Baa, baa black sheep

Say these few words and Claire's face will light up like it's Christmas. She will immediately start saying 'baa baa' with you, and look at you with wide eyes and a smile as you sing the song. When you get to the 'yes sir' part, she will nod emphatically, her head tilting way back and way down in an exaggerated motion, and she'll say 'essss'. I'm not sure why she loves this song, but it is by far her favorite song in the whole world.

Kate is starting to 'read' books. I guess we don't have that many in our collection, and she has heard them enough times to repeat them back to us. The other night, she 'read' Brown Bear, Brown Bear to her sister. Adorable.

Maybe it's the whole milk? The week before her birthday, Claire started talking. She says 'puppy', 'bunny', 'mommy', 'daddy', 'aaaah duhh' (all done), 'baby', 'baa' (ball, and of course the intro to the aforementioned song), 'ducky' and 'bye-bye'. She also started walking on her birthday.

We Netflixed Happy Feet, and Kate thinks it's pretty funny. I think it's pretty preachy. Both girls love to dance to the music. Kate also finds Looney Tunes to be hysterical.

Claire had her 12mo well-baby check last week, and is now 21lbs 5oz, and 30 3/4" tall. She also has 6 teeth (4 on top and 2 on the bottom) and her lower left canine is coming through.

When we were on the airplane, Tim drew Kate pictures of what we were doing, to entertain her and to take notes for us. Her notebook is full of cute cartoon drawings of our trip. It was also a good way for me to remember some fun moments:

• Kate running and running and running around the airport, in an attempt by us to wear her out. It sort of worked.
• I think she was afraid of the moving sidewalk at first, but then she loved it. She especially liked being faster than me, as I pushed Claire in her stroller and walked on a non-moving portion of flooring.
• During our connection in Houston, she looked out the window at a 747 and said, "Get on other airplane?" She likes them, apparently. She also said, "We go to airport every day?", and "We take seatbelt off now?" in hopes of getting out of her seat and causing a ruckus.
• We started to wonder if we should be worried about one of our airplane rides, as Kate studied the EP card for about 10 minutes.
• We got in trouble from one of the unpleasant flight attendants who didn't appreciate us changing Claire's diaper on our seat right before take-off. Tim had checked, though, and could not find a changing table in the tiny room that passed for a lavatory.

I am glad I didn't have to take the girls alone on that trip - I do not know how I would have done it. They did pretty well, but when one acted up, the other joined in, and I would have been pulling my hair out after the first leg. I would also like to say 'thank you' to all who tried to entertain Claire by playing peek-a-boo with her. She loved it, and it was a great distraction. I hope I can be as helpful to other parents someday.