One Year Update

What an amazing year it has been! Steve and I are so blessed to share our lives with each other and with Claire. God is SO GOOD to us!

Claire had her one year checkup today. Here's the skinny (literally):

Claire has grown taller and is now 29 1/2" long, putting her in the 75 percentile for her age. Yeah, Claire! However, she has dropped in the weight category. Weighing in at 17 lbs 10 1/2 oz, Claire is now in the fifth percentile. What this means? The girl has to eat! We've been feeding her what seems like tons of food, but apparently the baby food isn't cutting it anymore. Too much of it is low fat or low in calories. She's ready for the real stuff - preferably high in calories. So today I fed her two 6-oz containers of yogurt (her favorite food in the whole world), oodles of Cheerios, peanut butter and crackers, chicken nuggets from Chick-Fil-A along with fruit (She wasn't really fond of the textures of the fruit. I really hope she doesn't turn out to be like me in that regard!) and milk. She's been downing whole milk like crazy today, and she tried what we had for dinner. She refused it, so Steven gave her chocolate pie instead. She ate it until she was just too full and couldn't eat another bite. Hopefully we can fatten this girl up in the next six weeks, when she has to go back to the doctor so that they can check her weight gain.

May was a very busy month for our girl. She took five vacations - Memphis, Niagara Falls, Sea World and two trips to Tulsa. She saw/met a lot of people - Tammy and her son, Parker, Bryce (who Tammy used to babysit), Aunt Susie, Uncle Doug and Aunt Marilyn, Uncle Duie and Aunt Jodi, Cousins Diana and Laura (who I used to babysit), Valerie and her son Henry, Aunt Cheryl, her new baby cousin, Allie, Matt and Shari Bailey and their girls, Brooklyn and Taylor, Micah and Kathy, Matt (our new roomie in Memphis) and everyone else in Tulsa who came to her birthday party. It's been a great month!

Claire is doing so many new things everyday. I know I've forgotten so many of them. She copies me every time I turn around. She will blow kisses, point, stand on her own (She just pops right up now.), lick her fingers, roll her eyes, etc. There are just too many things to count. She is so funny and loves to laugh and make others laugh. She's very friendly and waves at everyone everywhere we go. She's so sweet!

She's talking more now. There's almost non-stop babble. Some of the words that are now recognizable are Claire, love you, thank you, balloon, pretty, baby, doggie (which she sometimes just says "gie" with a hard "g.") and Bob! (from one of her Veggie Tales videos - Larry is jumping on a trampoline and can't figure out how to get off. He starts yelling, "Bob! Bob! Hey, Bob!" Without fail, Claire will yell, "Bob!" every time. It's too funny!)

Claire is trying lots of new foods. She wants to taste everything I eat. So far her favorite is cheeseburgers. She, of course, likes ice cream, cake and pie too. About the only thing she refuses to eat are French fries, mashed potatoes and fresh fruit (other than apples). Hopefully she'll continue to be a good eater, and we'll be able to stack on the L-B's.

We are moving to Memphis this weekend. It's going to be a big change for us, but we believe that we are exactly where God wants us. Once we made the decision to move, Steve quickly and easily sold his business. He found someone to take over two of his other jobs and was able to get him trained quickly. (And the extra income couldn't have come at a better time for the other guy!) Every tiny detail is falling perfectly into place. There's no doubt that God has ordered our steps! We are really excited about this new season in our life!

Now that Claire is a year old, I will no longer post to this blog. We have another blog, a family blog, to which we will post all further updates on Claire and on us. Just click on this link to jump over to our blog: Happily Ever After Claire's blog will always be out here, but it will not have new updates.

Thank you for being a part of our lives and for caring about our baby girl.