Had I the Faith of Hannah

As the year is brought to a close, I am reminiscing over the past several New Years' Eves. Specifically I can remember this time two years ago, when I was already desperately praying for a child. I was already on the long road of fertility treatments, taking medicines, charting temperatures, going to the doctor month after month for bloodwork. A few months later we would conceive and shortly after lose our first baby to miscarriage. Many months and pills later we were on to more doctors and more methods for conception assistance.
And then there was last New Year's Eve - we'd seen her! Of course, we didn't know she was a "she" yet, but Martha Claire was growing in my womb - Praise God! We had this ultrasound picture showing her tiny heart and its four tiny chambers - what a miracle!
Sometimes looking back over the course of a year (or more), I see things I am proud of. Earning my stock broker's license. Buying my first home. Reconciling my marriage. Growing in character and faith.
As I look over the past year, I feel overwhelmed not at anything that I did, or even something I did with God's help - but I feel amazed at His faithfulness to me. Like Hannah in the book of First Samuel, I begged and pleaded with God for a child. I spent so many nights in tears, but I grew certain in my heart that God would not give me the baby I so ardently desired. And yet - He was faithful. In the midst of my disbelief, He remained faithful.
I hope I will never forget all that the year of 2009 has taught me about the faithfulness of God through the amazing gift of my sweet baby girl.

First Out of Town Visit

Before Christmas, we took Claire on her first road trip to Montgomery to visit our friends the Hamils. Here are Claire and Morgan sharing secrets. We are hoping 2010 will bring a little blessing to the Hamils (who are in the midst of the adoption process) so that Claire will enjoy our visits with them even more than she obviously does!
While Claire had an excellent trip on this particular weekend to Montgomery, the Birmingham trip the following weekend was a catastrophe and she now HATES to be in the car. We enjoyed visiting her friend MC, but the travel was NOT FUN. Here's hoping that gets better soon.

Claire's First Thanksgiving

So this video doesn't exactly scream Thanksgiving, but the only one that I have that did doesn't have Claire in it at all because she was sleeping. Here she is with her cousins on Thanksgiving morning. I have a bunch of random videos from Thanksgiving, but this was the best interactive video with Claire in it.
I was going to post her first bath video before this one, but I have to figure out how to edit videos on my computer for length. It's too big to put on the blog for now...

Christmas

I posted this picture on facebook, but wanted to add it here as well. If you scroll down to the previous post, you will note that I am going to add videos of a bunch of Claire's "firsts" over the next few days. Her first car ride, first bath, first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, and first cereal are all coming soon. I am also hard at work on a slideshow of 2009 in recap (from Claire's birth forward, though I may think of starting with the preggie pics as well).

But I figured folks did want to verify that the Peel family did have a good first Christmas for Claire, and we certainly did. We were also careful to keep with the spirit of Christmas and not get swept away in the overspending, something we are committed to continuing in our family for the long haul. Knowing that in all likelihood, Claire will be an only child, we will have to work hard to keep her from being too spoiled - especially when she has such generous grandparents and aunts and uncles. However, we you see the haul she received for Christmas, you probably won't realize that the bulk of what she received was purchased second-hand or in some cases, re-gifted so that very little was spent.

I have become a big fan of Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette. In the midst of the tips and tricks for saving oodles of money, she also has some great articles. One on Creative Deprivation in her second compilation really captures one way of thinking that Geoff and I are committed to as parents. The author says that when her children seem disatisfied with a treat such as a small ice cream cone, it doesn't make her think that they should be given a larger banana split, it makes her think that they have been having ice cream cones too often to appreciate them. I think gratitude is an important trait for Claire to learn and hope to teach it to her in the Christmas season just as during any other time.

Okay, enough of a soap box for one night. More posts to come soon...

Capturing the Firsts

I'm going to try to post a bunch of videos over the next few days, because one of our shower gifts from Mimi and Mr. Mike was a really nice camera which we have made a lot of use of already. It occurred to me that I have all of these videos and should share them, so keep checking back as I try to post a bunch of the "first" videos.
We'll start with the first car ride - a very short video:

Only after this car ride home from the hospital did we learn that Claire was too little for a car seat like this. We ended up being able to borrow an angel bed seat from a friend - a real life saver for carting Claire around in her first 2 months of life. We didn't ever think to take a picture of her in it until she was too big for it - but it is a great flat carrier for tiny ones!

Cousins!

All Smiles

Despite not feeling super well today, Claire was all smiles for a little while this morning. Glad I finally got a good shot of a smile to share with you!

We had cousin Sara over to play yesterday and I have to tell a tale on her for a minute. (For those who don't know, Sara is about to be 5). Here is a conversation with Sara from yesterday:

[Claire is a bit fussy]

Sara: SHHHHH! (Right in Claire's face)

me: She's okay, Sara.

