Clara is working hard with her Speech Therapist and Jason to improve her ability to make sounds. She can now say all of her vowel sounds clearly and with confidence. She has added the words "hole, mole, hat, agua (water in Spanish), and nana (for banana). Just the other day she finally said "bye bye" and waving her hand at the same time. This is milestone that will encourage other speech development. Just to make sure we're not missing anything we'll be taking her for further evaluation with folks from Children's hospital next week.
She is very involved in playing dress up these days, especially at bedtime as a way to prolong the sleep routine! Normally she wants to dress herself, including putting on her own pajamas for bed. Now she is eager to dress up others, including her baby brother if we don't keep a close eye on her! For Easter my mother gave Clara a white
straw hat. Turns out straw hats shouldn't be worn to bed :) She loves hats and gladly added it to her current collection (an assortment of summer shade hats and woolen caps that I don't use but actually fit her head).
Clara keeps herself busy playing by herself and "reading" to herself. She still sleeps about 12 hours but once in a while will wake up in the middle of the night crying (we haven't figured out why, nothing seems to make her happy except staying with her until she falls asleep. Well, that and grape flavored tylenol--we thought she was
teething at first, now we think she has just acquired a taste for the stuff.
She's looking forward to hanging out with her cousins in Iowa soon!
