Getting Sleepy

We are only six hours away from a new year and a new decade. Where has the time gone? I guess Kenny Chesney said it best; "Don't Blink".

Tonight is the night that many of us sit up with all due diligence in the hopes of meeting the new year head on. Some will be out partying and then carefully navigating the roads that are filled with people that should be anywhere but there. Some will spend a cozy evening with loved ones, patiently waiting for their New Year's Eve kiss. Others will end up looking like Claire in this movie. I think we all know which category we fall under.

2009 has been one amazing collection of days that we are slow to say goodbye to. Sheila and I were talking today about what our favorite stage of Claire's life has been. I remember talking to people asking them what age they like best with their children. Most everyone answered, "all of them". Each stage is distinctly different and fun in its own way. Six months does not give us a favorite age but it does give us many small changes each of which I have enjoyed thoroughly.

Here is a quick recap of our 2009 events, both good and bad.

• Claire born June 23, 8:58 a.m.
• We finally sold our house in Litchfield
• Had to say goodbye to Alvin Exsted
• Spending 2 weeks in MN
• Birth of Harvey
• Finding a home in Cypress, TX
• Encouraging messages on the Blog from friends & family
• Skype
• Catching the only fish in Minnie Belle
• Taking my daughter to the aquarium on a Thursday
• Swimming with the cousins
• Returning Sheila's wheelchair
• Hastling the Glencoe Girls about their phones
• Moving in the terrential rain
• Experiencing Toyota reliability
• Claire hanging out with Marley and Ava
• Giving directions to Charlotte

As I wrap up this posting and finish out our year, I want to send a special welcome to the newest member of the Family, Harvey Leonard Hlavka. We cannot wait to meet you. Claire is especially excited to have a cousin she can pick on.

Claire's first Christmas

We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve this year since I had to work on Christmas Day. We went to church and were planning on having Claire open her presents when we got home from church. Well, she decided to not take a nap in the late afternoon that day so she had been awake from 2pm until 8pm. We were hoping that she would sleep some in church, but that didn't happen. So by the time we got home to open presents, she was exhausted. We did manage to get her to open two (all the while looking at us with pleading eyes to go to bed!) and had to wait until Christmas day for the others. When I got home from work on Christmas day, Claire was more awake and ready to tear into the presents. She was more interested in eating the paper than in the toys at first! It was fun to watch her tear at the paper, which immediately went to her mouth! We hope she likes what she got and hope she will play with the toys lots.

It is a bit tough spending Christmas without our family. The day went by very fast though with me working and Jeff watching football with his little girl. We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.

We want to say congratulations to Brandon and Annie on the birth of their baby boy! We wish so badly that we could be there to share in this amazing time with y'all. We are so thankful that you have kept us in the loop and we thank God you are blessed with a healthy, BIG baby (I think Annie's goal was to push longer and have a bigger baby than me! Way to be the overachiever Annie!). Congratulations again and we cannot wait to meet him.

We have a baker on our hands!

Yesterday, Jeff and I both had off of work for a change so we decided to start some holiday traditions with our little girl. We listened to Christmas music and spent time as a family making Christmas cutout cookies. As you can see from the pictures, Claire decided to jump right in and help! It was lots of fun and a great tradition to start with our family. After all the hard work of making the cookies, Claire decided to share her toes with her daddy! Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season. It is still a bit strange to be without snow for Christmas, but we are managing just fine in the 60+ degree weather!

Makes me laugh

There is just something about a laughing baby that is contagious. No matter how many times I watch this video, I find myself chuckling out loud.

Who says you need to "crawl" to get places?

Claire's 6 month check up

Wow! Where has the time gone? I cannot believe Claire is just about 6 months old already! She is so much fun and we are absolutely loving each and every minute we spend with her.

Claire had to get 4 shots at her 6 month check up. It was horrible because as we were waiting for the nurse to come in with the shots, Claire fell asleep. When the nurse came in, I had to put her on the cold table, which woke her up. Of course she wanted to be held and be put back to sleep, but instead, she got stuck with 4 needles. My poor baby. At least she is young enough where she won't remember the trauma! She weighs 18 pounds 7 ounces (90%) and is 26.25 inches long (75%). She is doing all of the things that are expected at her age and we got the green light on starting some meats with her. I didn't think I was ready to start feeding her foods, but it turns out we are having lots of fun with it. I am making our own baby food which I really enjoy. We tried zucchini last night and she liked it. The only food Claire didn't seem to like was green beans. I am going to try them again after a few nights of zucchini.

