Claire's camera face...

Ice Skating

Last week we went ice skating with the family. It is a tradition that we have done for as long as I can remember. Despite staying up all night long with a sick baby the night before and despite the huge blisters that I got on my feet from ice skating, we really had alot of fun.

Adoption

Last year was the best year ever. The reason why it was so great was because we were able to start our family through adoption. It was a long and stressful process, but in the end it was all worth it. We can't even begin to express the happiness we felt when we found out that a birth mother wanted us to adopt her precious baby. Or how excited we got when our birth mother called us in the middle of the night from the hospital saying that our baby would be born soon. Or the peace we felt the first time our birth mother placed Claire in our arms. We got to know our birth mother really well and she will forever be a part of our family. We love her so much.

This year we plan on putting our paper in again so that we can get Claire a little brother or sister. We ask you all to please pray for us and help us find another precious baby to add to our family. Feel free to find out more about the miracle of adoption at www.itsaboutlove.org

Why We Love Claire

We love her camera face. She will be all smiles until we break out the camera. Then her eyes get all big and her mouth hangs open. If we want a smile, we have to trick her or hide the camera.

Claire will eat ANYTHING!! Right now she really likes spicy food. Her eyes will start to get watery from the food but she will throw a fit if we take the food away and try to give her something else.

She always wakes up happy in the morning. She will start making a “whoo” sound and will usually continue this until we go get her out of the crib. It sounds like there is an owl in the nursery.

She thinks that Baby Einstein is funny. She gets excited when I put a Baby Einstein movie in for her and she will laugh and clap her hands at her favorite parts.

She hates getting dressed. I mean she really throws a huge fit. It can seriously take at least ten minutes to get her dressed because she is kicking her legs and flipping onto her stomach. And she is screaming the entire time. Im sure the neighbors think that we are beating her each morning and night.

Claire tries to eat the bubbles when she takes a bath. The problem is that she puts her face into the water trying to get them. It scared us to death the first couple of times she did it.

She likes to help unload the dishwasher. Well, actually she likes to play with the silverware while I unload the dishwasher….and occasionally she will hand me something to put away.

She yells for her “dada” during the day but only wants her “mum” at night.

Don’t ask me why, but she loves to sit on the scale in the bathroom.

Whenever she hears the bath water running, she will head into the bathroom and wait by the tub hoping that she gets to take a bath.

When Luke is playing Wii Sports and does good, Claire will get excited and clap along with the people in the game.

She will still usually only poop in a dry diaper. So we will change her wet diaper, wait about fifteen minutes and then change her dirty diaper.

We make this funny sound moving our tongue up and down really fast and Claire loves it. She tries to mimic us but cant. Instead of her tongue moving up and down, she moves it from side to side as fast as she can but still isn't very fast. Of course this doesn't make any sound so she just makes up her own sound while she is doing it.

Christmas

Sugar cookies are sooo yummy!!!

We had so much fun for Christmas!! Christmas is definately alot more fun having Claire with us and we can't imagine life without her. Everyone told us that she would care more about the wrapping paper than she would about the actual present. Well, they were wrong about the wrapping paper but she didn't care about the presents either. What Claire liked to do was climb over the presents or if the box was big enough, she would try to climb on top of it. All during December we would find Claire climbing on top of the presents under the tree just so she could reach the ornaments that were up higher. The crazy girl (well, it was nice for me) wouldn't try to pull the ornaments off the tree she just wanted to stick them in her mouth while they were still attached to the tree. It was quite a sight!! Unfortunatley every time that I tried to take a picture, she would quit doing it.

We got Claire a walk'n ride toy for Christmas. We thought she would love using the walker but we were wrong. So far we have only been able to get her to use it a couple of times. Instead she prefers to crawl over to mom or dad, pull herself up so she is standing, and then reach up for our fingers, and then have us help her walk around the house. This is her favorite thing to do now. For right now, it looks like the walk'n ride will only be used to push her around the house....which she also loves.