She is a Biped

Thursday April twenty-eighth, Clara Grace, sat on her Mommy’s lap to play with her wooden activity block. Without warning, she took hold of the squiggly bars on top and pulled herself up to a standing position. She was wobbly, but held on for at least five seconds without support. “What a big girl,” her mommy declared in surprise.

Impressive in a Scary Kind of Way

Clara Grace’s Daddy left his daughter alone for just one second on the morning of Thursday, April twenty-seventh, but just one second was all it took. When he departed, Clara Grace sat benignly on her nursery rug rocking her toy fishbowl in front of her and listening to its cheery bubbling sounds. This would be a fine moment, her daddy thought, to go and put on a pot of coffee. He promises he was only gone for half a minute, but when he reentered the nursery, an extremely different scene played out before him. Somehow, there was his baby girl in the air, tummy down on top of the fishbowl, with her arms and legs flailing wildly to maintain balance. For a few seconds, Clara Grace remained suspended in a superman like pose, until inevitably, she rolled not so gracefully onto the carpet. Happily, her daddy reports that Clara Grace shows no signs of trauma. Without a peep, she continued her play. Though her daddy did not see the means by which his daughter actually mounted the wobbly fishbowl, the incident clearly prophesies events to come. If Clara Grace can manage to get into this amount of mischief after being able to sit on her own for only a few short weeks, her parents shudder to imagine the future predicaments greater mobility has in store.

First Word?

It is a very real possibility that Clara Grace vocalized her first word on Monday, April the twenty-fifth. While playing in the yard with her mommy on a cheerful spring day, Clara Grace watched Katie, the Australian Shepherd; persistently drop her slobbery ball on mommy’s foot to be kicked. Distinctly, and with evident effort, Clara Grace announced, “Dog.” Her mommy interrupted her phone conversation in order to report to Liana, “What do you know? My baby girl just said ‘dog!’ Of course,” Clara Grace’s mommy acknowledged after the long moment of disbelieving silence on the other end of the line, “Of course, she probably didn’t really mean anything by it.” Tuesday proved to be rainy and cold, so Clara Grace and her mommy stayed indoors. And that might have been the end of it, except that while playing in the back yard on the afternoon of Wednesday the twenty-seventh, Clara Grace very clearly declared “Dog,” once more. This time, her mommy reacted with a bit more enthusiasm “Yes!” she exclaimed, “Yes, this is a dog!” As she spoke, she bent down to scratch the top of the drooling Australian Shepard’s head. Clara Grace’s mommy is well aware that most everyone will read this report with a skeptical eye. After all, at this point, the consonants D and G do admittedly make up the vast majority of her daughter’s vocal repertoire. However, the facts remain that Clara Grace made a distinct effort to pronounce each part of D-O-G. She has repeated the word twice so far, and she has not vocalized it as part of her many babblings while indoors. And so there it was, with that one little vocalization, all the hopes Clara Grace’s mommy had cherished of hearing that magical word, “Mama,” roll with first importance from her daughter’s tongue were painfully stripped away. And as much as Clara Grace’s mommy and daddy hate to admit it, after a few more days of examination it may be declared that Katie, the insanely irritating Ausie, has claimed the honor of being Clara Grace’s very first word.

Potential for Percussion Concussion

Clara Grace learned to beat two toys together on Tuesday, April the twenty-sixth. Proudly she sat on the living room floor and began a percussive concert for her mommy. In her right hand, she held the yellow ball that crowns her stacking tree, and in her left, the red stacking star. The two plastic toys made extremely gratifying knocks as Clara Grace beat them together in varying rhythms.

Makes You Sick

On Sunday, April the twenty-fourth, Clara Grace showed signs of being sick for the second time. Her mommy got her fever down with a little bit of Tylenol, but poor Clara Grace was left with a runny nose and sore throat. It wasn’t until Clara Grace’s mommy and daddy also succumbed to the illness that they realized just how stuffy and sore their daughter must be feeling. Yet again, Clara Grace never once showed signs of complaining. Even when her congestion made eating and sleeping nearly impossible, she smiled and kept at it. While listening to the hoarse coughs from the crib in the middle of the night, Clara Grace’s mommy wanted to cry for the little girl who refused to cry for herself. But on hearing Clara Grace babbling herself to sleep with her new consonant sounds, she decided to be brave just like her little daughter.

Animation

On Wednesday, April the thirteenth, Clara Grace presented her mommy with yet another new trick. All at once, she began bouncing up and down like a pony rider on her mommy’s lap. This was an especially fun developmental milestone since she now looks absolutely adorable when she becomes excited.

Copy Frog

On Monday, April the eleventh, Clara Grace invited her friend Nicholas over for lunch. While the two mommies conversed, Nicholas showed off one of his old talents. Since a very young age, whenever his feet come into contact with the ground, Nicholas has been jumping like a frog. Clara Grace watched in wonderment. Jumping was something she had not yet attempted in all her six months. In sheer admiration, she bent at the waist and then threw her body upwards. Unfortunately, this did not have quite the desired effect. Time and time again, she studied the bouncing baby boy and then doubled over for another go. When things seemed to be at an impasse, Clara Grace’s mommy tried to lend a hand by pushing on the backs of her daughter’s knees. “Bend yourself here,” she told her perplexed child. Several days after Nicholas went back to his home, Clara Grace was still valiantly trying to propel her fourteen pound self into the air from the waist up. In the end, she put jumping on the back burner in order to focus on other more pressing developmental milestones.

When There's Nothing to Do

Clara Grace experienced her first trip to the zoo on April ninth. Any animal that was nearby and fast moving held her in rapt attention. The lumbering elephants in their multi acre habitat, on the other hand, were a mammoth disappointment. Their fence was rather tasty though, so it wasn’t an entire loss. Her favorite exhibits included the mere cats, llamas, goats, monkeys, birds, and fish. A tank full of tropical sea creatures absolutely delighted her. Perhaps this has something to do with the early influence of her daddy’s murals in the nursery.

The Best Toy

Clara Grace amused herself on the morning of April sixth by rolling across her nursery floor through the obstacle course of interesting toys her mommy had laid out. First, she pulled the large gumball machine toward herself and pressed the lever to receive her prize. Then she rolled twice and wound up beside her fishbowl, which she rocked vigorously to obtain music and bubble sounds. Then she was off for a rocking dish, which contained several large balls filled with various sea creatures. She kicked it repeatedly and was rewarded with the raucous knocking of its plastic balls. Next she found her way to a cloth block, which she flipped over and over with each side producing a different song. She reached the finish line and bumped up against her blow up turtle on whose back she had first rolled over so many weeks ago. Her mommy reentered the room after eating breakfast to find Clara Grace stroking the turtle’s polka doted foot as if to tell mommy and the turtle, “Look what I can do now. Although this was not the first time Clara Grace played by herself, it was the first time she played in her room making decisions about which toy to play with. Mommy is still useful however since at this point, Clara Grace only rolls one direction efficiently and needs to be reset at the beginning of the track.