I have been having a hard time keeping Claire's socks on. As you can tell in the picture, it is probably because she likes to stretch them to the max! Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoy posting the growth of our little girl. We miss y'all in MN and cannot wait to come visit again.

Rollin' around

Claire had started to roll all over the place. It is so much fun to watch. She will start in one spot and before I know it, she will be across the living room floor. I have a feeling she will start crawling sooner than I am ready for!

Jeff got Claire a blow up duck tubby since she has outgrown her other tub. As you can see from the pictures, she loves it. I just had to take the one of her playing with her two favorite things...her thumb and her toes!

Claire continues to eat well. She seems to really love her vegetables, which I am grateful for. The sweetness of the fruits cause her to make some funny faces. As you can see in the pictures, we are having so much fun with her. We take her to her pediatrician on Tuesday for her 6 month checkup so we will keep you posted on her growth.

We hope y'all in MN are able to stay warm. It has been rather cool down here for this time of year too. We miss all of you and hope that you are all having a wonderful Christmas season.

Some more pics with the family

Just wanted to post a few more fun pictures from when Nanny, Papa, and the Streich family were here to visit. We miss them all so much already! Hope you enjoy!

All alone again

Today Nanny and Papa headed back to MN. It is so quiet in the house and it feels kind of empty without them here. We miss them already. We are so grateful for all that they were able to help us with while there were here and we are so happy they were able to spend time with Claire. While they were here, they got to watch Claire eat her first bites of baby food and watch her become more coordinated with her hands.

We were also lucky to have the Streich family here to visit for a few days. Claire definitely loved all of the attention she received from Owen and Ellie. As you can see in the pictures, she wasn't left alone ever! While the Streich's were here, Claire went swimming for the first time at their hotel pool. She sat in a floaty and used the handle on it as a teether the entire time. She really seemed to enjoy being in the pool. We also went to Chucky Cheese with the kids. Claire had a good time just watching all of the activity and we all had fun being kids again for a few hours.

We are grateful to also have Roxi, Roger, Charlotte, and Mike stop in for a day on their road trip. It was so great to see them all and to be around so much family again. Thanks for taking the time to stop by and visit us!

Claire is now very good at grabbing toys and putting them into her mouth. She loves to have her thumb in her mouth and sometimes even gets almost her entire hand in. We are unable to tell if she will be right or left handed since she sucks on both thumbs and uses both hands to pick up toys.

Claire appears to have some discomfort with her teeth (we can't feel any coming yet) and loves to put her cold teethers into her mouth to chew on. She is sitting up easily now and rarely tips over. Her favorite toy right now is a toy piano with lighted keys on it. She has tried rice cereal, peas, squash, sweet potato, and bananas. So far she seems to like it all, as long as we feed her before she gets too hungry. If she becomes too hungry, she wants only milk.

Claire had a wonderful time getting spoiled by Nanny, Papa, and the Streich family. It is tough to know that the next time they will be able to see her, she will most likely be crawling, or possibly even walking. Hope y'all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving

We want to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, we are unable to spend the holiday in Dallas like planned. Claire decided the 4 hour drive was too much and let us hear all about it for our first 1.5 hour drive. After many attempts to console her, we decided to turn around and head back home. So, we are spending Thanksgiving at home this year.

Claire has been having such a blast with Nanny and Papa here. She is definitely getting spoiled! As you can see in the pictures, she loves all of their attention. We have started Claire on rice cereal and today gave her the first taste of vegetables...green beans. She actually seemed to like them better than the rice cereal.

We are very thankful for our family and for all of the blessings God has given us this year. Our parents are such amazing people and we are so glad they can be here to share this time with us and to get to know Claire. We cannot wait for the Streich family to arrive...especially since Owen and Ellie are on "diaper duty"!

Waiting for Nanny and Papa

Claire has settled nicely into our new home. The past 3 nights she has slept through the night...we are hoping it is a new behavior that will continue! She has found her toes now and loves to play with them. We are working on sitting up. Claire does pretty well, thanks to her belly! She is able to lean forward on her belly and can stay sitting up for a good amount of time.

Claire has also found that she can shove her entire hand into her mouth to suck on. Sometimes she even tries to get both hands in her mouth and gets pretty close! We are having so much fun watching her grow and learn new things every single day.

We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Nanny and Papa. Claire is so excited to get to know them and to show them all that she can do.

Heaven is the Face of a Little Girl

Playing with friends

It has been a very busy week and a half. However, we did make sure to spend some time with Amanda, Marley and Ava, the mommy and 10 month old twin girls we have become good friends with. Of course we had to get some pictures of the three girls in their Halloween costumes (it was interesting getting everyone to sit still!).

