- She is an excellent eater, still tries pretty much everything and isn't too picky. She is more of a grazer and would like to eat all day if I let her
- I would say about 90% of the time she is in a leotard. She calls it her "ballerina" and it is her favorite outfit. Lately she has added a couple of tutus into the rotation as well, over the leotard, even if the leotard already has a skirt attached. She will wear this whether it 20 degrees outside or 90, she claims to never be cold (we obviously don't let her leave the house in it).
- She is extremely easy going and quite goofy. Contrary to her older sister, nothing really ruffles her feathers and it takes a lot to make her upset. Case in point today, Kaitlin was being exceptionally whiney after waking up from her nap, and Claire was being her usual happy go lucky self. Kaitlin burst into tears b/c I "smiled at Claire and not at her" (wish I was making this up) and I said "Well, look at how Claire is acting and look at how you are acting, and then you will see why I smiled at Claire and not at you" and Claire (in her cute Claire voice, this story really loses it b/c you can't hear her) goes "I'm not all crying, wah wah wah, I happy." And then proceeded to make funny faces at Kaitlin to make her laugh for a good 5 minutes. Love that girl.
- Apparently she also loves to be the center of attention. Maybe that's not the right way of saying it, b/c she doesn't necessarily do things to draw attention to herself, but she doesn't have any sort of stage fright. Every day at preschool they have chapel in the morning and her teacher is the one who leads it for the whole school, and she's been up there for months leading it along with Ms. Liz. I got to see this in action when I went up for the Valentine's party. She stand up there and does all the hand motions to the songs, leads the Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem, she's just a regular mother hen up there.
- She cracks me up with the way she talks, she is just so matter of fact about everything. She is always laying out what the rules are and what different consequences are if you don't follow the rules. She basically talks and narrates the whole day in this matter of fact tone, kind of with a shrug of her shoulders. I pretty much want to eat her up on a daily basis.
- She adores Kaitlin and wants to do everything she does (the leotard thing above started with sissy going to dance class every week). They love to play together, run around screaming and chasing each other, tickling one another. They really are a delight to watch. But she still hasn't mastered control over her impulse to hit/pull hair, etc, so when she is done playing, she is DONE playing and you better watch out. Kaitlin is so patient with her though and never fights back, which I am thankful for b/c I think if she ever figures out that she's got 25lbs on Claire she could crush her.
- Her favorite activities these days are painting and glueing, thanks to school. She is pretty neat about it so I let her do it when she asks, she loves to paint her hands and make handprints, then wipe it all off and do it again, and again, and again. And we go through a lot of glue as she takes one sheet of paper, rips it into smaller pieces and then glues each piece onto another piece of paper. She asks to do this pretty much every morning first thing "Mommy, can I glue?"
- She's a great listener and generally does things the first time I ask her to. I list this b/c that is still a struggle with some people in the house. :-/
- She is extremely independent, to the point where I have to remind her that Mommy still has to help her with some things (pouring her own milk - she'd rather go to the fridge, get it out and do it herself; I take her potty only about 25% of the time, she usually does it herself and doesn't even tell me, etc)
- She loves to say her prayers at night and her favorite thing to say is that she's "thankful that God made me SOOOO happy!".
We love our Claire Bear!
