My dearest Claire,
This week you turned 10 months old. I just can't believe how fast you're growing up. This past month has been a month of changes for you. You have 2 teeth now. They are both on the bottom right in the front. They didn't bother you as much as we thought they would. You were just putting EVERYTHING in your mouth whenever you could. The biggest change for you this month however was day care. Daddy and I both hated to put you in day care and we still hate it every time we have to drop you off, but it is for the best in the future. You still cry every time we drop you off, but your teacher says it doesn't take long for you to get over it now. The best part of it is that when we come to pick you up, you have the best smile on your face and crawl to us just as fast as your little arms and legs will let you. Then you give your teacher, Ms. LaShea, a look that says, "HA! You only wish you were my mommy!"
Another change for you this month is drinking formula only. You have officially been weaned this month, and to be honest, I don't think you've noticed or care. You also can now eat small snacks and like sweets and breads. We no longer can eat a meal without giving you some. We don't mind however! Drinking a bottle is now a lot easier for us now that you can hold the bottle yourself. Although, you don't let us walk away from you while you drink your bottle. We must be right beside you. Claire, I cherish these moments that you want me near you for I know they won't last forever!
The doctor said at your 9 month checkup that you were too skinny! Daddy and I couldn't believe that one of our kids was called skinny! She told us to give you an extra bottle per day which is difficult to fit in to the schedule, but you don't mind the extra bottle at all! You are such a wonderful eater. You're not a great fan of the green vegetables but you will eat them with a little motivation---fruits! You eat a lot for your age, but yet you still don't look like it! I know it is because of your activity level. You are actively moving from the moment you awake in the morning until your last fight from sleeping. You are persistently crawling, jumping, walking along furniture, bouncing, talking, etc. ALL DAY LONG! Even today, as we went shopping and you were in the stroller, you were turning around, trying to crawl, doing whatever you could just to be in motion. I hope you never lose that activeness.
This past month, you went to a baby shower for your cousin Alyssa who is to be born in September. You were so good throughout the whole shower, a few ladies at the end of the shower noticed you and asked where you'd been the whole time. You are so good!
You do have your moments though! There are a few places in the living room where you play that you're not allowed to go. The number of times we remove you from those banished places is countless! Daddy jokes that if we put 3 of your favorite toys directly in front of you and a gun all the way across the room behind you with obstacles in the way, you'd make a beeline for the gun--obstacles and all! It is a vivid picture to us that your sin nature is already in control. Daddy and I pray for you every day that one day you will not be a slave to sin anymore!
These are just a few of the things that have happened this month, but we are still so grateful for you each and every day and wouldn't change a single thing about your wonderful self!

Love,
Mama

My Dearest Claire,

You turned 9 months old today. My how the months have flown by. You are such an adorable girl. This month has been full of excitement. You have learned to go without your pacifier for the most part. You still use it at night to go to sleep and for about a minute after your bottles since you never can imagine that 6 oz. is all you get to eat at a time.
We haven't started table foods yet although you get really angry to see Daddy and me eat and not give you any. Everyone tells me to feed you more food, but you cry regardless of how much food we give you. Mommy gets to brag about the fact you sleep so well at night and take good naps throughout the day. One of my favorite things is to take a nap in the afternoon with you. We both sleep so much better that way.
You also love to laugh and smile. Lately all we have to do is say, "Ha, Ha, Ha" and you just light up and give us that giggle we love to hear. You also like to pull up on the arm of the couch or chair and peek over the edge and smile at me. You learned to say "Dada" right on cue the week after Father's Day. It makes Daddy so happy to hear you say it all day long. You only say "Mama" when you're upset about something.
We love you so much and are so excited about what this next month will bring.

Love,
Mom

Ok, I know it's been a while again. But really nothing exciting has been going on here. I'm boring. My life is boring. Busy as all get out, but boring.

Well, spring semester is over. Justin and I both did really well and are glad it's over. He's going back in July, I get to go back in August. yea.

Claire is doing well. Still no teeth yet. Seven months old and no teeth. I don't get it. She is getting really close to crawling though. She does a little half-crawl, fall over, scoot forward and repeat thing. I've noticed that she's very sensitive though. I guess she's like me in that regard.

