My little one year old

Happy 1st Birthday Charlotte!

I can't believe that we are already at a year.  It seems like just yesterday that we were so excited to find out we were having a baby and now you are one year old!  We had such a great day today and I can't wait to post a lot of posts about it but for now I want to talk about you and what you're up to at one year old. 

 

You are so sweet.  You have been giving Daddy and me hugs and kisses for a while now but just this week you started associating it with your baby doll too.  It melts my heart to see you give your doll a hug.  Such a sweet, little girl thing to do.  You are so well behaved and we ALWAYS get comments about how happy and sweet you are.  You rarely get in a whiny mood and if you are whining we know something is really wrong (your teeth hurt,  you're really tired, etc).  We are so thankful that you are such a sweet little girl and we hope that calm. laid back, happy temperament will always characterize you.

You are noticing things around you and pointing them out so much more now than you used to.  When I hung the paper flowers for your birthday party you started pointing to them and now anytime you see one you point.  You point out flowers on our walks and when we are looking at pictures and ask you where Charlotte, Mommy, Daddy, etc are you can point to them.  It amazes me how much you understand and how aware you are of your surroundings these days!  It's so much fun!

You have become quire an independent little girl.  You are happy to know where one of us is and then to just go on your way exploring.  We tend to follow you but are trying to give you your space to explore.  As you can see we pretty much let you explore wherever you want as long as it's safe!  I think in this picture you were telling me to leave you alone in your cabinet! :)

With you being so independent comes you being fearless.  You were not scared in the slightest to climb up on the counter here and stand up to get in to your present.  It scares me sometimes to watch you try to get down from your little pink chair head first or something equally unsafe but you are pretty good about getting yourself out of situations and knowing your limits.  I am thankful though that you are good at playing by yourself and aren't scared.  I hope you continue to embrace those traits (to a degree!) as you get older.

Over the past month it seems like you have developed exponentially in your awareness and verbal skills!  It only takes us repeating something to you or showing you how to do something a time or two before you pick up on it!  I feel like you have advanced in this area quickly instead of really worrying about walking.  You are too busy learning new words and new tricks to worry about walking!  So far you can say: MaMa (on a rare occasion), DaDa (all the time), CaCa (Luca), Bye Bye, Quack Quack, Boooooo (Moo), Ah Ah (Oo Oo Ah Ah for what the monkey says), Baa Baa (what the lamb says), Yesh (yes), Fow-s (Flowers), and she does her lips like a fish when you ask what the fish says.  She can also: hold up 1 finger when you ask how old she is, wave bye bye and has just started waving back to us any time if we wave at her, give a high five, throw her arms up for the "throw it in the pan" part of Patty Cake, clap, open and close both fists (always both fists!) in the air when anyone says "Twinkle Twinkle" or starts singing the song, point to your hair, point out other people's noses and eyes and sometimes your own, get pretty close to your belly button when we ask where it is, points to flowers or herself in pictures when you ask where they are, and her absolute cutest new trick is to "smell" the flowers.  I have to get a video of it but Talitha just taught it to her yesterday so I haven't had time.  Basically when you ask her to smell the flowers (doesn't matter if there are flowers around or now) instead of breathing in through her nose she wrinkles up her nose and blows out of it instead.  It is adorable!  Charlotte, you are so precious!

Like I said, your vocabulary and physical tricks have accelerated this month but you still haven't made much progress towards walking.  I'm a little baffled by this since you started pulling up around 8 months but you just really haven't felt a need to try it.  In the past week or so we've started really trying extra hard to get you to walk and over the past few days you have taken a few steps to me from the ottoman in the den.  And you are getting more confident standing without holding on to anything also.  Today at your party everyone got to watch you stand by yourself for a good 30 seconds before you touched your toy and you even had to readjust your balance during that time also!  I know that all babies walk at different times so I'm not worried about you.  Honestly, it's much easier for me when you crawl because you're slower than you will be when you start walking!  We'll just have to keep encouraging you and watch you develop at your own pace.

Charlotte, feeding you is interesting.  Some things you love (most fruit except bananas), mac and cheese, grits, eggs (you had those this morning and loved them), lil crunchies, and shredded cheddar cheese.  Then there are other things that you like sometimes like chicken, goldfish, puffs.  And then there are vegetables which are in a whole different category.  It cracks me up because you'll eat them all in baby food form but in table food form you will immediately reach into your mouth and take them out if we try and give them to you.  So for now we're just trying veggies sometimes and continuing with the baby food veggies a lot.  And thank goodness for the Gerber mac and cheese with veggies because you'll eat that up in a second!

Up until last Thursday you were still nursing four times a day (8 am, noon, 4:30 pm, and 8 pm) with two naps a day (10-noon, 2:30-4:30).  But you haven't eaten pumped milk in a sippy cup or bottle for probably a month.  We haven't tried feeding it like that to you any more often than when we went out but it suprised us that you all of a sudden turned on the bottle in addition to the sippy cup.  You love drinking juice/water from the sippy but no milk.  So on Thursday you decided (and I agreed) to drop the 4:30 feeding and so I tried giving you whole milk.  Since then we have only been nursing three times a day and trying to give you whole milk at 4:30 but so far we haven't found a way for you to drink it.  I'm interested to see what our doctor says on Monday at our appointment about how to do that.  So I'm slowly weaning you and praying that you will soon learn to love drinking milk from some sort of vessel.  We'll see how that goes.

Charlotte, you are my little girl and I will always love you so much.  This past year has been the happiest of my life.  You make life so much sweeter just by being a part of it.  I hope that you always know how much your Daddy and I love you.  We will do anything to help you become the woman that God wants you to be.  I am so glad that we had such a wonderful day today celebrating your birthday.  I can't wait to tell you all about it when you get older.  I love you sweet girl.

love, Mommy