Quite Possibly the Greatest Toddler Toy Ever

With toddlers you can tell how popular a toy is by how much they cry when you have to stop playing with it. Well, when we stopped playing yesterday (after 30 minutes straight of playing with it) there was lots of crying and gnashing of teeth.  We had seen one of these a while back on a tv show or movie and I thought to myself, we have to get one. It is a ride on "roller coaster" for kids 2-5. They are kind of expensive new but yesterday I happened across one on craigslist for a lot cheaper.  I think I was more excited than anybody about it.
Esther loved it and she learned how to do it all by herself so that is nice. I wish we had a longer paved area so the car could go even further. When she gets older I may set up on the slope of a downhill just to see what happens. Anyway here is a little video of her playing with it last night.

She's a Biggin

We had Clara's 6 month check up at the doctor today.  It went good.  Basically, she is big, really big.  She weighs 21lbs 13oz and was 28.5 inches long.  She is approximately in the 115% for weight and height and 95% for head circumference.  She is the average size of a 12-14 month old.   Otherwise she is doing really good.  She is meeting all of her developmental milestones: rolling, sitting on her own, grabbing stuff, transferring things between hands, etc.  She is also super happy these days and gives really good happy faces.  The nurse and doctor were loving her big smiles.  She is ahead of where Esther was at this age with these developmental skills and she is ahead of where Esther was in eating baby food.
This past weekend we had to move Clara up to a bigger car seat and out of a infant car seat.  We had actually already had to get her out of our infant car seat at 5 months because she had outgrown it's size restrictions.  We borrowed a bigger sized infant seat from a friend but she outgrew that one also.  Ours she outgrew because of weight and the other one she outgrew because she was too long.  As a comparison Esther was 10 months old before she outgrew our smaller infant car seat (double Clara's age).  Anyway,  we had to buy a new set of car seats.  Clara is now in Esther's old convertible car seat.  Here are some comparison pics of when they first started using this seat.  They weighed about the same in these pics but Esther is thicker/wider and Clara is taller.......but Esther is 4 months older!!!!

Here is Esther at 10 months

Clara at 6 months in the same seat.  

And I decided to take a picture of Esther today for a comparison of how much she has grown.  She is almost 23 months old. 

6 months!

I can't believe it, but Clara is 6 months old today! I know it sounds cliche, but it has gone so fast. The first three months were really rough; Clara was not very happy about life! But now she is a very happy, fun baby. A few highlights/milestones:

• She has mastered sitting up in the past week or so. She likes to sit up and look around and play with her toys. 

Sitting up

• She rolls and scoots all over the place.
• Sleeping through the night (usually!). She goes to bed about 8:30 and sleeps until 6:30.
• She LOVES Esther. She would watch her all day long. She loves when Esther talks to her and hugs on her. She loves to grab handfuls of Esther's hair!
• Likes being outside. She likes watching Esther play and watching the dogs and cats. She loves it when the animals come close enough for her to pet/grab their hair.
• She has started sucking her thumb more. She mainly does it when she is tired or hungry.

• Eating cereal and baby food (green & orange veggies) and loving it
• We weighed her at home last week and she was 22 lbs. We go to the doctor next week, so we'll get her official measurements then. She is wearing 9-12 month clothes!

Clara's birthday!

One month old

2 months

3 months

4 months

5 months

Happy baby!