One year

Technically she’s still a baby. For another 22 minutes, she’s still a baby. But my baby is turning one today. I cannot believe how time has flown. My baby girl is a toddler.

We had her birthday celebration on Sunday. Almost everyone was there. Even my grandmother's sister made it (who, by the way, monopolized her for most of the party. :) )

It was a good time. We kept it simple with pizza, wings, and cake, but others brought salads, orzo salad, dip, and mojitos. And gifts. There were plenty of gifts. We didn’t hint that anyone needed to bring gifts - we certainly weren't expecting them - but she had a nice little haul. We were very touched. I’m going to have to remember to do the thank you notes.

I think her favorite gift for the moment is the musical card. She loves opening and dancing to the Celebration song. I have a video of it, of course. But she also likes the other gifts as well. I think she’s played with everyone of them that we’ve taken out. We have one or two more to go, but I know she’ll love everything. I would have at her age.

She did come down with a fully fledged cold this weekend. Her nose was running like a faucet, and she threw up twice. I think it was from all the phlegm she was swallowing. It’s disturbed her sleep, but it hasn’t slowed her down. Cases in point:

• She discovered that she climb Sadie’s perch. Straight up the pillow and onto the perch in less than 30 seconds. She loves it. She likes sitting on the window sill. I have a few pictures of it. She’s quite proud of herself. Of course, that means it’s next to impossible to keep her out of the computer room short of closing the door. She has so much fun, though, I’m not sure that I want to.
  


• She stood up on her own. She’s been going around and sitting on things between 2 and 8 inches off the ground, us included. She’ll push up into downward dog, then from that position, she’ll push up into a quick squat before plopping down onto the “seat”. The one time she did it, there wasn’t really a seat to flop onto. She was standing.
  


• She knows the sign for bottle. I've been signing it to her for weeks. I didn't realize she was signing it back to me until Saturday when we were walking into the kitchen after the warmer had gone off. She was slapping her little fist into her open hand. All this time I thought she was clapping for her bottle. No, she was signing bottle!



• My personal favorite: she said “mama” and she meant me! It was during her birthday party. I was standing just inside the kitchen when she power crawled to me saying mama mama mama. One of our guests heard her too: I have witnesses!

Our baby girl is growing up so quickly. What incredible things with the next year bring?