Milestones aren't just for the baby, baby!

I hate driving. I always have. Driving around town in high school nearly always flooded me waves of panic, fearing that I'd do something wrong, piss someone off, or just get into an accident. Oh, the stress!

Eventually, I did get over that. But I never enjoyed driving.

Upon moving to Mexico, I was really excited about the thought of living somewhere that has a reliable, cheap, and fairly efficient public transportation system. Wherever I have lived in Mexico, I have taken full advantage of the buses, combis, and taxis and gloried in the fact that I had absolutely no need to maneuver a car in the midst of Mexico's freakish traffic.

However, Saltillo's traffic follows fairly standard rules. Turning left from the right lane is actually discouraged here and the traffic police here really do have some clout. For example, taxi drivers insist that passengers in the front seat buckle up because they know that otherwise they'll get fined. Again, I was shocked and charmed by the level of civilization here.

This also means that I ran out of excuses for why I could procrastinate my mastery of the standard transmission vehicle that Mario owns. Reason #2: the heavier that Clara gets the less fun it is to strap her to my back while we ride the bus. Reason #3: while I'm beginning to find friends, they all live on the OTHER side of town. Boo.

So after months (OK, years) of touch-and-go "how to drive a standard transmission car" lessons, I finally traversed town by myself, with Clara shouting encouragement from the backseat, a few days ago. I feel like a real grown-up again.

Despite the fact that I'm back to the whole knotted-stomach, driving-induced stress that I experienced in high school, I know I can do it. The stress will pass eventually.

This made me think of Clara and her "quest" for increased mobility. I put quest in quotation marks, as she has made it clear that creeping and rolling around on the floor is as mobile as she wants to be, thank you very much. Quite like me and my satisfaction with the buses and taxis. It doesn't matter that she is over a year old and most other kids her age are at least experimenting with walking. I was over the age of thirty and had no desire to drive a car, like a "normal" adult.

Like me, she just needs some real incentive coming from deep within to make it worth all the effort of getting her legs under herself. She almost had it this morning when she really, really wanted a cup that was on top of the coffee table. But, like me driving the car, it will just take a lot of practice to get it.

She'll get there.

The Torquelich

My parents were just asking if I had any new photos of Clara. Nope. We haven't done much that's interesting recently, and all the pictures that I get of her playing look the same, because she generally does the same thing all the time. She's really hooked on the Container Game. She finds something that fits well into a container and then takes it out. Puts it in, takes it out. Ad nauseum. I made this even more exciting for her the other day when I gave her an old baby bottle, some diaper pins, and the sticks for her bottle-dryer. Hoo-nelly! What fun! She plays with these for about a half hour at a stretch. The bottle is particularly challenging as she can't jam her chubby little fist inside to get the pins back out. While she's figuring out physics, I get the dishes washed. Oh, boy.

However, I did take this video recently. Enjoy!

For those of you from camp, do you remember the Torquelich skit? I love that Clara makes the same noise that the Torquelich makes when it's hungry. And she came up with that all on her own. Isn't she so smart?

And if anyone knows how to turn these videos vertically, please fill me in (they're opened with Windows Photo Gallery).

She's Getting Bigger and Better

In typical Clara fashion, last week she reached a major movement milestone (sitting up on her own) and then promptly forgot about it. Or just doesn't care. Except that she really likes to sit up, so I'm thinking that she just can't remember how it was that she got herself up to a sitting position last week. Two months from now, she'll no doubt remember, once again giving me hope that she just may become mobile.

Now that she's gotten really good at getting a loaded spoon to her mouth, I thought I'd see what she would do with a full banana.

It took awhile, but she figured it out!

This evening she also asked for a napkin so she could wipe her mouth off. What a little lady!

That, or she just really likes playing with napkins.