happy belated birthday to our firecracker baby! you are developing such a fun personality -- you love to make us laugh by playing peekaboo, pulling duck faces, and crawling around with dish towels on your head. you scowl and squawk if you're displeased with something (usually Elizabeth encroaching on your personal space). and you chat happily to yourself while playing with baby dolls or wooden puzzles.
helping mama cook
you can stand up unassisted and keep your balance for quite a while before squatting back down and crawling off like a shot towards your next adventure. you haven't taken a step by yourself yet, but you still have time to beat the Will child record of walking at 13 months (Cece is on tenterhooks to find out whether you're going to steal that crown of laurels from her -- Elizabeth walked at 14 months and Greta at 15 months so we'll see!).
helping yourself to your sister's yogurt
you put anything and everything into your mouth. thank goodness you've only had one scary moment of choking, and even that wasn't a true airway obstruction -- you got a thick hairband stuck in the back of your throat and couldn't cough it out, so I had to do the baby Heimlich and put you over my arm and slap you on the back a few times until you dislodged it. even though you were still able to breathe through it all, of course it was scary and I was so grateful for the biannual CPR training we do at work with mannequins so that the muscle memory took over!
at your one year well visit, you weighed 19 lbs and were 27 inches long (50th percentile all around). you are wearing 12 month clothes. you say "mama", "dada", "this!" (while pointing imperiously) and "no". you love to eat -- PB&J cut into strips, all kinds of fruit, pizza, yogurt, and pasta are favourites. you drink whole milk out of a bottle and water out of a sippy cup. such a big girl!
you finalllllly (dare I jinx it?!) are sleeping all the way through the night after months of multiple night wakings. just within the past month you transitioned from waking up between 1-3 AM needing a bottle, to waking up needing your pacifier put back in, to waking up and putting your own pacifier back in. you and Elizabeth both sleep in our room still (in separate cribs) and I couldn't let you self soothe as much as I did with your older sisters at this age because then you would wake up Elizabeth. so your sleep skills have taken longer to develop but finally, praise God, we seem to be through the worst of it! (for now, haha... we're flying across the country soon to visit family so with the time change and travel all bets are off.)
on your first birthday, we continued our tradition of driving out for the Fourth of July festival in the town where your Pappy grew up and where we were married. you ate chicken BBQ and macaroni salad, then spent some quality time with family and ate most of the frosting off of your birthday cupcake. we sure love you, Victoria Anne!
reading your card from Cece, who also made you a headband
your mother forgot a bib so your father improvised.
birthday books from Aunt Patty and Uncle Larry
with your godparents -- and your new baby cousin, soon to make his debut!
then you celebrated back at home with presents from Grammie & Grandpa and Nana & Pappy. and your sentimental mother pored over photos and videos from the past year, reliving the joys and thankfully short-lived hardships. what strikes me most is the fact that from the very first day of your life, you have been surrounded by so much love. whatever the rest of your years may hold, I hope and pray that you carry that love with you wherever you go.
your very own couch from Nana & Pappy
super cute outfits from Grammie & Grandpa
your very own pop-it, which is definitely coming on the plane with us at the end of the month
Can you imagine that the sweet baby girl in the casts (I can't think of what it was called) might be your earliest walker? She's adorable and looks like a happy go lucky type of kid. Bonus points for a full night's sleep!
How is she one!? I feels like just yesterday she was born. Time really flies when you measure it according to a baby growing up. What a lovely recap, and what a joy to see her loving life. Yay for sleeping through the night!!!
it's about time for a good old airing of the grievances. while we have ever so much for which to give thanks, sometimes we need the catharsis of enumerating our woes, big and small. (you can read the 2023 edition here.) _________________________________________ first up, potty training. I buckled down and trained Greta and Cecilia both around age 2 1/2, and it went fairly well (I'm a big fan of waiting until the kid is practically ready to train themselves). Elizabeth turned 2 1/2 near the end of the school year, and logically it seemed like a great time to buckle down -- we wouldn't be driving around to after school sports and activities and we'd have more time at home. I kept waiting for the day when I'd wake up full of excitement and motivation to strip off the diaper and chase a naked toddler around the house. and ... shockingly ... that day never came. then we were preparing for our trip to Seattle in July and it definitely didn't seem like the right time...
1) Zoo. we picked a scorcher of a day to go to the zoo with friends! I can't actually remember if we went to the zoo at all last year (when Victoria was a newborn). in any case, Elizabeth was definitely far more interested in pointing out the animals than she had been the last time. striking their best explorer pose Greta is as tall as an adult female black rhino! she was obsessed with the anteater our friends headed home and we decided to circle back to see a few animals we'd missed the first time around. we ended up getting caught in torrential downpours and had to seek shelter by the cheetah enclosure for a while. but I'm glad we came back because we got to see the funniest shenanigans between the baby gorilla and his dad playing chase! another good place to wait out the rain -- hanging out with the sea lions. 2) Around home. Victoria and Elizabeth are having so much fun playing together (well, at some point it devolves into fighting and scratching, but still! they...
sitting outside the new independent coffee shop that opened in the neighborhood this summer as a physician assistant with an undergraduate minor in psychology, I've always been fascinated by the connection between the mind and the body. that interest serves me well in my chosen specialty of primary care/internal medicine, as mental health comes to bear so frequently on physical, or somatic, complaints like fatigue, upset stomach, and dizziness. in any given day, I'll typically have one or two appointments that are scheduled specifically so someone can address their anxiety or depression, and it often comes up as a subject of conversation during routine physicals. I have probably recommended therapy to my patients literally thousands of times, whether it's to deal with an isolated situational stress or grief, or more pervasive issues like OCD, chronic insomnia, bipolar disorder, depression, or borderline personality disorder. when we're discussing starting antidepressant...
Can you imagine that the sweet baby girl in the casts (I can't think of what it was called) might be your earliest walker? She's adorable and looks like a happy go lucky type of kid. Bonus points for a full night's sleep!
ReplyDeleteHow is she one!? I feels like just yesterday she was born. Time really flies when you measure it according to a baby growing up. What a lovely recap, and what a joy to see her loving life.
ReplyDeleteYay for sleeping through the night!!!