Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of our friends and family! Love to you all!

We all had a great Christmas this year, fun Christmas Eve with Aaron's side of the family, and then a nice Christmas day with my family. Claire had a great time opening presents, but might have been a bit overwhelmed by all of her new toys. She's having a great time playing with all of them, though! She got a bunch of toys, some very cute clothes, lots of fun videos, and some good books.

My birthday was yesterday, and was also a lot of fun. I spent a bit of time shopping with my mom and Colleen, then we sat around and watched The Office for a while, and then had Japanese for my birthday dinner. We finished off the day by going to Target and stocking up on marked-down Christmas decorations for next year! I like to think that this proves that with age comes maturity, because my absolute LEAST favorite thing to do when I was growing up was to shop for marked-down Christmas decorations on my birthday. Yay me!

Some christmas pics...

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Eve

Opening Christmas presents

Scooting around her Sesame St busWearing some of her Christmas present jammiesEating mommy's birthday cake for breakfast

Then and Now...

Last year, sweet little baby...

This year, crazy hobo...
To briefly catch up on the last 3 months... Claire is 15 months now. She crawls all over the place, and is finally starting to take a step, but only between the couch and the coffee table. She has a great vocabulary, except the words that she's learned from her father... and some of those are unrepeatable. We're working on manners right now, and she's getting pretty good at please (or "pease" as she says it) and we get a "thank you" every now and then.

We took our second family trip to the beach for Thanksgiving, and Claire loved it. She got to see dolphins, go to a petting zoo, and feed the quack quacks. The beginning of the vacation was a little rough, with her fighting strep throat, but she's over it now, and is back to her typical happy self.




Claire's 15 month appointment went well, she was almost 20lbs, and by now, probably is over 20lbs, finally! She had gotten both versions of the flu shots, so we're hoping she stays healthy for the rest of cold and flu season! Her pediatrician is guessing she'll be walking by the next time she comes in, at 18months. Good lord, I hope so! Her chubby butt is starting to get heavy to carry around.

And one last gratuitous picture, of Claire in her new Christmas skirt!