Thirteen Months

   My-oh-my, what a little mover!  Photographing a 13 month baby is so much harder than photographing a 12 1/2 month baby.  She has completely given up crawling and is walking everywhere.  It seems like walking has doubled her energy.  She can't sit still any longer, which means no reading, no cuddling and no high-chairs.  She's fearless and indestructible.  She wants to run, but doesn't quite have walking down, so she takes a lot of tumbles, but she never cries.  She always gets back up to try it again.  She loves slides, swings and stairs.  I'm already having a hard time catching her at this pace, I fear a little for the time when she learns to run.

   Despite not cuddling, she seems to have become more affectionate.  She's learned how to make kissing noises, give hugs and blow kisses, and she hands them out like candy on the Fourth of July.  She usually gives kisses when you ask for them, and she loves to give her animals hugs and kisses, too.  Sometimes she'll even offer up a few kisses, completely unsolicited.

   She loves to play games and invent new ones.  Some of her favorites are hiding in boxes, playing peekaboo and getting squished between me and the couch.
   David and I seem to have worked out a good bedtime routine.  We give her a bath, read her The Big Red Barn (with David cleverly executing every animal noise),  put on her jammies, sing a song, lay her down, say her prayers and leave her with a lullaby playing.  This was working well enough that we could get her to sleep without a single tear, so we decided to start taking her pacifier away at night.  Now she absolutely loathes bedtime.  The moment she sees one of us holding her book, she throws a royal fit, so we have to skip all the fun stuff and just leave her in her crib until she cries herself to sleep.  It breaks my heart, because singing to her before bed is my favorite time of the day, but I'm afraid if I give her paci back at this point, she will just depend on it more.  Eventually, when she gets used to sleeping without it, we will take it away at nap-time, then in the car, too.  Here's praying that she comes to terms with it soon...
  She's still as social as ever.  She loves Sundays when she gets to see her Sunday-school friends, and lights up whenever she sees her buddy in the morning.  It's so much fun to watch them play peekaboo together and share their toys with one another.  She still loves to go on walks, go shopping, watch us when we play Ultimate Frisbee, and visit the Alexandria boardwalk.

  I'm really looking forward to being able to introduce her to more activities.   Finger-painting and Simon-says are the big ones.  I'm not sure if she's quite there yet, but there's no harm in trying until she gets it.

Cool stuff she can do:

stack 2 blocks

stack rings

walk

climb up and down stairs

go down slides

roll a ball

blow kisses

draw with chalk

pull on hats, necklaces, shirts and bracelets

Favorites:

tomatoes of every variety

eating grape tomatoes straight off the vine

cottage cheese

playing Squish

doggies

musical pull-horse

classical and alternative music

playgrounds

Tooth Count:

still working on #5 + 6 (slowly)

Words she can say (and mean it):

Hi

Mama

Fawn-Doe-Rosa

   During our trip to Minnesota, we took a family trip to Fawn-Doe-Rosa in St Croix Falls, WI.  It's an educational petting zoo with all manner of farm animal, plus deer and other native Wisconsin wildlife.  Many of the animals are allowed to roam, including deer, geese, hens and roosters, and bunnies.  They also had an area with only baby animals, my favorite being the tiny little fox cubs and the calf.  Most of the animals could be fed by hand.
   The Little took a little warming up when we got there.  The first animal we tried to show her was a  little baby bunny, and when we tried to get her to pet it, she pushed it away.  After she woke up and walked around for a while, she was fearless.  Eventually I had to hold her back so she wouldn't lose her fingers to the ponies.

 

This lamb and kid went everywhere together.  Best friends forever!

 

Party Time

Last month, we made a trip to Minnesota for The Little's first birthday.  Our trip was originally supposed to last seven days, but we ended up missing our flight out of DC and embarking on a straight 22-hour drive at 11 at night.  In the end, we only got to stay about 5 days, but it was well worth it.

We saw Grandma and Grandpa and went to the park, had a girls' day at IKEA, did Star-Trek night and a lot of video games with our friends (of the Katamari and Kinect varieties), and Little spent the rest of the time with Grandaddy.

We had originally planned to have a picnic party at Battle Creek Regional Park, but we got rained out and partied at David's sisters' house instead.  Lucky Little had a lot of friends at her party, half of them my family, the other half were our friends and David's family.  I had planned the party perfectly in between her daily naps, but since it was her party, she decided not to nap and was drowsy the whole time.  Thankfully there were no tears or fits, just a little sleepy face all day.  I couldn't get her to smile once for cake or presents.
Our menu for the day was a potluck picnic lunch, pink lemonade and Strawberry Mousse cake.  We had a special little carrot cake just for Little to tear apart, but the frosting was a hard buttercream and she's a dainty eater as it is, so the mess was minimal.

Sharing her birthday with Olga and her cousin

Birthday dress: Laura Ashley, c/o  Auntie Debbie

Debbie brings the party, as usual

Top the trip off with a day at the park and a day at the petting zoo, and I think it may possibly be the best possible first birthday ever.
The trip home alone involved a drive-in movie, a crummy motel room with a wet bed, getting lost in West Virginia for two hours and being stopped by police (just once, thank God).  Probably our most adventurous drive to date.

