Clara's eleventh month - Boston Family Photographer

I can’t believe I only have one more of these posts to write, and by then it will be her first birthday!!! When I was pregnant, I remember holding the bag of wooden discs for her monthly photos and not being able to fathom having a 10, 11, 12-month old next year. Now here she is! We’ve both been through so much change and growth in such a short amount of time! I’m feeling a bit nostalgic and sad that her first year is coming to a close, but mostly I’m excited because she’s getting more fun and interactive all the time.

This has been a month full of learning new words! She doesn’t say anything except for “hey” yet (which we are not really counting as her first true word), but she understands quite a few words and the actions/items that go with them. Here are the ones she knows:

• palmaditas / clap – her first true bilingual word! She will clap for either. E is so proud because he’s been working hard at teaching her Spanish. I also use some Spanish words around the house – I’m learning because of them! And when I’m at work, E uses only Spanish.
• botella/bottle (she freaks out and kicks her legs with happiness!)
• agua
• Alexa (sigh…she’s known this one since she was tiny! She looks up at the speaker when you say it)
• shimmy shimmy
• bang bang
• high five
• no no no (she shakes her head for this one)
• oreja (her Abuelo taught her this one!)
• hello – we are working on the beginnings of a wave 🙂

She’s cruising! She likes to stand while holding onto the couch and will cruise back and forth to chase and eat the TV remote (ha!) She can take a few tentative steps if we hold her hands, but usually she prefers to sit straight down and crawl instead.

She has six teeth. Holy moly, that happened fast! Her toothy grin is so cute.

We’ve started brushing her teeth, which she begrudgingly tolerates. It’s a whole operation involving E distracting her with peekaboo while I pin her arms down and brush.

Adjusting to the Delta variant news has felt tough. We canceled our long-anticipated first family vacation as well as a visit with my 87-year-old grandma. We’ve only ever known parenting during a pandemic, and we’ve gotten really used to adjusting our expectations and figuring out new solutions for how we thought things would go. But even so, the last few weeks have felt harder than usual. We were finally breathing a little easier (literally) and now we don’t know what’s next. We want childcare, time with family and friends, and more chances to experience the world outside of our neighborhood, but our risk tolerance is a little bit skewed these days, and it’s hard to figure out what we’re comfortable with when we’re so used to staying isolated.

Baby gear has officially taken over our apartment. We replaced our coffee table with a playmat and Pikler triangle, and we added a giant playpen in the middle of everything. Although our home is not going to be winning design awards anytime soon, it’s totally worth it to be able to put her down for a few minutes and do some laundry or dishes without worrying about her eating carpet lint 🙂

She’s still a great sleeper and has started sleeping until 8:30 a.m. most days, which almost feels like a crime to admit! Once in awhile she will protest a nap and just play in her crib – but once she gets tired enough, she flops onto her belly, curls up into a little nugget, and goes to sleep.

Other cute things form this month:

• She’s still a total bookworm. She methodically pulls all the books out of her book bin one by one, and then she sits and turns the pages for a long time.
• She likes Frank Sinatra’s song “Pocket Full of Miracles” and dances to it!
• She loves to show off “tricks” like fake laughing to get us to smile!
• “Huggies” are still going strong! She’s very selective about when she gives her hugs, but when she does, it’s the best feeling in the whole world.

Her squishy belly is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world. And those sweet soft cheeks!

E had some time off of work, and even though we didn’t travel together like we had planned, it was still nice to spend time as a family at home.

These two. Forever besties.

I adore these lemon photos so much. In true Clara fashion, she pulled the lemons out of the basket one by one and threw them on the sidewalk.

This summer, we spent a lot of family time at this beautiful garden in our neighborhood. It’s such a nice spot to spread out a picnic blanket and eat a takeout lunch.

First ride in a bucket swing!

Is it really summer without watermelon?! I ate SO MUCH when I was pregnant with her, so I’m not surprised that she liked it!

This was a really special day: my best friend Krysten got to hold her for the very first time since she was born!! This was right before we started taking more precautions due to Delta, and I’m so glad the timing worked out. Our last mask-free hang for awhile.

With summer starting to wrap up and Clara getting bigger by the day, I worked on switching out her 6-12 month clothes for size 12-18! I’ve been collecting future sizes for her whenever I see something really special (often on Facebook secondhand groups), and I had the most fun getting everything washed and hung up for her. I’ve been making outfit flatlays for her since I was pregnant last summer, and they have been a fun way to exercise my creativity. I’m sure I will love looking through these photos when she’s all grown up!

We tried to get out a lot and take family walks in new places. This was one of those walks:

We also took some updated tripod family photos at our favorite neighborhood spot 🙂

This one is my favorite…definitely framing it somewhere in our house!

Another day, another walk! This time showed her some of our favorite spots in our old neighborhood, Fenway. We grabbed takeout and ate on the stadium bleachers just like old times.

This little Messi jersey was part of my Father’s Day gift to E (it had been on his wish list for a long time!) We finally took some pictures of them in their matching outfits. Coincidentally, three days later Messi announced that he’s leaving F.C. Barcelona (E’s favorite team for decades). Luckily he has a new favorite soccer player now: Clara!

Our hot mess of a living room. We replaced the coffee table with a giant playmat, and we took one of the couch cushions off to help her learn how to cruise.

I made us a summer bucket list of activities to try with her. First thing on the list? Our bubble machine! I bought this for work a few years ago, but now it’s going to get a lot of extra use 🙂

No matter how much we moved the bubble machine, she kept trying to crawl right up to it and get bubbles in her face. Silly kid!

These next two melt my heart…

Another thing on the summer bucket list: taking one last trip to the beach together. This view of her enjoying her bottle by the ocean cracked me up!

She enjoyed playing in the tide pools…until she snuck an entire handful of mud into her mouth and realized it didn’t taste so great!

Love love love this photo of the two besties eating dinner together on the beach.

A very “real life” pic for you: E tackling a particularly smelly diaper change while I play peekaboo from the closet.

That SAHM/work-at-home-mom life! Taking a quick break from editing to hug my girl!

Cruising like a pro.

I’m slowly working up the courage to drive in Boston, and we’ve gone out for several practice runs lately. We found this beautiful forest by chance one night when we went out for a drive.

My attempt at capturing her toothy grin! The easiest way to get her to laugh is to tickle her big ‘ol belly 🙂

Testing the light for me before a client session one night:

Love the two outtakes on the right: flashing her bloomers, and the bottom expression that says, “Hey mom, you can’t fool me!” She is the spitting image of my husband as a baby in that photo.