12 Months Old

Today my baby girl is 12 months old! Since we had her party this past Saturday, we have been celebrating for a few days now. As sad as I've been thinking about how fast the past 12 months have flown by, today I have just been happy and excited to see what this next year will bring. I know we have lots of fun moments ahead!

This past month SC started walking. She started taking steps at 10.5 months, but now walks most of the time. She is still not super stable all of the time and falls a good bit. But she now seems to prefer walking much more than crawling.

Her sleeping habits are still the same: going to be between 6-7pm {earlier on our days off/weekends, and closer to 7 on work nights}. She still takes two really good naps per day. I just put her in her crib and she lays her head on her lovies and rubs them while she falls asleep. She still loves her pacifiers.

As of today I am done breastfeeding. I'm planning on doing a more detailed post soon, but I have been slowly weaning for the last month, and I didn't necessarily plan to end exactly on her birthday, but it just happened that way. Over the past couple of months, I have gotten sad when thinking about being finished nursing, but it's neat how God can change your heart. I feel a total peace about it now and feel like it's time to end {not that my body would have kept up for much longer anyway}. I still have a lot of frozen breast milk, so she'll probably be getting that for at least another month. I don't plan to rush dropping the bottles either, although she takes a sippy cup fine. I just want to make sure I use up all that milk! I haven't given her cow's milk yet, but she has stolen a few swigs from her sister's cup, so I think she'll do just fine with it.

She eats great! I still send a good bit of food to school, but she eats well off the menu. New foods this month were: lasagna, lemon pasta, a few different casseroles, blueberries {had tried plenty of times but didn't like them until recently}, french fries {definitely didn't want C to eat those at this age :) } and so many others I can't really think of. I should have written them down because I do like to go back and read those types of things about C.

{the pictures from this point forward were taken after school (the others were before) and you can tell: flushed cheeks, crazy hair, stained dress. well, you can't see the stains. :) }

Her two main words are still bye bye and uh oh, although she has now said mama a couple of times with meaning. New word this month was dog {usually sounds like 'daw'}. She continues to say dada fairly often too.

She still bathes in the infant bath tub. Hilarious to me, but every time we put her in the big bath tub she freaks out! I have no idea why because she loves her baths. I guess she just likes the security of her little tub. :)

She loves to play chase. We do this thing where I carry her and we chase John  {or vice versa} through the house, and she thinks it's the funniest thing ever. And if he is holding Curran, she likes it even more. She gets so tickled and then we all end up laughing hysterically. I just always hope that no one can see us through our windows because I know we look ridiculous.

She still just has those two bottom teeth. So funny to me since C had eight by this age. I can see the outline of her top four just under the surface, though, so I'm waiting on those to pop through at any time.

She hates getting in her car seat and usually screams bloody murder while thrashing about and arching her back. It's fun. We're taking her first road trip since New Year's in a few weeks and I'm not looking forward to the drive. She hates grass. If you try to put her down outside, she will hold her legs up as high as she can, and if she happens to touch a blade of grass she cries hysterically. Hopefully she'll get over that soon now that the weather is warming up and we plan to be outside more! She is scared of umbrellas and will lay her head on my shoulder the whole time she is underneath one.

I feel bad that I haven't been as good about reading books to her as I was with C at this age, so I'm trying to do that more as we're sitting on the floor playing. I also realized tonight as I was putting her to bed that I never sing to her. When C was little, singing was the only way I could get her to quit screaming {funny since it probably makes other people want to scream}, so I did that quite a lot. But SC has always been so easy to put down that I guess I just have never thought to sing to her. So tonight I sang her a couple of songs because she actually put her head on my shoulder and let me rock her for a few minutes. When I was singing "You Are My Sunshine" she started patting me on the back. I laughed and teared up at the same time; it was so sweet. But by the third song she was getting antsy so I put her to bed. :)

Cakers, I say this every month, but we just love you so much! Your first twelve months have brought us such joy! We can't wait to see what the next twelve bring. Happy Birthday!!