I've always been a very sensitive person can cry to this day at the drop of a hat. for any reason. When I was little, my parents would just look at me wrong and I would spill my guts and burst into tears. I am grateful for this in a way because it never allowed me to get into any really big trouble. I couldn't hide anything. So today, Claire started towards Nina (our dog) and her bed. I told her no and shook my head. She turned around. Later, she went towards it again and when I said no again, she looked at me with her big blue eyes pleading with me not to say that word again. Her lips curled under and the poochie lip disease occurred. Then tears started streaming down her big fat cheeks as she cried. It broke my heart into a thousand pieces. But it is sorta nice to know that one word has that kind of affect on her, at least at this point.

Mother's Day is tomorrow. This is my first one and Justin already has made me feel so special. He's already invited me out to dinner and has bought and wrapped my present. I'm excited and wondering why I never thought about having a kid sooner just for a Mother's Day present!

Have you ever had a good idea that later turned out to be really stupid? I'm sure everyone has experienced this and this past weekend was one for me.

Claire and I went to Galveston to visit some friends for the day. We were driving down a two lane highway when the police had blocked it off for an accident. They were routing traffic down towards the beach. While we were waiting in line, we realized that the route led underneath a private beachhouse. So all the traffic from the highway was going through one lucky person's beachhouse. One of my friends got out and started to take some pictures of the unbelievable sight. While he was out of the car, I saw a path to the beach without going through the beachhouse that nobody else was taking....RED FLAG! That should have gone off in my head, but nooooooooo. I said, "Let's buck the system!" Why follow what everyone else was doing? So we decided to go straight and take this little path. Halfway down the path, we got stuck. In the sand. Ding! Ding! Ding! That's why nobody else was taking this path. So my friend and I got out and started to push the car back up the path. When the car began to accelerate, I let go. However, I didn't realize that my ring had caught on the car hood. So the car is accelerating and my hand is caught. The only thing I could think of was that I was going to lost my finger. I said my goodbyes. My right ring finger has served me well for 25 years but here was its time to go. I apparently was yelling to stop because my friend who was driving stopped. My finger was still attached! It hurt really bad though and was cut. We made it back up the path, through the beachhouse, onto the beach through a well traveled path and then back to the beachhouse they were staying at. So, lesson learned and almost a very costly lesson at that. My finger is purple so I did break some blood vessels, but that's it. Not even a break! As for the rest of our trip, we had a great time and enjoyed a day out of our ordinary routine.

In other news, Justin got a 97% on his Calculus 2 test. I'm so proud of him and so jealous as well. I struggled through Calc 1 although I know not everyone can even do that. Mainly, I'm proud of him though. Let's just see how he does in Calc 3 though!

Also, today is my brother's birthday! So, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JIMMY!

Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Game Show Network. I love that channel. I have always been a huge fan of game shows and it is a dream of mine to be on one someday...not to win money, although that would be nice of course, but just to say I was once on a game show!

However, our cable company does not understand the love affair I have with that channel and have taken it off. Not of expanded or moved it to a higher price rate, just taken it off completely. I won't say my life is over, but it is forever changed...until we move or the cable company gets it back. Maybe it's time to switch to satellite television. Hmm......

In other news, Claire has been eating her veggies so well. I'm so proud of her. She ate a whole jar of carrots today for lunch. I couldn't get them in her mouth fast enough and when she finished the entire thing, she cried for more. Afterwards, I felt guilty for feeding her so much, but I'm just so glad that she likes her veggies unlike someone else in our household. Tomorrow, we try sweet potatoes for the first time and after that we're moving on to the fruits!

Hopefully, she'll continue to like her veggies but even if she doesn't I will finally get to use the old saying we all heard growing up...."Eat your veggies, they're good and good for ya!"

I love vegetables and I would have to say my favorite one is pumpkin but if you don't consider pumpkin to be a vegetable, then my favorite is squash. What's your favorite veggie?

Ok, so see? I'm posting again! A lot sooner than you thought I know.

A tragedy happened this week in my community and it has really affected me a lot more than I expected. A bus carrying a high school girls soccer team crashed and killed two of the girls, and injured a lot of them. One girl has lost both arms due to this. It was just horrific.

The reason why it affected me so much is two fold. First of all being a new parent. Now that I have a little girl, I just couldn't imagine her not being around anymore. You always hear how horrible it would be and how your kids are supposed to live longer than you. When you actually have a person that you are responsible for bringing in this world, and then raising them through all the heartaches, to never see them again I just don't know if I could deal with that.