Sara: But I don't want her to cry.

me: (thinking this is sweet) Well, she's not really crying, she's just being fussy. And sometimes babies just cry.

Sara: Well, but it's really annoying!

At another point Sara said, I want you to play with me! Can't you just put her in her crib or something?

Ahhh, to be five again!

For the Record

At some point, I intend to put together from my blog and other sources, a baby book for Claire. Lately I've been posting a lot of pictures and not much text, because I know that most of my "readers" these days are really just looking for pictures of her. But there are certain things that should be recorded for posterity.
Such as...
Claire absolutely LOVES "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" - in fact, singing this song (with motions, of course) is my new way to catch her smiling on camera. When I do the motions, she brings her hands together and mimics me a little. She's not coordinated enough to do the motions yet, but she's thinking about it. This tells me it's time to start getting serious with the baby sign language, as I have a good feeling she's going to pick it up with no problem very soon.
Claire has a security blanket now. It's a small Winnie-the-Pooh blanket my mom brought down for her when we first told her we were pregnant. It has some different textures and makes rattly and crinkly sounds. Claire mostly likes to chew on it and likes for me to make it dance while I sing the Winnie-the-Pooh theme song.
At her four month check-up on Tuesday, Claire had moved into the 75th percentile on both weight and height. (Previously she had been in the 50th on both, except for her first check-up when she was in the 10th). She weighed 14lbs 8oz and was 24.5 inches long.
I had a pretty good idea she was really growing when we visited our friend MCW last weekend. Unfortunately, neither that MC's mama nor this MC's mama had a camera to show that they were basically the same size. If you scroll back through blog posts you will find a picture when Claire was 6 weeks and MCW was 12 weeks and they were vastly different in weight and height. While MCW is longer than Claire now (she has a pretty tall daddy and brother), she and Claire weigh the same. Wish I had had a camera for that get together!
Claire likes to grab things with her feet. When she went to the doctor and the doctor was listening to her chest and such, Claire wrapped her feet around the doctor's arm. She also likes to do this when I change her clothes or diaper.
Claire can roll from her tummy to her back on her own, but she doesn't really like to be on her tummy that often unless she's sleeping. When you catch her in just the right mood, you can put her on her tummy and she will lift her head and push with her feet. She has even scooted enough to grab hold of her Pooh blankie. Just today she is showing interest in trying to get from her back to her tummy, but is really frustrated when she can't get her muscles to cooperate. She can almost get to her side, so it's only a matter of time before she's got that way down as well.
Claire is completely fascinated with her dogs and cat, especially Colson (see her four month picture). I don't really let the animals get all that close to her, but Colson managed to sneak in a kiss on her ear while she was in the jumperoo the other day. Each animal is different. Irving, the cat, ignores her or sniffs her, but mostly wants her to get out of the way so he can have his mom back. Soozie is a little over-excited still, but seems alternately interested in and scared of Claire. I've started to try to give Soozie attention when I hold Claire sometimes so that she won't feel threatened, because Soozie was the only one I worried about when it comes to how she would handle the baby. She does well with the cat, so I'm hoping she'll get the point that Claire is not a threat. Colson is a gentle sweet baby so he loves Claire. He is afraid of all of her toys, though. For those of you worrying about my pitbulls (and cat) mixing with my baby (Nene!), please know that I do not let any of my animals have any interaction with Claire unless Geoff or I am holding her, and even then, she's out of the animals' reach. I know all animals well enough to know that until Claire is my size, she's not going to have unsupervised interaction with 80lb dogs!
Claire really likes to hear herself talk now. She mostly makes these noises that remind me of a parrot or loud bird. She seems to be experimenting with volume and likes to squeal to get attention (as if there isn't someone practically staring at her during every waking hour of the day). Occasionally when she cries, it sounds like she's saying "Nani! Nani!" I want to get this on video for her grandmother.
I guess that should suffice as an update for Claire's current activities and such. We'll get some more pictures going on the next posts. We have some family time coming up with Christmas next week, so pictures and videos coming soon.

About Time

Finally purchased Claire's hospital pictures. All four turned out great, but this is my favorite:

Four Month Milestone

At four months, Claire is on the move! She can now roll over from her tummy to back unassisted, and as evidenced in an earlier blog post, she's definitely got the hang of the jumperoo. We are in for a busy future as she really starts to get moving.

Playtime with Pooh

Putting the honeybees back in Pooh's hunny pot.

The Best Entertainment on the Web!

My hat's off to you if you can find anything cuter (or more entertaining) than this!

Christmas Rush

So we're in that season of busy busy just before Christmas. I have a lot of year-end projects to complete for work and I've managed to work Claire into a nap schedule just in time for her to start teething! I have been terrible about taking pictures lately - I don't think I took a single one last week. I do have plenty of videos that I need to post and hope to do so soon, but soon might be after year-end and all my projects are completed. For now, I did manage to take a picture of Claire helping me decorate our tree yesterday morning.