then reach for the cup. I'd hold it for her so she could get a few sips of her water, then she'd turn back to her pancake until she would indicate she wanted more water. If anyone has suggestions on transitioning from bottles, I'd love to hear them!

Another big change - Claire is going to start at a new school at the beginning of March. She's been doing fine at her current school and always seems to have a good day, but we'd been feeling like she needed a little more stimulation. So, we decided to move her to another school that seems to have a better curriculum (it was my first choice from the beginning, but they didn't have an opening when we moved). Since she's so close to turning 1, they want to go ahead and put her in the 12 - 18 month room rather than having her start in Infants and move over a month later. I was really impressed with what her new class was learning - they sit in chairs at little tables rather than high chairs, nap on mats rather than in cribs, learn signs and new words, do lots of crafts, etc. The lead teacher of the class has a Masters in early childhood development, so I'm really excited that Claire will have such a qualified person watching over her while we're at work.

Claire demonstrating her favorite game - "Bang! Bang!"