New Year's Eve

2012 was a very special year.  Our precious baby girl arrived and gave our lives new meaning.  Miss Claire Elizebeth added more excitement, laughter, smiles and love each day.  She taught us a lot while growing and learning on her own at the same time.  We look forward to each and every new year we get to celebrate with her.

Tonight, she is sound asleep in her bed.  Will and I are relaxing on the couch, watching Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve (wondering who some of these bands are), enjoying a quiet end to 2012 at home.

We look forward to 2013 and the adventures it may bring us, along with all of the special moments we can share with Claire!

Cheers!

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning was very special at our house this year.  Claire made the magic of the day come alive more than ever. 


Since she already had 2 Christmas's, she knew what to do with the presents when she saw them under the tree.  It seemed to be a kid instinct to not get too excited about the new clothes, but she liked her new books but got really excited about her new Leap Frog play table. 

The Hippo's mouth opens and closes, and says "hello" and "good-bye," and Claire waves every time, it's so adorable.

Nana and Papa Schlumpf came over for awhile and played with Claire and her new presents, and brought her a few more.

Later that afternoon we went back to Aunt Megan's for more fun with the Mineck side.




Playing with the blocks Daddy made me, a replica of a set Papa Rick had as a kid

It was a very special and eventful 1st Christmas with Claire.  We are looking forward to enjoying future Christmas's and having her understand and enjoy then even more!

Holiday Season

Claire enjoyed her first holiday season with all of the excitement it had to offer.

Though she didn't get to taste any of the yummy food we had at both Thankgiving dinners we attended, our little turkey gobbled up some love from our families.

 

eServ has a Santa Visit each year. We had low expectations of how Claire would like Santa, given that she's unsure of beards still. Surprisingly, she liked him!

 

 

Christmas was extra magical this year with Claire's wonder of the presents, and cautiousness to open anything (after we've tried to get her to not rip paper due to the fact that she'd put it in her mouth).  We spent time with both families, and Claire got spoiled with love and gifts! 

 

 We started our Christmas celebrations at Nana and Papa Schlumpfs...with Nana, Papa, Uncle Drew and Catey!

Claire got really excited when she opened the box that held a baby doll.  We couldn't get it out of the box fast enough for her!  This was very surprising as she hadn't seen a baby doll before, and was instantly attached.  Once we had the doll out of the box, Claire was giving it kisses and hugs!  So cute! 

 

 

She loved her new blocks, puzzles and car too - and looks forward to watching her new movies!

 

 

 

The picture below is special to me.  Drew and I took a picture in this sleigh when we were little.

 

Christmas fun continued on the Mineck side...with Nana and Papa, Aunt Megan, Uncle Jason, Aunt Whitney, Uncle Eggroll, Cousins Nash, Nolan and Nyle!



Nash reading a Christmas book to Claire

Rudolf has been spotted!

Daddy helping me open some puzzles from Santa



Building Forts

Will has been (im)patiently waiting for Claire to get old enough to enjoy making forts with him.  On a cold Sunday afternoon, Will got the blankets out and made a quick fort for Claire to play in.  I'm not sure who had more fun, Claire or Will...

November - December

The last two and a half months have flown by (and I've been slacking on my updates) and Claire is growing too fast and learning more each day. 

Since my last post, she quickly went from 9 months old to almost 11 months old in a blink. 

Some of the things she's learning (or tricks she's doing) and other milestones:

• Giving high-fives
• Self feeding with soft fruits and veggies (and still loves her puffs)

•  Is "SO BIG" with her arms up high
• Loves waving "hi" and "bye-bye" (she's very social and we joke she must think she's in a parade with as much waving as she likes to do) 
• Signing "more" and "all done"
• Loves rolling a ball back and forth
• Figured out how to sit up from laying down (and was really impressed with herself when we found her sitting up in her crib one morning).
• Blows kisses
• Plays "peek-a-boo" with her hands over her eyes
• Got TWO teeth (bottom 2 - just in time for Christmas!) :)
• Starting to crawl up on her knees finally (still does some army crawling, but gets around faster on her knees).
• Pulling herself up on EVERYTHING.  She is definitely a dare-devil and even attempts to move back and forth between objects (the ottoman to the chair, her play table to the bouncy)

 

• She's starting to point at things she's "talking" about and to (which is a lot of talking these days).
• She learned how to drink from her sippy cup - and really gets a kick out of it.  She really tips her head back to sip out of it, and gets a big smile on her face afterwards (so proud of herself).

• Sassing mommy - she has seen me shake my finger at her enough when she's getting into something she's not, that now she started shaking her finger at me!
• And for her final trick before the new year - standing up in her crib!  She hasn't started jumping in bed yet, but we know that is not far off.

Every day is an adventure with Claire, and we're loving every second.  Even if we are having teaching moments of what is ok to play with and what is not one of her toys, the challenging times are fun in their own way too.  Watching her explore and learn is worth every challenging moment with her.  It's so much fun to see the world thru her eyes now, and I can't wait to see what she continues to learn because she's teaching us at the same time.

Election Day

It's election day, and this year I now can say I "Hope" for a "Change." 

Right now our favored Governor Mitt Romney may not pull out a win in this very tight Presidential Election (it's almost 9:40pm and several swing states are still being counted).

Hopefully when we wake up in the morning, all will be right in the political world...especially for Claire's future...


**Update on this post: Barack Obama has been re-elected for a second term.  As Mitt Romney so elequently put it "This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation."

Two weeks of tu-tu much fun!

Over the last 2 weeks, Claire has been a busy girl!

We carved pumpkins and Claire was very curious about the gooey inside, and was a nice big drum to beat on.

  

For her first Halloween, Claire had "Pajama Day" at Daycare.  We didn't have Halloween jammies for her, but I made a little headband of "cat ears" to match her leopard jammies. 

For trick-or-treating, she turned into a little pumpkin!  Claire loved seeing the neighborhood kids come to the house to trick-or-treat and caught up with two of her favorite friends, Tyler Caulkins and Emma Pierce!

 

 

 

Emma showed Claire how to walk behind her music machine, and just a few days later Claire was pulling herself up on to it.

She's been a little feverish and cranky lately, and we're noticing her bottom gums are very swollen in two very distinct bumps.  I think she'll have some little teeth popping thru soon (or we hope so anyway)!

This past weekend she had her first ride in a grocery cart like a big girl.  She thought she was pretty hot stuff sitting up and looking around at everything.

 We decided to take another try at giving her Gerber Puffs to eat (she was not a big fan during the first attempts), and to our surprise, she picked them up and put them in her mouth!  She chowed right thru them!  She seems to enjoy just about any food we give her these days, but her favorite is by far the fruit baby food - we can't feed her fast enough! 

 

She will wave bye bye more now and loves to give hugs and kisses (which just melts my heart).  She's also starting to have an attachment to Mommy.  She wants to constantly be in my lap or close to me (and I'm not complaining).