Thankful Thursday

Today I am thankful for Miss Claire Alden Lieser! It is hard to believe that 3 years ago I was holding her for the first time. I was in love with her the moment I found out I was pregnant and that love keeps growing just as fast as she is. She has taught me so much about myself, life, love, patience, joy...I could go on and on. She is independent, loving, beautiful, caring, entertaining, funny, and so smart. She makes me so proud everyday and I am so blessed and lucky to be called mommy by her. I look forward to seeing what God has in store for her life. She has grown so much this past year and though it makes me a little sad to see her growing up it also is exciting to see what what will happen next with her. Here are a few of her favorite things.

Claire loves dresses and skirts. She is not a fan of long sleeves, posing a problem now that it is cold outside, or blankets while she sleeps. She loves to sing and dance and knows all the words to the theme songs of her favorite TV shows and movies. She has to have a skirt and shoes on so she can dance to those songs. If she doesn't we have to pause the show and wait for her to get "ready" then she will sing. She makes up songs constantly. They are pretty cute and often funny. She loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Curious George, VegiTales, Signing Time, Umi Zumi, and Backyardigans. She can quote the movie lines of VegiTales Princess and the Pop star while it is playing. Scary. She loves to play Legos, pretend with her kitchen and baby, and race with Quinn. (They run around the house and she calls it racing) She loves to be outside and even though she is a clean and neat child she loves to play in the dirt. She likes to fill up buckets with dirt and make roads for her matchbox cars. She can now pedal her tricycle all by herself. That was a big accomplishment for her this summer. She can count to 20 and recently has been wanting us to help her count to 100. She can draw and recognize her shapes and has started to show interest in learning to write her name. She can write the C-L-A-I and the E. The R is a little tricky. Thanks to Rachel, Alex, Leah & Hopkins of the show Signing Time Claire has learned sign language. She can count to 10 in signs and can spell her name and knows the alphabet as well. She gets stuck on a few. She knows signs for all kinds of words. If she doesn't know the sign for something she will ask me...unfortunately I do not know any so she gets disappointed sometimes. She recently told me she knows her right from her left. I have no idea where she learned that from so whoever taught her, thank you. This summer she became potty trained and is doing awesome. We have seen every public bathroom in every store and restaurant and once we tried to potty on the side of the road on a road trip. That did not go so well but I guess that is just part of it. She loves going to church and to MOPS. Those are things we all look forward to. Her favorite thing about church is singing time and craft time(I teach her craft class). Ok, I may have added that about my class...I am sure she loves it though. :) She also loves her friends at church and her teachers. My favorite thing about Claire is that she loves her baby sister. There are times when they argue and fight over toys but Claire has always, always taken care of Quinn. She will not do anything or get anything without asking and making sure Quinn is included. Claire loves on Quinn when she is sad (pats her back) and gets sad when Quinn is sad. She is the best big sister!

I honestly could brag about Claire all day she is a wonderful and sweet little girl and I am very THANKFUL on this Thanksgiving day that she is my daughter!

(note:written 2 hours before Thursday...we are going to be pretty busy with family and I wanted to make sure I wrote this. Happy Thanksgiving!)