Claire seems to like our new house as much as Jeff and I do. It is starting to feel like home and we are able to enjoy time as a family a bit more as the things to unpack become less. We are very excited for Nanny and Papa to come visit in less than 2 weeks! Then we get another treat when the Streich family comes to visit over Thanksgiving! Claire cannot wait to play with everyone and show them all of the things she can do. We look forward to spending this time with our awesome family. We wish Brandon and Annie could make it too but our nephew is too close to his due date for Annie to fly...maybe next year.

Claire is rolling around lots and can now even roll from her back onto her stomach. It is fun to watch her roll off her play blanket and get around. Guess I can't leave her alone for long because she definitely isn't in the same place I left her when I walk away for a minute. She is such a happy baby and keeps us smiling all the time!

One crazy week!

It has been 5 days since we moved into our new home and it has been an adventure! After many challenges (seems to be the theme for us!), we have finally started to get settled into our new house and we are all loving it.

We decided a good way for us to meet the neighbors was to bring Claire out trick-or-treating. We were able to meet many of our neighbors and they all seem nice. The next door neighbor has a 16 month old boy so once things settle down for us we will have to get to know them better. The mother is a nurse so we have that in common to get things started. We are excited to get to know some of the neighbors more and to hopefully develop some friendships.

Claire has begun to roll over much more now. She started rolling over many times in a row on Oct 26 for Jeff. He was awesome and caught it on video since I was at work when it happened. Now she is rolling over lots and it is so much fun to watch.

The other big milestone for Claire has been sleeping through the night. Since we moved into the new house, she has slept through the night every night but last night. It is awesome! I wish I could sleep through the night too, but I find myself getting up frequently to check on her. I am not use to having her in another room so it has been a bit hard on me.

Hope yall enjoy the new pictures. I should be working on unpacking but needed a break! Once we get settled, we can share some of our new home.

Playing in the pumpkin patch

Yesterday we took Claire to the pumpkin patch for some pictures. We had a good time and she seemed to enjoy looking at all of the people and activities going on. It will definitely be a fun place to take her when she gets a bit older since there were lots of activities for little ones including a hay ride, train rides, slides, and mazes. This year we just got to enjoy taking pictures of our little "pumpkin" sitting among all of the pumpkins! Hope you enjoy!

Aquarium with my daughter on a Thursday

I can distinctly remember the first time I saw this commercial. We had just found out we were pregnant and I said to Sheila that this commercial represents my goal as a father.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OC5_wJLxZU

Yesterday we had the chance to turn the commercial dream into reality. When I got off work at 3:00 we decided to head downtown to the Aquarium. We both new that Claire was way too young to really enjoy or remember it but we couldn't help ourselves. It was great fun to walk into the Aquarium and watch her just stare with amazement which was very similar to Visa's take on the experience. The only disappointing part was that we couldn't take many good pictures due to the poor lighting but I wanted to share with you the ones that we did get.

Getting cooler

We have finally started to cool down here. The weather this week is in the mid 70's to low 80's as highs. It sure feels good to be able to walk outside and not instantly sweat! We have finally received some good news on the house. It is looking like we should be able to close next week...although Jeff and I are not holding our breath since we have been told we had a closing date many times. This time all the paperwork is completed so we are more hopeful it might actually be true! We are very excited to get out of this apartment (which is full of packed up boxes for the past month since we were originally told our closing would be the end of September) and into our new home. It will be so nice to have more room and to finally have a place we can call our own.

As you can see from the pictures (I know I have an addiction to taking pictures and should probably get some help!), Claire is growing so fast. She is still working on rolling over. We have come so close many times and she just needs that little push to get completely onto her back from her belly. We keep working on it even though she doesn't care for it too much. I have gotten her to sit up a few times too but only for short periods and then she tips over. If she leans forward enough to have support from her belly, she can sit for a bit longer! Good thing she has her stomach to support her! I took the picture of her in her Bumbo seat last night when I got home from work. She was so intent on watching the baseball game on TV that I couldn't even get her to look at me for a picture! We have so much fun with our amazing little girl and are savoring each and every day. Before we know it she will be walking and talking! We talk about nanny and papa coming lots and when Claire hears their voices on the speaker phone, she gets smiles on her face. We are all very excited to see nanny and papa and the Streich family for Thanksgiving. If we are lucky, we might even get Owen and Ellie to change Claire's diapers while they are here! If not, I am sure we can get them to sing to Claire...she really misses her cousin's singing to her.