Merry Christmas (late) and Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe that 2009 has come to a close, the year our sweet Anna Claire was born. She's growing and changing just about as fast it feels like the year went. It seems like not so long ago we were on our way to the hospital for our scheduled C-Section. We have Christmas and New Year's behind us, so the planning moves onto the first birthday party! I love planning a party and know this one will be extra special and fun.

I'm posting some pictures of Anna Claire from Christmas and some in the days following. If you think the quality of pictures looks better, they do, I got an awesome new camera for Christmas!

Anna Claire and "Da Da" on Christmas Day.

Santa brought Anna Claire this cute lion that she can either push or ride. She hates to ride, she only wants to push. You can see the determination in her eyes in this one, needless to say, the lion was big hit.

Such an active, happy girl!

We're back!

I'm sure we have lost some blog followers considering I haven't updated this in months. Oh well, I won't make excuses, I'll just post some cute pictures of Anna Claire and a short video of her crawling, eh, scooting and hope you'll forgive me :)

She is growing more and more everyday and is starting to copy stuff we do. It's really cute! She was a pink bunny for Halloween and charmed everyone at my office Halloween party. She was smiling and "talking" and just being the happy baby that she is! It's hard to believe she'll be 9 months old next week (Nov. 13).

A trip to the beach and July 4th

The last month, for the Tuten's, has been busy. In mid-June we took a week long vacay in North Myrtle Beach with my (Meredith) family. Anna Claire was entertained and loved all week long. She got to experience the beach, ocean and pool, all for the first time. She wasn't too sure about the ocean at first, but eventually enjoyed having her feet in water. She loved the pool and seemed to enjoy it the most. It was fun to be able to spend time with everyone. Aunt Nat and Uncle Hunter hadn't seen Anna Claire since her first week and Uncle Nick had never seen her in person, so it was fun for everyone to see how much she had grown.

July 4th Thad was able to manage a day off in between two very long days at the hospital. This is a long month, on-call every fourth night! We were both sick with bad colds, so we didn't do much on the 4th except to go to a cook out for a couple of hours before we were carried away by mosquitos. While being right on the water in Charleston for fireworks sounds like fun, you forget that mosquitos the size of large children are there too, not even the bug spray could keep them at bay.

Here are some of our favorite pictures of our girl over the last month:

June

For those of you who have been asking me to please post some new pictures of Anna Claire, here you go. I promise I'll try to do better!

I started back to work in mid-May, we made the transition successfully. Anna Claire does well with her sitter, and when I pick her up she's happy, fed and usually rested. She's not always in the same outfit she was in when I dropped her off, but that really has nothing to do with the sitter, but more to do with Miss Anna Claire! I still hate dropping her off every morning, a friend told me that I would get used to it, but didn't mean I would like it, I would say that's pretty accurate.

Anna Claire is growing like a weed. She goes for her 4 month check up tomorrow, and I'm excited to see her growth. She is more aware of us and especially loves her daddy, I'll post some pictures of them together below. She is getting stronger and can sit up pretty good (not quite on her own) and almost hold that head up without bobbling.

Since I last posted Thad celebrated a birthday. We went to dinner, but Anna Claire had a melt down before we could finish our food, actually, I think I only got one bite of mine come to think of it. Thad shocked me when I asked him what he wanted for his birthday and he said a nice fountain pen....so that's what he got, a really fancy one that is retracable, apparently with as much writing as you do as a resident people take notice of what you use to write with and he got several compliments on it the first day he used it.

Here are some pictures of our baby girl from the last month. I've got to figure out how to edit some of them so she doesn't have red eye.

Jasmine still likes to snuggle with us and Anna Claire.

We pulled out the Bumbo and little Missy thought she was big stuff! She got so tickled, it was so cute!

A new post

Since it's been almost a month since I last posted I figured it was time for an update. Sorry for the absence, I wish I had time to post everyday and I suppose I could if I didn't do anything around the house or interact with Anna Claire at all. Speaking of our Anna Claire, she is growing and becoming more alert and fun everyday. I go back to work on May 11th and it's going to be a very, very sad day. I know we'll survive, plenty of parents and babies do, and I have plenty of friends who have had to go back to work and they and said babies survived.

Anna Claire has also been to her first birthday party (our neighbor's little girl turned 3), slept in the crib in her own room, stayed in the nursery at church and rolled from her tummy to her back! It's been an exciting month of firsts!

Since I last posted Thad has finished his shed! I first posted about it first here. He took his two weeks of paternity leave these last two weeks of April, coincedience that is also happened to be the last two weeks of turkey season? I think not. While he did do some hunting, we also celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary, my birthday and then completion of the shed!! I told him if the doctor thing doesn't work out he could build these, he's just got to work on his turn around time. :) Here are some pics.

GO HEELS!

Anna Claire and I were so excited about last night's Final Four game that we decided to put on our Carolina gear and sport it all day on Saturday in anticipation of the big event. We are glad we weren't bad luck and we look forward to putting our outfits back on on Monday!!

A special thanks to a family friend for handing down her cheerleading outfit! Anna Claire's got some room to grow in it!

7 weeks today

Anna Claire is 7 weeks today. Time does fly.

Last weekend we took our first out of town trip to visit my parents in Asheville and to introduce Anna Claire to some family and friends. It was a big weekend. It took us 6 and half hours to get to Asheville, before Thad and I could make it there in 3hrs. 45 min. Needless to say we learned a few things about traveling with a newborn. The trip home was more like 4 and half hrs. Anna Claire got to meet a couple of her Mimi's friends and my best friend since the first grade, KHW (I won't use her name to protect her innocence, haha).

This week we also had lunch with a friend from work who had the same due date I did, Feb. 18. She ended up having her son on Feb. 17. It was fun to meet up and talk about what our babies were doing, how much they are sleeping, what they like, dislike, etc. Friday afternoon I took Anna Claire to work so I could introduce her to some people there. It was fun, they all kept saying, "Look at all that hair!"

Here are some pictures from this week: