Christmas Catch-up

With so much catching up to do, I think I'll start with some "Claire-facts." I love that I'll be able to look back on this blog and remember Claire at every stage. Right now, at the "almost-fourteen-month-old-stage," here are some things I don't want to forget...

• Over the past month or so, it seems that Claire's understanding and ability to communicate have increased every day. Somewhere along the line, she started to understand and respond to things such as, "Can you go get your shoe, please?" "Where is your book?" "Are you ready to eat?" All right, maybe she has been responding to that last one for quite a while now. But not only is she understanding more and more, she is also really starting to communicate back with us. The simple sign language that we have been doing with her for months suddenly seemed to click around 13 months old. With her hands she now says "eat" (of course), "more," "drink," "please," "thank you," "banana," "dog," "fish," "I love you," and "all done." Some of her verbal language includes banana ("ba-ba"), baby ("bweh-beh"), ball ("ba"), dog ("duh"), mama, dada, hey, and bye ("die" - possibly my favorite :) If there is something that Claire wants or needs, between her words and her body language she is pretty capable of letting us know what it is.
• She remains a very good eater. Although she is beginning to have some *relatively* picky days, all in all she still devours whatever we put in front of her and continues to ask for more. Some of her recent new diet staples include almond butter, soy milk, and turnip greens. We did find out that she is allergic to cow's milk, eggs, and peanuts, as well as dust. I am hoping that she will outgrow at least the food allergies very soon!
• One of her favorite games right now is the hiding game. I'll hide one of her stuffed animals in one room, and as soon as I ask her where it is ("Where's Elmo????") she will grin and take off to go find it. This game can go on indefinitely.
• She has her quirks. Recently she has been falling flat on the floor a lot, for a couple of different reasons depending on the context. Either she is just tired so she falls down and lays there for about three seconds to recharge, or she is throwing her version of a tantrum. This consists of falling down, rolling over onto her back, and just looking at me...at which point I usually burst out laughing. I'm not sure how she feels about that.
  

Now on to Christmas! I'll start with our time with Spencer's side of the family. We left town a week before Christmas to head down to a dear friend's wedding, in which Spencer was a groomsman. This is important because it was the first time that we have ever left Claire overnight!!! She got to spend some quality time with her Gran and Pawpaw while we went to Scotty and Jadison's wedding. She did great, of course, and we did pretty good too, if I do say so myself!

The wedding was beautiful, and when we got back we had a few days full of fun with Gran, Pawpaw, and the gang. Here we are riding in the golf cart...

...and enjoying a nice walk with Gran...



Claire had a lot of fun seeing some people that she doesn't get to see very much, like her cousin Hudson...


And her Uncle Travis!


Here she is helping Uncle Travis open his gifts.


And here is a shot of our time with Gran, Pawpaw, Nanny Faye, Papa, and Uncle Travis.

She absolutely adored the piano that Uncle Travis got her!


Christmas Part 2 - Coming soon!!!