There is no pretending that as Claire's mom, I am not biased in my judgment of her fantastic-ality. In my eyes, she is a beautiful, smart, and incredibly sweet child. She's a dream baby. Not gonna lie. Adding to the list of my dear baby's qualities, the kid is freaking hilarious. She's always been a funny baby but her comic talents were limited by her inability to talk. Now that she's a full on talker, her hilarity is uninhibited. Here are some of the recent things that she says/does that make me smile. Mind you, you have to imagine a 16 month old saying these things to really appreciate the comic genius :)

1. Claire started saying "ok". The funny part is that she not only uses it in the correct context, she totally mocks the way that I say it to her. She whips out her high-pitched, sing-songy voice...apparently that's how I talk. 

2. Claire's cousin Vera recently developed a strong love of singing the ABC's a few dozen times a day. Since Claire is in love with her cousin and since we get to spend a lot of time with her lately, Claire has been taking a stab at it herself. So far, Claire does a pretty solid job of getting to the middle of her ABC's but the age old alphabet roadblock, LMNOP, totally trips her up. Claire has come up with a simple solution. Once she hits the tough spot, she replaces LMNOP with ELMO-P. Genius right? Actually, I kind of enjoy her version more than the original. 

3. In the last few days, Claire has decided that her Daddy needs to see everything that she sees or does. We spent the weekend at my parent's house and any time she did anything (noteworthy or not), she would yell "Daddy, watch". It didn't matter if he was in the same room or not. In fact, based on her gleeful yelling "Daaaaaaaaaaaaadddddddddddyyyyyyyyyyyyy", from the other room, she might actually prefer it that way. In addition to making sure her Daddy is aware of everything she does, she also makes sure that he knows what's going on around us. Widening his horizons really. For example, we went to the beach on Saturday and there were groups of horses going by. Someone would say "Look Claire, horses". Claire would see the horse,  say "horse", then say "Daddy" until she got his attention and then would say "horse" in a matter-of-fact way...to be sure that he saw the horse too. Or maybe she thinks she's teaching him what a horse is. Could be either I suppose. Either way, she did this a least a few dozen times over the weekend for totally random things. I think Kyle liked the attention...and possibly learned some new words in the process. 

4. On a similar note, Claire loves to get her Grandpa's attention as well. Her recent joke is that when she's in her highchair, she waits until he isn't paying attention (i.e. trying to get something done) and then she yells "Gampa!" and as soon as he turns around to look at her, she lifts up her arms and does a funny little dance/wiggle and says "wooowoowoo". It's cute the first time she does it and hilarious the 34th time in a row she does it. 

5. Claire started adding y-endings to a bunch of words that she previously said correctly. I truly have no explanation for this. Rock has become rocky, hot is hotty (or I suppose hottie depending on the context), snack is snacky. She recently started saying her Aunt Lauren's name but somehow her interpretation of it is Lorly...have to admit, I think that one is pretty cute. We consciously make a point to say words correctly around her and don't cute-up the words we teach her (with the exception of maybe doggy or kitty but those are legit monikers in my book) so this is totally her own thing. 

6. This one is funny but scary at the same time. Claire's Grandma Susie recently brought over a new outfit for her, so we threw it on to see how it looked. I asked her to show me her outfit and she literally popped out a hip, held the pose, then looked at me. So I had her show her Grandpa and she did the same hip pop and looked over her shoulder at him. She "modeled" her outfit for everyone that was over in this manner before she got bored and started hitting things with stick (at least that's how most things end around our house, with Claire getting bored and whacking things with a stick). I'm curious if she'd do this again if I asked her to but I'm a little to frightened to try it!

Then there is the patented "Claire arm-cross" but that deserves it's own blog post. 

Since I'm pretty sure that 90% of the people who read my blog, skip my blabbering and go straight to the pictures, I don't want to disappoint. So I'll leave you with some photographic evidence that my child is silly (in case you weren't convinced). 

I've snicked every time I've seen this picture. I went to check out the evening lighting at a local park and stuck baby-model in front of the camera for some test shots. Her expression is hilarious to me and she's holding her arm like she's saying "awe shucks". 

Here she is checking out what Scout's up to under the bed. Maybe this is the source of the yoga pose, Downward Facing Dog! Eureka!

The dogs got a new water dish last week and Claire put it on her head at the store and proudly proclaimed "hat!". She decided that although she was banned from playing in the previous water dish, this one was fair game...even though, it's in the exact same spot and serves the exact same purpose as the old one. New bowl, new rules.