Bubbles Bubbles

One of Claire's favorite times of the day is still bath time. She loves playing with her bath toys and the bubbles! Splish-Splash!

We are so thankful Claire has been feeling better since her ear tube surgery last week. Thanks to everyone for checking on us! We hope to keep Claire away from the doctor's office for a while!

Birthday Party

Our friend's, Angel & Chris, little boy Brooks celebrated his 1st birthday this past Saturday. Claire had a great time playing with his toys and helping Brooks celebrate. She didn't mind the chicken nuggets or hershey kisses either that she chowed down on! Happy Birthday Brooks!

Sweet baby Tanner

Claire's friend, Hayes, recently got a new little brother. Tanner Michael Paganelli was born on 1/15/09. We went to visit them in the hospital after Tanner was born and Claire did great!

Claire's surgery

Hi everyone! We just wanted to let you know that Claire had tubes put in her ears yesterday. We went to see her Pediatrician the week before and she still had double ear infections. This made 6 since September. We immediately saw an ENT the next day and scheduled her surgery for the following Thursday, which was yesterday! Claire was definitely a big girl through the whole thing and did great. I was a little concerned since she couldn't have anything to eat or drink (even water) after midnight the day before and her surgery wasn't until 9:45am, but she did wonderful. Once they took her back for the actual surgery and I had to leave her in pre-op, she was finished 10 minutes later and back with us pretty quickly. She slept most of the day afterwards and was her happy self this morning and ready for school! We hope this will keep those nasty ear infections away for good or at least a long time! Have a great weekend!

Our poor little blog...

Claire's favorite toy and word to say - BALL, BALL, BALL!

Our poor little blog has been put on the backburner lately. As usual, things have been pretty busy and with our terrible internet connection at home, i'm seldom on-line to update the blog. Hopefully, i'll be able to post some new pictures soon. We are very excited to be moving closer to Birmingham within the next few weeks. We found a house we liked in Vestavia and closed on it right before the holidays.....as soon as we're finished with some cosmetic changes, we'll be ready to move. We'll be closer to things we need and should have more time at home........since right now we all have a 45 minute commute to and from work! So....since we won't be in the country anymore, I will hopefully have better internet connection and will be able to update Claire's blog more often.

Claire has been doing very well lately...she just recently turned 16 months old and we have a little toddler on our hands. She still has her occasional sniffles here, and stomach bugs there, but nothing major (and hopefully no ear infections for a while). If she has another ear infection before mid to end February she may have to get tubes put in her ears! :-( But.......so far, so good!! We are definitely ready for spring and to be rid of this cold weather. Some other big news for Claire is that she is WALKING!! She could completely do it all the time if she wanted to, but right now she just walks back and forth from Mommy to Daddy or over to her ball, etc......she won't go from room to room unless you're right behind her and cheering her on....but I would think in a couple more weeks, she'll be running all over the place. The way she remembers things now is just amazing too.....you can just look at her concentrate on something and see her taking it all in...our fun thing to do now is to ask her to make animal noises...she can moo like a cow, cluck like a chicken (her favorite), naaaah like a horse and roar like a tiger....it's so cute! We're still working on the sheep and pig. Claire got barn yard animals to play with in the bathtub for Christmas, and that's how it all got started....I just added the roaring tiger for a little Auburn cheering. I will work on posting some pictures soon from the past month, and promise after we move to do better with blogging.

New pictures!

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks I've been meaning to post!

Cousin Walter takes Claire for a ride!

Claire wants to help with the Christmas lights at Aunt Deb's!

Family Picture
Claire and Mommy celebrating Christmas at Cousin Lester's

Claire is excited about her new baby dolls!

Ready for Christmas!!

Claire, James and I are definitely looking forward to Christmas this year. We have had so much fun the past few weeks going to parties, decorating and watching Claire get excited about Christmas decorations and lights. We all have one more day of work and school, and then it's time to celebrate. Claire went to visit Santa Clause this past weekend. We stopped by the Bass ProShop in Prattville on Saturday and noticed that you could have your picture taken with Santa for FREE and the line was super short!! So yes, Claire and I went to join the other children. At first I was afraid Santa might be in Camo, but saw that he was dressed in his usual big red suit. Of course the Bass ProShop Santa had a real "stuffed" reindeer behind him....gotta love it! Claire didn't have on her cute "Santa picture" outfit, but I had a feeling she would cry this year anyway, so away we went. At first she did cry and it was the typical toddler screaming picture....but they ran out of ribbon while they were printing our picture and asked us to go to the front of the line and take another. Somehow the miracle working elf was able to get Claire to smile a little bit, and they snapped her photo fast! I'm hoping we can access her picture on-line today and i'll post it this afternoon along with some other pics from the last few weeks. We've been to Granny & Paw Paw's rib party, dinner with our friends and a few other family celebrations. We will be at home in Alabama for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and will celebrate Christmas with the Creel's, and then we will drive to Baton Rouge for a long weekend afterwards with the Spradley's. We hope everyone has a safe and happy Holiday!