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 feels a bit preposterous to sit down and type out a list of woes on my personal laptop, in my own heated house, while my four healthy children nap or play (respectively) and I sip on a San Pellegrino flavored water from a case that a neighbor on our Buy Nothing group just gifted us. and yet. and yet! there has been quite a bit of woe in the last several weeks and I want to complain about it, so I shall. at the top of the list: car woes. not one, but two of Nick's cars were hit by other drivers within the past month. fortunately he was not injured, but working on his cars is essentially therapy for him -- so he lost not just two vehicles in his fleet, but also the time that was required to deal with insurance and police reports, and the emotional benefit of his favourite hobby. this car was rear-ended while parked. Nick wasn't actually in the car, but saw it happen -- the driver of the SUV in the photo below was driving full speed in the right hand lane and didn't reali
dear Victoria, sometimes I scoop you up and can't stop myself from squishing your little body right into my chest, and nuzzling my face into your neck until you squeal with giggles. you are just so darn cute! you can spend up to an hour scooting around the family room playing with various toys -- recently you've started to be interested in baby dolls and the Fisher Price doll house. you mostly army crawl, but sometimes you pull yourself forward when you're sitting, too, and a few times you've been able to launch forward an inch or so from a bona fide crawling position. you can stand supported for a little while, but you're not close to pulling up by yourself yet. we had another wonderful report from the orthopedic surgeon this month. both hips remain in place. your left hip has what they call a "delayed ossification center", meaning that it's still primarily cartilage since the hip socket didn't form properly to begin with, but the doctor said tha
you love sitting in the Boppy! (your little toes are just too cute) dear Victoria, you are well and truly into babyhood now -- I feel like every day your face changes a little, new rolls of chub appear on your arms and thighs, and you figure out a new way to express yourself, mostly through your constantly expanding "vocabulary". obviously, you're a ways off from speaking words, but you squawk, squeak, trill, chortle, grunt, snort, and make just about every other sound imaginable. you get especially loud and exuberant at night when it's time for bed! you continue to be the happiest little babe, belly-laughing at your sisters and grinning up at Daddy and me whenever we look at you. Greta says you look like a raspberry pie with your round, rosy cheeks! she also calls you her little chicken nugget, and Cece calls you "Vicky Micky". you are finally rolling front-to-back, and are just a hair away from rolling back-to-front (you'll get 3/4 of the way there a
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!!!