A very merry (one)birthday to Emily!!!

The first smash cake- at home without clothes on (good idea!)

Notice the butterfly-shaped fruit tray (way to go, Greg!)

Todd is on Emily's top 5 list. He's been getting smiles out of her from day one.

Jess, Ellen, Rachel, and me catching up (not sure why we sat down around the toy?)

Erin and Kylee letting their boys play on the floor

Sean and Thomas finding fun "big kid" uses for the toddler toys

Happy birthday time! :-)

Immediately fascinated by her cooking pot (thanks, Mann's!)

and her giraffe pillow (thanks, Heath's!)

Big girl stats:
Weight: 21 lbs 4 oz (55%)
Height: 29 1/4" (55%)


Wow!! We have a one year old! What a blessed, magical, insanely tiring, insanely exciting, steep learning curve year this has been! One year ago today (the 19th), we were finally checking out of the hospital room that I was very glad to leave and were heading home with our 5 lb baby girl. She slept, we cried tears of relief and joy, we carefully maneuvered every pebble on the road back home, and life as a family of 3 began. Hard to believe that this little girl came home weighing 5 lbs and is now more than 21 lbs and full of energy, spunk, and curiosity.

We had a GREAT time celebrating her birthday (twice!) - once with Lauren, Mom, David, Nicole, and Paul and once with Greg's mom, my mom, us, and a whole host of wonderful friends. The party was up at our church in the fellowship hall. Wish so much that we had enough parking available to throw a party at our place, but sadly all the residents take the spots designated for visitors on our cul-de-sac, so we knew we had to have the party elsewhere. All the kids had plenty of toys from our house to play with up there (and they had each other, which of course provides plenty of entertainment). Food was good, cake was yummy, and the fellowship was a blessing as well. I think Emily had a great crawling around and checking everybody out. She was much more cautious at the party about her little homemade cheesecake cupcake, but the shots we got of her at home with it showed that she didn't shy away from the mess.

I missed her 11 month update on here, so lots has changed since her 10 month update! Let's see....

*just started clapping with her hands together instead of up and down last week
*lots of mimicking now- if you cough or laugh, she follows with one a few seconds later. She is such a social butterfly and really wants to join in when you are having fun laughing with someone.
*started waving awhile ago but only to Daddy! This past week she started waving to more people. She only waves "hi", and I think it is because it is exciting to wave when someone enters the room. She is sad when you say bye-bye and walk out the door, so I don't think she wants to wave because she's not happy when you leave.
* Words so far are "mama", "dada", and "hi"...and I'm pretty sure that "mmmmm" with a whimper is her attempt at saying "milk". She babbles everything else in long sentences with lots of vocal inflections.  We have no idea what she is saying, but she is expressing that she has a lot of thoughts to share. :-)
*Last week (it was a big week for her!) she started to sign "eat" to us consistently. She might be starting to show us "all done" but I'm not sure if that's really what she is doing yet.
*Still crawling quickly all over the place and wanting to climb up and down on low areas; pulling to stand at walls, doors, legs, and furniture; and cruising about 3-4 steps along furniture when she's motivated. But no walking yet or solid standing unassisted. Although over the past couple of weeks, there have been times where she's stood on her own for 2-4 seconds at a time. But she prefers to be on her knees to move and will quickly kick her feet behind her in the air so she's dangling if you try to hold her hands up to help her walk. We are happy to have her crawl as long as she wants (both for our sanity and for her mental and fine motor development that comes from lots of crawling).
* Sleep has hopefully recovered now. We took a quick out of town trip for a few days that had her waking up b/w 4:30-5:30am again (ugh....), but last night she fell back into her 7:30-6 routine that she had been doing for about a month before the trip. I don't think we're going to get her to sleep longer than that until she changes to one nap a day. She flirted with that idea a few times on the trip, but once we were home she gladly went back to two naps a day. I'm happy with this!
* Still on formula in bottles at the moment, but we're planning on moving along to cow's milk and cups as soon as possible. I was pretty adamant about sticking it out with the formula until a year since the vitamin mix in formula is what she really needed through the first birthday. We've introduced 1-2 oz of milk into the formula a few times over the last week. She has been on straw cups for water since about 8 months old, but she still loses a good amount of what she sucks. It is sooo messy and wet when she drinks from a straw. I think she just doesn't care to change the habit, but the thought of doing this with milk is not exciting. She is getting much better at tilting her take n toss sippies back far enough to drink without my help, so that might be our milk cup for the time being. But I am hoping we are not using sippies for too long. After such a battle in the beginning with the bottles, it is now a very comforting thing for her. It will be difficult to wean her off of them. The times I've tried the last month or so have resulted in about an ounce of milk being consumed and a very unhappy baby. Any advice from a mom whose kid didn't like the transition??

Now you know way more than you ever wanted to about Emily's life at a year. :-) Thanks for reading!