Sorry for the delay... Claire is 9 1/2 months old!

So, it has been forever since my last post. Sorry about that. Things have been a little busy, and lots has happened!

1. We dedicated Claire at church. Dedication is essentially a public declaration of our intention to raise her to know the Lord and to ask the church body to pray for her journey and ours. We chose a life verse for her and during the ceremony were able to pray it over her along with the church elders as a blessing. This is our prayer of blessing for Claire taken from the Living Translation of Philippians 1:9-11:

"Our prayer for you is that you will overflow more and more with love for others, growing in spiritual knowledge and insight. We want you to always see clearly the difference between right and wrong, and to be pure of heart until our Lord returns. May you always do those good, kind things which show that you are a child of God to his praise and glory. Amen."

It was a powerful experience to release control of Claire's life into the care of the Lord. I think that the journey as a parent will require us to remember this experience many times. I have some very sweet pictures from the day, but my computer is broken right now (dropped one too many times), so I'll have to wait until I can retrieve the data. 

Claire has grown up quite a bit in the last few weeks. 

• She has her two bottom teeth, and from the state of her attitude lately, may be working on the tops ones! 
• She loves to walk while you hold her hands now, and cruises around the furniture. 
• She says "haaai! (hi) to everyone we meet during our walks.
  
• She loves to spontaneously give kisses, especially to Daddy. They are always open-mouth!
• She dances any time she hears music
• She signs all done, more, milk, doggie, and bird (although a lot of these look the same!)
• She loves to swim, and struggles to get out of my hold and do it herself. She can propel herself under water with a very strong frog kick if I let go, but can't hold her breath for any length of time, and has no idea how to come up for air (so I almost never let her go because the result is lungs full of water. But even that doesn't slow her down!)
• If you let her go while she is standing up, she can balance enough to squat down to the ground before falling back to her butt.
• She can now climb down the living room step without falling on her head.
• She knows there are places she is not suppose to play--like the fireplace-- and sometimes climbs on it and says "ah ah ah" mimicking my warning. It's nice to have a baby that tells on herself, makes it much easier to keep tabs on her!
• She likes to eat the dirt out of the house plant. Terrible!
• She has quite the little attitude these days! She has this angry scream that she does when she is irritated... drives me crazy!

We leave for Hawaii on Saturday. It will be our first plane ride since Claire has become so active. I'm very afraid of what she has in store for us! I am already making lists of what I will need, and asking for advice on how to keep her happy for the very long 6 hours! She screams if her movement is restricted for 6 seconds... Pray for us! Despite the plane ride, I am looking forward to Hawaii (of course!). I know Claire will have a great time. She is such a happy little one most of the time, she has fun wherever she goes. And I am ready to soak in the tropical sun!

I'll post next time with photos of our trip!