12 month stats

1 year ago today, life as we now know it began. D turns 1 today! Happy birthday, sweet pea!! How in the world did this happen? It’s kind of weird because I look back at this past year and it really doesn’t seem to have flown by in a flash. Like it does feel like we’ve had 12 full months with her, if that makes any sense. (don’t you love how i use “like” in my sentences as if i’m a 6th grader?) However, saying that we now have a “1 year old” as opposed to a “– month old” seems uber strange. Time in general has seemed to only speed up as we’ve gotten older, which everyone always tells you it will, so I’m so thankful that it feels like we really did fully enjoy her first year of life instead of looking back and thinking where in the hell did it go? I’m sure each subsequent year will blow by faster and faster, but this first one has been perfect.

So here’s what’s shakin’ in the wide world of D on this, her big 1 year birthday. Again, not much has changed since last month, but here we go:

Weighs about 20 lbs. and is probably around 29-30″ tall (we have her official 1 year doctor appointment on wednesday this week, so i’ll find those out for sure then).
Still has just the 6 teeth. I’m convinced more are on their way, though, what with her fingers in her mouth again and tendency towards the cranky side lately. Molars maybe? I’ve heard they take a long time to finally cut too. But I could be totally wrong there. Maybe she’s just being a brat.
Still so close to walking, but not quite there. My mom and sister said they saw her take a step in Canada and one of her teachers said she saw her take 2 steps at daycare that following week, but we still haven’t seen any evidence of this phenomenon at home. The hands and knees leapfrog gallop/”crawl” is still her preferred method of travel, or if she has something to hold onto she loves to cruise around standing. She also loves to hold your hands and walk around that way.
Favorite toys? Anything. She has never really shown a preference for any one or two of her toys, but is more of an equal opportunity player. She does still love her gumball machine, which always results in the plastic balls ending up scattered behind and under all the living room furniture since our floors slant. She also loves her books, and is always excited when I open the little cupboard in her room where we keep the ones she isn’t quite ready for yet. Lift-the-flap ones are still some of her favorites, with only 2 flaps as ripped-off casualties so far.
Diapers size 3, and clothing size 12 months. She can still fit into some 9 month outfits, but I won’t buy anything smaller than 12 months at this point. I would call 12 months the minimum size, too.
Favorite foods? I don’t think she really has one – she’ll eat pretty much anything. She much prefers to feed herself now, too, which is nice. So I try to give her everything in tiny pieces that she can manage. Too bad she likes to shove fistfuls of those tiny pieces in her mouth all at once, which kind of negates the tininess. Ah well. Fortunately I finally figured out how to get her to take those gross vitamins that she needs – put them in her bottles of milk. Seriously? DUH!! Why did that not dawn on me until just a week or two ago? I was only able to successfully hide them in her food a handful of times and was really frustrated that she wasn’t getting them. Of course she won’t detect 1mL of vits in 8oz of milk. Geez. At least she gets them now, I guess.
Her first words were “thank you”, in Canada this year. R says she’s saying “tattoo”, but it’s quite obviously “thank you”. We always say it to her after we give her something, so she learns the correct timing. It’s funny though, because she also likes to say it when she gives you something. Like putting a bite of whatever she’s eating into your mouth. So polite. Little Miss Manners we’re raising here. Other words aren’t exactly *words* yet, still more just noises. I think there’s one she does that is supposed to be her name, but to anyone but me and R it would just appear to be another crazy sound.
She’s a great waver – loves to wave hi and bye to everyone, everywhere.
Still loves stroller rides, and now that we added a bike ride last weekend she loves those now too.
She’s been treated for 3 ear infections this year, but in actuality we think it was only 1 that never fully went away. Her doctor said they generally don’t start looking into inserting tubes until they’ve had 5 in the first year, so at least we didn’t make that cut off. We found out she’s allergic to the Omnicef (cefdinir) family of antibiotics too. No issue with penicillins, though.
It took until 10 months for her to take a nose-dive off something, and that was off the bed in our hotel room the first night of our WI brewery tour weekend. Whoopsies. The only other one so far came in Canada, when she tipped over my legs and took a head-first digger off the couch. Like I said, fortunately babies are pretty rubbery. She was no worse for the wear after either spill.
