Oh man! Between being back to work, Clara getting more mobile, and hosting lots of visitors, these posts are getting harder and harder to keep up with! I’m so grateful to have the monthly deadline as accountability to keep up with personal photos, otherwise I would be buried in a mountain of RAW files with no hope of catching up before she leaves for college. Yikes!
Here are the big updates from this month:
- Clara met her Abuelos for the very first time!!!! We had been trying to coordinate their visit for many months, and it was such a gift to welcome E’s parents to Boston. We had a wonderful time with them, and tears were shed by all when it was time for them to head home again.
- Crawling! Clara’s arms got so strong from army crawling that she wasn’t all that interested in learning how to crawl on all fours…she could get around pretty well by dragging herself everywhere (even over obstacles like my legs!) and wasn’t very motivated to learn anything different. My friend Ashley signed us up for a crawling class since she knew I was worried about it, and after a few days of exercises to strengthen Clara’s hips, she started taking her first couple of crawling steps at around 8.5 months old! I’m so excited about this milestone!
- She can also stand up by herself while holding onto furniture – aahh!! When she does that, she looks like a giant toddler?!
- She sprouted her first tooth!! It’s so wild that her gummy grin is changing now!
- She’s on the move! Clara usually only wants to snuggle while reading a book or right after a bottle – otherwise, she’s busy getting into everything. I miss my cuddly baby, so once in awhile I will let her fall asleep next to me in bed before I put her in the crib for her morning nap. It’s heaven to watch her sleep.
- Work changes for both E and me: I had my first client session since re-opening KLP, and E went back to the office one day a week. He will have to return to the office full-time on July 6th, so we are savoring our last days with him around the house.
- Of course, our job timing coincided perfectly with some new separation anxiety :/ I learned quickly that when I say goodbye, Clara cries pretty hard, so I have to sneak out the door when I leave to meet clients. It breaks my heart, since I don’t want to leave her either! But I also kind of love that some days she only wants mama.
- The start of summer! They say you only get 18 summers with your kids, and I am taking that to heart. Our summer calendar has filled up quickly, but I’m trying very hard to make space for enjoying the summer as a family. We’ve been enjoying lots of pool time, chilling on the grass in the backyard, barefoot stroller rides, and walks around the neighborhood to pick up iced coffee. Summer memories are extra sweet.
I’m also appreciating this season because it’s wild that only a year ago, I was still pregnant. This season brings back memories of sitting on the porch barefoot eating watermelon and dreaming about our girl. Now that she’s here, there is a lot less sitting and a lot more diving after her as she tries to get into something, haha!
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Clara can understand a few words: high five, bang bang, and bye bye. The first word she understood, sadly, was Alexa. She’s actually been responding to that one for a couple of months now…she knows that when we say Alexa, it usually means music is about to start, and she’ll look up at the speaker. She knows the location of Alexa in every room, which is kind of scary. So much for our efforts to limit tech in this house, I guess?
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She’s having lots of fun with her hands this month: snapping her fingers (or at least trying to copy us when we snap), twirling her wrists around, holding them up in the air, and giving us high fives!
I had the hardest time narrowing down the images from this month, so please forgive me for about the million and a half photos that follow…
One of our last days with our beloved Lovevery play gym! Now that she’s on the move, we’ve graduated to a pack ‘n play instead …that way, when we need to run to the bathroom, we know she’s safely contained for a hot second.
The kid still loves her food! We are still doing BLW for dinner every day, and we’re also trying to add solids for lunch now that she’s 9 months. It’s fun to watch her get messy, but it’s also HARD work prepping meals and then cleaning up afterward!
So many hours clocked in our backyard, especially with her little kiddie pool! We have loved spending time out here with her!
The first time I realized she could stand up all by herself…oh, this picture melts my heart!
So proud of her!!!
The face on the left…LOL
Post-work snuggles with her daddy.
We got a foldable Pikler triangle to help her with crawling and standing, and she’s really enjoying it so far! I can’t wait to see her climb all over this when she’s older. It cracks me up when she turns around like this…like, “Mom, look! I can do it with only one hand!”
I didn’t realize when I took these photos, but she was in the middle of popping her first tooth…hence the extra-rosy cheeks! Poor girl!
Her WTF face…an exact duplicate of my husband’s when he was a baby. This one cracks me up.
Teaching her how to kick a soccer ball for the first time!
Neighborhood strolls in her sunnies!
Finally getting to see some friends in person for the first time since the beginning of COVID! She loved hanging out with Jason and Ali!
I’ve enjoyed hanging out on the porch with her now that the weather is nicer. She loves to crawl up onto this pouf!
With all of the ways Clara is changing and growing this month, I feel acutely aware of the true baby days slipping through my fingers…so I asked E to take these photos of the two of us. Just me and my favorite girl in the whole wide world.
Forever trying to yank earrings out…LOL. Ouch!
Always kissing those baby toes!
Please forgive this ridiculously Photoshopped pool photo…I could not resist 😉
Her mischievous smile that means she is up to no good! 😉 In this case, trying to eat alllll of the leaves!
Our first trip to the zoo! She didn’t really notice many of the animals (except for the ostrich that kept parading back and forth in front of us), but we still enjoyed the family outing.
Meeting her Abuela and Abuelo! Such a special week that we’ve been anticipating for almost nine months! Now Clara has met all four of her grandparents 🙂
I knew she would love her Abuelos, but I underestimated how quickly she would become besties with her grandpa. These two were attached at the hip for the entire week. I especially loved hearing him read books in Spanish!
E’s signature move that he dubbed “the poop cannon.”
I only ever grabbed this one photo of Clara dragging herself around only using her arms!
Daddy teaching soccer tricks in their Barcelona jerseys:
Abuelo invented a game called oreja, which basically consists of them grabbing each other’s ears over and over again.
On their first night in town, we took them on a mini tour of the Charles River Esplanade and Back Bay. That was our first time back downtown in quite awhile, and Clara’s first time staying out past her bedtime! Hence the PJs and sleepy face in this next photo!
Even though we would have gladly cooked for E’s parents, his mom insisted on taking over our kitchen to cook all of her signature Mexican recipes: enchiladas, pozole, tostadas, and homemade salsa and beans every day. What a gift!
On their last night, we ventured downtown again and enjoyed walking along the water!
Looks like she’s casting spells with a wand, but really she’s just examining a flower, Clara-style!
Her faaaavorite new activity is kneeling in front of her book bin and tossing all the books onto the floor, one by one. Already making a mess and I’m here for it 😉
For Father’s Day weekend, we took our first family day trip! We headed out to Ipswich for strawberry picking at Russell Orchards and a visit to Crane Beach down the road.
Watching Clara eat the strawberries that we picked for her was one of the most pure, joyful memories of this past year…I will hold it in my heart for years to come.
That single tooth…so cute!
I laughed so hard seeing her dribble bright red juice all over her white dress. (for the record, Oxiclean is a true miracle worker, y’all! Not a stain to be found after treating it!)
When she was done eating, she thought it would be more entertaining to dump all the strawberries out on the ground. 🙂
On to the beach! She was NOT a fan at first and didn’t even want to let her feet touch the sand…but after awhile, she seemed to really enjoy watching the waves come and go.
A very kind stranger came up to us on the beach and offered to take a few family photos for us…thank you so much, whoever you are!!!
Afraid to stand on the sand…but as long as dad held her, she loved it!
Love those sandy beach toes.
…and that brings us to nine months! Phew! Thank you for following along with our adventures this month…I’m so glad to be able to share them here on the blog!
Updates from previous months:
