Our sweet baby is no longer a baby by strict definition. However, I’ll refuse to call her a toddler until she’s toddling. Although I have to admit that toddler-like emotions and opinions are beginning to emerge.
1 Year Old
The Botanical Gardens
Before we get to baby milestones, let’s talk about mommy. I handled 1 really well, if I do say so myself. I only teared up once as we started singing happy birthday. The morning of her birthday, I posted “Elia survived our first year as parents!” and I was only kind of joking. Looking back, I’m amazed at how little we knew, but you just hunker down and do it.
Now to put the focus back on Elia:
In your last month as a “baby,” you kept very busy. You got your very first tooth (upper right) and then immediately got 3 more. That’s 4 teeth in 3 weeks, so I’m afraid that it was a very, very rough month for everyone. Your sleeping, which had been a dream from 7 – 10.5 months, reverted back to a newborn schedule with you waking every few hours. We knew it was because you were in pain, but there was little we could do besides the pain relievers and lots of cuddles and nursing. It was quite pitiful.
- Teething Chomps
You continued to get more espressive with your hands, so we’ve been working on more signs. We cannot believe how quickly you learn and how well you can communicate. Your mama has started putting hand motions to all of the songs that we sing frequently, and we were shocked to discover how quickly you learned them, even when there are several different hand motions to a single song. You’ll also randomly start doing the hand motions, which we take as a sign that you want to sing that particular song.
Elia & Maw Maw
Besides the official and unofficial signing you can do, you say several words. In addition to your very first word, dog (DOH!), you also say cat, bird (bir), duck, that (dat), and, embarrassingly, boob. Nope, you do not say mom, mama or mommy. Oh, well. We’re also learning that your vocabulary is much bigger than what you can technically say. If we ask you to get the ball, you do so consistently, and you know your cabbage patch doll as “sweet baby” and will get her when asked too. Your mama would cuddle and rock and pat the doll’s back, while saying “awwww, sweet baby.” So you not only picked up that she is “sweet baby”, but you now pat our backs when we pick you up, which we find so unbelievably cute.
St. Patrick's Day
You still love to eat. You’ve tried just about everything except for peanut butter and have yet to outright reject anything.
Red Beans & Rice
Your favorite pastime - eating your friend's snacks.
You are still pulling up, and have started standing for a few seconds at a time before you realize what you are doing and plop back down. I don’t think you’re too close to walking though, and that’s fine.
We’ve also started Music Class, which you seem to love. You particularly like the songs where the babies are allowed to shake, rattle and bang on instruments and often protest loudly when the song is over and I have to put them away. You can be pretty serious during class (even while dancing and bopping about to every song. Dancing is serious business), but you perk up immensely when we sing the songs and play the CD for you outside of class.
Playing with Callie
And I cannot recap this month without mentioning The Face. You have started this horrible yet hilarious expression whenever you see something new, or confusing, or upsetting or annoying or anything, really. Luckily, you’re cute so people see it and laugh, but honestly, it’s a little embarrassing for mommy.
The Face
We had your party on Saturday, March 24th, the day before your birthday. The theme was The Very Hungry Caterpillar in honor of the fact that we stuff you, only to find that “you’re still hungry.” Oh, and because the theme pretty much did the menu planning for me. We had fruit salad (apples, pears, plums, oranges, strawberries & watermelon), a meat and cheese tray (including swiss cheese, salami, sausage, and pickles among other things), a cake and some “lollipops” (cake pops in the shape of a caterpillar). In addition we had baked brie, jalapeno poppers, sweet tea and sangria for the adults. The hungry caterpillar didn’t have any of that, but he really should have.
Decorations
There were about 13 guests, including immediate family and close friends, so you were surrounded by a lot of love. We were pretty excited to see what you’d think about the cake, since it would be your first real taste of dessert. You studied it and then very carefully picked at the icing with your thumb and pincher finger. You considered the icing for a second and then decided to feed it to mommy. We finally gave in and cut a small piece of cake for you, but you were underwhelmed. In all, it was the daintiest cake “smash” we’ve ever witnessed.
Birthday
We adore you, princess angel monkey!
