My Christmas wish came true. In a strange turn of our bad luck, Chris missed his rotator to Kuwait. As a result, he was able to return to Boston with us, actually, before us. After waiting 12 hours in the airport, my flight with Claire was cancelled from Baltimore, but Chris' made it back. He picked us up from the airport on Monday, we ran some errands on base and returned home to unpack and pack again. We all made the trip to ND. Chris was a bit skeptical about his flight since he had a 2 stop journey. His first flight was delayed, which in turn, affected his second. Luckily, O'Hare was delayed too. My sister and her family picked him up around 1:00 am and we flew in at 11:00 pm. It was a long day. My Mom is in the hospital for her second Christmas in a row. She has had an infection in her body, which makes it extremely difficult to walk. Sadly, she found out yesterday, she has to have a knee replacement. Hard to believe as she is far from old. We are going to visit her today and stay in Fargo for a couple of nights. Chris, Claire and I had a great Christmas Eve. Claire was very excited about the presents, opening each very delicately. As part of her gift, my parents bought her play-dough. She loves this at daycare and enjoyed it as much here. Chris supervised as she ate bite after bite. Yucky! At least it is non-toxic! Past Christmas' my Grandparents have been extremely generous to us, giving each grandchild & spouse a large monetary gift. My Mom & Dad picked up that tradition this year, giving us an equally generous gift. Chris and I are so appreciative. It was truly unexpected, bringing tears to my eyes. I am so thankful for my family. They truly are fantastic people with huge hearts. I am not sure what we will be buying with the money, but we had talked about getting another large, flat screened tv for our basement. I guess we'll see what happens when Chris returns. He flies out tomorrow and deploys a few days later. We will miss him greatly, but are so glad that he could be with us for Christmas. It truly was the best Christmas.
Claire is nine months old. She is such an active kid, always on the go. She no longer lays nicely when we change her diaper. It is quite the challenge. She is getting rather quick at crawling, so we have to move just as quickly to keep her out of where she doesn't belong--the fridge, cupboards, etc. Developmentally, she is right on track or maybe a bit advanced in our biased eyes. She crawls, pulls herself up, is beginning to move from one piece of furniture to another, mostly eats table food, and imitates us (both in the noises we make or actions--knocking on a door). When we hold her hands, she is beginning to take steps without much guidance. On Saturday, she made her first attempt to climb a step. Sadly, it ended with her sliding down. She has three teeth--two on the bottom, one on top with another coming in on top. Ten things we love about her: 1. her smile 2. her curiosity 3. the way she holds our hands or her own hands when she sleeps 4. her easy-goingness 5....
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