Pulling to Knees

As you have seen, Clara is a Bird in motion. She can stick the sitting position now with ease and regularity, but she doesn't stay in it for very long before she is off. She is almost always off to something on which she can pull herself to her knees: the musical table*, the small white bookcase upstairs, the stool by Joe's bed, and the stair case (where she gets most frustrated as she cannot. Get. Up. Them!!!!!)

In the second picture, you can see Clara very intently considering a cylinder filled with beads that rattle when the cylinder is spun. It also cues up the alphabet. One morning, Joe had joined Clara at the table and, with his more advanced two-and-a-half-year-old knowledge, was spinning that cylinder for all he was worth and singing along with the ABCs (or, ABCD, as referred to by Joe). Julie watched in amusement as he (and the table) would get about as far as the Q-R-S range, when Clara would randomly hit something, prompting Joe to slap the cylinder again with a toddler vengeance.

*Back for an encore. When Joe used this to pull to a stand, it was warm enough that we could be outside and the table in the grass. For a fun trip down memory lane, and to see one of our favorite pictures of Joe that still hangs in our stairwell (it is the one on the right in the post), see: http://joeekkers.blogspot.com/2009/05/classy.html.

[Photo Editor's note: We are including the close-up shot as Baby Bird's two teeth are visible in it. False alarm on the top teeth. They are on their way, but not yet broken through.]