finola - one year!

Dear Fin,

I'm a little late in posting this, but I'm sure you don't mind.

Your first birthday came and went as quickly as the entire first year.

What a lovely year!

Eating:

Awesome.  You love your food.  You get immediate 'food envy' if you are not offered what others are eating.  You will pretty much eat anything, and a lot of it.  Still prefer the bottle over a sippy cup, and still prefer your milk to be warmed up.  However, we ditched the formula (yay!) and now you are solely drinking cow's milk (or water.)

Sleeping:

Consistently through the night - barring instances when you are teething, when you may wake up several times for comfort.  Still taking a morning and an afternoon nap, with no real end in sight as far as the first nap goes.  

Sibling Relations:

Lovely.  I adore watching you and your brother together.  Sometimes you scuffle (aka he gets annoyed at you for being up in his business)) but the love there is so cool to watch.  You both will randomly hug and kiss each other, and it is the sweetest!  You want to be wherever he is and playing with whatever he is playing with.

Milestones/Developments:

• Started standing on your own, without support from anything!  It is so cute how you laugh proudly nearly every time you do it, which is all the time.
• No independent steps yet.
• Started attempting to use eating utensils.
• Getting better with the sippy cup.
• Will both wave and point at things.
• Can now finally climb down the steps and off of whatever you have climbed up onto.
• Still lots of babbling but no new words.  You go off on long baby tangents where you look like I should really know what you are talking about.  I just smile and nod and say, "Really???" a lot.

Health/Measurements:

• weighs 22 lbs...was in 85th percentile for weight and 25th for height.  short and chunky at his point, and I love it.  
• has six teeth, two on bottom, four on top.
• apparently the Ohio River Valley air is bad for babies, also...she has constant congestion and drippy nose, it seems.

Month's Memories:

• The first birthday party!!!!
• Tons of trips to the park due to the beautiful warm weather.  You love climbing on the playground equipment and going down slides, by yourself or with mama or brother.
• First time in the pool and going to splash parks.  It is clear you are my water baby.  You had no problem (despite initial water coldness on opening day at the pool) hanging out with mama in the pool, and you LOVE splash parks/fountains.  You even climbed right in by yourself at the one by your Mimi's house.

Instead of the usual onslaught of pictures from the past month, I decided to do a slideshow of the year instead...

So there it was -  the final 'monthly baby update.'  I want to cry thinking that this was probably my last 'first year' with an infant.  But in so many ways I am just simply grateful and excited to watch my two little ones grow into 'big kids.'