Back home enjoying her loot

12 Months

   Wow, twelve months old already!  I'm amazed by how much can happen to a little person in just one year.  She's gone from a tiny person who didn't know how to eat or sleep by herself, to a little toddler with the biggest personality and her own opinions about what she should be eating, and when she should be sleeping.  I can't boast that I made her myself anymore, because she's so much greater and bigger than anything I could have ever accomplished.  I'm so proud to have such a big-hearted, fearless girl who loves so freely and openly.
   She has become so independent.  She crawls so fast, cruises laps around the furniture, races her wagon back and forth across the house.  She refuses to be hand fed, and has very decided opinions about which foods she will and will not eat, and "mush" is definitely out of the question.  She loves Sunday school and play-dates.  If I left her in a room full of children, she would stay happy indefinitely, and forget she ever had parents.
  She tries so hard to be grown-up.  Everyday I catch her trying to imitate me doing things, like trying to drink from a water-bottle, read a book, write with a pen, talk on the phone, push carts at the store or open and close containers.  She imitates the way David and I talk, too.  When we leave her in her high-chair for a while she starts to babble, and sometimes she sounds just like me and David when we pick on each other.
  I'm so grateful that she loves music so much.  She dances and claps whenever she hears music, or even when I sing or whistle to her.  She loves to bang on everything and gets so excited when she can make two different sounds at the same time.  Her favorite toy is is her new xylophone, she'll go straight to it and dig it out of a huge pile of toys every time she sees it.  She holds her mallet so artfully, like a tiny maestro.
  I'm pretty intimidated by the thought of raising a toddler.  Raising a baby was easy.  All I had to do was feed her, change her, love her and play with her.  Now she'll require activities, meals, and patience (I am the polar opposite of structure and graciousness).  
Here's to one year conquered, may the next be just as delightful!

Cool Stuff she can do:
Give kisses
Dance
Clap to music
Walk (10 steps is her record!)
Climb stairs
Bend over and pick stuff up

Actively play Peekaboo
Play hide-and-seek with a phone

Throw stuff overhand (usually food)
Pull her wagon backwords

Stuff she likes:
Playing chase or peekaboo with her buddy
Her toy xylophone
Digging in my purse
"swimming"
Buckets
Drawing
Animals
Bread, cheerios, pasta, as long as it's not a vegetable and it's been baked
Nibbling

Tooth Count:
Four, plus two more upper teeth on the way

Words she can sign:
More, milk, food, up, please

Words she can say:
Hi

Summertime, Summertime, Sum-Sum-Summertime

We have been having way too much fun lately.  David is done with school for the semester, so I actually get to see him EVERY DAY and like, eat together and stuff.  The weather has been beautifully sunny, but increasingly more miserable every day.  Minnesotans do not belong in the South.
I've been busy on my garden and taking walks and picnics with the family nearly every day.  I love being able to take the kids outside when I'm babysitting.  I can take them out into the grass to eat dirt, or if it's too darn hot we'll sit in the porch and play all day.  Since David's semester has ended, the list of activities has included church and school picnics, visiting Arlington Cemetery, playing frisbee and a birthday party.
I'm looking forward to going to the pool and possibly taking a road trip to the Shenandoah River or the Maryland coast.

 

David's Little Helper

*** I wrote this post a long time ago and forgot to actually publish it.  oops.  Better late than never, I guess. ***

 David is currently working on a project for a design competition for the city of Virginia Beach.  They are building an education center on a very rare piece of undeveloped land in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed area.  I've been so jealous of all of his "academic" field trips, so he finally decided to take me along.  I was technically there to take photo documentation, but I think I may have enjoyed it too much.  Learning is supposed to be painful, after-all.

 

It was a beautiful day.  It was stormy and windy and sunny and warm.  The dramatic weather changes made for great picture taking.  It also made for a very crazy hair day.  After about two hours I got sick of having my hair in my face and donned my scarf like and old lady (or other head-scarf wearing person).

 

The area that the land was in was near a dense residential area, so there was obviously some signs of use from the local inhabitants.  (That's David-speak for near houses with trash everywhere).

 

One of the coolest things about this area is that it used to be a natural oyster reef.  Since pollution and development have gotten so bad around here, the oyster population has all but disappeared, but by building reefs out of discarded oyster shells from restaurants, they plan to bring the oysters back to the bay.

 

The trip was a lot of fun just to be with my family, but because I'm learning so much about the landscape and the natural history of the area.

The very best part of the trip for me, however, was seeing my old friend Kati and her family.  Kati and I grew up in the same neighborhood, and she happens to live near Virginia Beach, so we met up for dinner after we were done with our site study.  I had so much fun meeting Kayla and Lorne for the first time.  I was so disappointed when I realized we didn't take a picture together.  Maybe next time...?

Just a Typical Day: Family Field Trip

David is currently studying church parks in DC, so every Sunday we will be going to a new church garden.  David will creep out the park goers by walking around taking notes in a notebook while Nora and I smell the roses and play in the grass.  Last week we visited the National Cathedral.  We spent all afternoon in the garden and took a brief tour of the cathedral.  It was so beautiful.  I can't wait to go back!