Personality? Oh yes, this girl has one. And it’s big. Like, you need to look at me and immediately start playing with me when I enter the room, big. Her teachers at daycare say she’s the nosiest one in the class, always having to see what everyone’s doing and getting into everybody’s business. I said oh great, the class bully. They said no, not a bully at all (whew!), just curious and nosy. We call her the queen of the class. Fortunately she seems to have much more of R’s outgoing personality than my shy one. She has started exerting a little bit of clinginess and neediness lately, though, but I think that may be associated with a touch of separation anxiety, which is apparently common at this age. She’s never cried when we leave daycare in the mornings, it’s more like come here, pick me up, every time you walk by her. Which I can understand – she hasn’t seen us all day and wants our attention once we’re home. It’s just hard to unload the dishwasher or put away groceries or change your clothes when one arm is occupied by a spider monkey. But as one of my friends pointed out – it does feel great knowing that she loves us and just wants to be near us.
Sleeping. Hmm, this is a tough one, and one that I’ve talked about a lot recently. She’s been a great sleeper up until probably the past month or so, which was my first inkling that unsurfaced molars were bothering her. Those may be part of the problem, but one of her daycare teachers said she’s also at the age where babies will start to try to see how they can control you with their crying. Which would definitely explain a lot of the having to practically slither out of her room once we put her in her crib so she doesn’t wake back up with the first creak of a floorboard. And that’s not an exaggeration. Some nights are a real struggle, and I’ve been all the way to the door, stepped in the wrong spot to hit a creak in the floor, and up she popped to start over. So I now know the exact route to take so as not to make a peep when leaving her room. It works best with bare feet too, not slippers or flip-flops. She still wakes up sometimes during the night too, which she hadn’t done for the longest time either. Sometimes she needs a bottle to go back to sleep, other times a little rocking does the trick. So this one kind of has us stumped. We haven’t resorted to full-on CIO yet, because those nights when we’ve steeled our resolve to endure it, she goes to sleep no problem and stays there all night long. Fortunately this is really the only area where we’re having an issue right now though, so I think that’s pretty good.
She gave up taking a second nap at daycare months ago, so is usually pretty exhausted by the time we get home each day. We try to prevent her from taking a nap in the evening, though, because when she does is usually when we have trouble getting her to go down at a good bedtime. With no evening nap she’s usually in bed by 7:30-8, sometimes even 6-7 if she’s super tired (like falling asleep in her highchair tired). With a later nap, or if she’s just unusually wound up for some reason, she can be up until 9 or later. Those nights tend to be the ones when she wants to fart around at bedtime instead of going to sleep. Wrong answer. I just worry sometimes that she doesn’t get enough sleep without that second nap, but I guess she’d fall asleep if she really needed it, right?
Her hair is starting to get a little longer (very little, but some) and it’s cute how the ends curl around the back of her little head and neck. Her eyes are still a beautiful gray color, and I’m so happy she’s thus far escaped the poop brown shade of mine.
She has one little freckle in her hairline just above her right temple, and so far this is the only marking I’ve seen on her. No birthmarks, or anything like that.
She gives the best hugs I’ve ever known. This may be part of her clinging phase, but I’ll take it. When I pick her up and she buries her head in my neck and wraps her little arms around my shoulders to hold on tight, it’s just about the most wonderful feeling in the world.
We took our first short family vacation when we did our WI brewery tour weekend at the beginning of June, then our first big family vacation when we went to Canada the first week of July. She did great on both, long car rides and all.

I think that about sums things up for this year 1 recap. We got her this water table for her birthday, and I made some funfetti cupcakes for her to smash in her face tonight. I also made a giant photo album chronicling her first year, complete with room for 960 photos. There are 900 in it so far.

Thank you for making us a little family, D, and especially for showing me that maybe I am the mommy type after all. My eyes view life in an entirely different way now, thanks to you. We love you more than anything in this world.