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!