Second of all, I think about this whole thing from a teacher's point of view. I just never thought of it from that perspective. Here is someone that I see and am in charge of every day even if just for one class period. I saw them earlier today, maybe scolded her for talking in class or something like that, and now I won't have her homework turned in tomorrow, her seat will be empty in the class, her lab group is one person short. It's not just about being different, it's about a great loss. Even though I've never been a school teacher before, I can already imagine the responsibility I'll feel for each student.

On a much brighter note, Claire has been doing really well. I love her smile. She is so happy. She is also getting really good and fast at turning over. I had her in the very middle of the bed and I was at the end of the bed hanging up laundry. I was watching her and in the time it took me to put a hanger in a shirt while still facing her, she almost rolled off the bed. No lie! I scooped her up when she was about one inch away from the edge--mid turn. Needless to say, from then on I hung up laundry with her on the floor playing quietly!

Ok, I know it's been a little while, but I'll explain why.

1. Traveling with an infant. Wow. I knew it was going to be more difficult, but had absolutely no idea how hard it truly is. First, I was able to get everything packed that we needed in the proper bags and with the proper weight. Whew! So we were doing really well. We'd gotten to the airport on time and the line wasn't very long for security. Then we get up to the place where you put everything on the xray machine conveyor belt in those plastic tubs. We did shoes, our two carryon bags each, the laptop out, the digital camera out, coats and all in the tubs. Then I go to push the sleeping Claire in the car seat on the stroller through the walkthrough machine and the lady who's been standing there watching us unload our lives onto the belt says, "Ma'am, you can't take her like that through here....you need to taker her out of the car seat, then take the car seat out of the stroller, break the stroller down and then carry her through." I wanted to say, "Ma'am, you could have told us that 5 minutes ago instead of watching us unload all this other stuff and keep silent!" Anyway, I complied although I felt like I held up the line forever which is a huge bother to me.

Then on the way back, I was prepared. No problems through security. We get to the gate and now I'm finally one of those people that gets to board earlier than everyone else. So we're about to board and I realize that I am missing one of my bags. So Justin has to run literally run all the way back to security which was 3 elevators back to get my bag. To make matters even more embarrassing, it wasn't just a bag that I left, it was my breast pump with breastmilk inside. I can only imagine what the security people were thinking. So now, my precious time to board earlier than everyone else is gone. Justin makes it back and we are the last ones on the plane. Literally the last ones on the plane. So much for preboarding.

One good thing about this trip is that she slept the entire time on the plane both ways. I was so thankful that she was not the baby screaming on the plane where you can't shut them up and you can't escape because you're trapped thousands of feet in the air with no possibility of escape.

2. We're sick. Claire got sick first. Her first illness. She was coughing, and had a stuffy nose. To make matters worse, she's also teething. It's annoying enough when we get a stuffy nose, but when you're sucking on a pacifier and breathe through your nose exclusively and that nose is now stuffed up with mucus not allowing any air to pass through, it sucks. Not only for her, but for those that are taking care of her. Then, Justin came home Saturday night not feeling good. Two sickies that I have to take care of. No problem, right? Sunday comes and then I don't feel good. My nose has been stuffed for the past 4 days. Some good news though, Claire is getting better. Now we just have to be careful not to get her sick again since we're still sick.

So those are just two of the reasons that I haven't written lately. But we did have a fabulous time on vacation and my family was just overjoyed to meet and see her again. Justin got to fix my dad's computer and we had lots of fun seeing everyone and catching up.

Hopefully I won't take as long to post this time and will be feeling better.

Ok. I'm not really sure where this whole blog thing is going to go or how long it is going to last. I simply know I've never been that good at keeping a journal because inevitably the first entry is way too long and then I get bored and never write again. However, my motivation for this journal/blog is a little different so I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Claire is my main reason for the blog. See, she is just 5 months old and already I realize how fast she has grown and changed since her birth in October. I want to remember these precious times and look back on memories I know I'll forget. I've also been reading other popular blogs and think they're pretty interesting. Some good friends also recommended it, so here I am. I hope someone reads this someday and if nothing else I hope Claire will! The three of us are leaving for vacation tomorrow. Justin, Claire, and I are flying to Michigan so that most of my family can meet Claire for the first time. Understand, we live in Texas and most of my family lives in Michigan so they haven't been able to visit yet. I'm so excited to see them although I already can tell this visit will be different because it's not for me to reunite with my family but for Claire. It's just amazing how a baby changes your life so completely and so immediately!