…Or, “Celebrating the ways my life has changed more over the last 12 months than I ever thought possible.”

Newborn:

1 Month:

2 Months:

3 Months:

4 Months:

5 Months:

6 Months:

7 Months:

8 Months:

9 Months:

10 Months:

11 Months:

12 Months:

Happy Birthday, my little munchkin! (Yeah, I know, a few days late - it takes me some time to get the pics off the camera and on the computer)

Note: Pictures are coming soon, but I’m too tired right now to mess with getting them off the camera.

Dear Button,

Year #2 was off to a great start this morning as you cheerfully handed your grandfather a turd.

Apparently you found it stuck to the dog’s butt and felt compelled to share your discovery. Your gift was much appreciated …if only because you did something with the poop OTHER THAN shove it in your mouth.

We went to the Texas State Fair today in honor of your birthday and you had a fabulous time being overstimulated beyond belief. You enjoyed chunks of turkey leg and funnel cake, and riding around on Dada’s shoulders.

Your favorite part (due in no small part to the fact that you were totally nap-deprived and sugar-high, I’m sure) was the Ferris Wheel. The little people walking around below were so fascinating and the couple we shared the carriage with even gave you a little stuffed frog. You got SO EXCITED over that frog, laughing and squeezing it as though it was your Kitty.

Then as soon as we went our separate ways, you threw it out of the stroller in announcement of your impending nap and BAM - you were out like a light. You snored all the way home.

When we got home and changed you into a new set of clothes, one startling fact became very obvious: You have quite suddenly and without warning grown into 12-month clothes. Today. Sometime between breakfast and lunch. This morning, you were still growing into the 6-9 month clothes. After being 1 to 2 clothing sizes behind for your entire life (doesn’t it sound like a long time when I put it like that?), it appears that you are finally catching up.

Perhaps it’s the massive amount of turkey, cheese and green beans you have been ingesting recently. But now I really need to update your wardrobe, as I was expecting to have several more months before you needed 12-month sized clothing. I hope you like onesies kiddo, because that’s what you’ve got.

When it was time for your second nap of the day, which was a necessity due to the birthday part we had planned for this evening, you absolutely refused. You have never been so stubborn about not taking a nap as you were today - and I have never been so agitated by it, knowing that if you DIDN’T nap before the party, you would be a little bear this evening.

Eventually, we resorted to driving you around in the car, which successfully resulted in a good 45-minute refresher nap. Enough for me, I was ready to take what I could get at that point.

The party was a success, and even though you were again overstimulated by all the presents, and overtired from an already big day, and were forced to stay up an hour past your usual bed time, you did very well. We were really impressed.

As expected, you received a totally unreasonable amount of cool presents, and completely ignored most of them - preferring instead to play with the wrapping paper. Evidently nobody listened to me when I told them ahead of time that would happen. You did develop an attachment to one particular toy - a little plastic horse-riding figure - and carried it around in your mouth for most of the evening. Apparently equestrians are tasty.

You ate cake and ice cream, and ice cream, and then you enjoyed some ice cream. Since our trip to the fair had been unsuccessful at reaching sugar-high energy levels sufficient for powering an airbus, we made up for it at dinner by injecting the sugar introveniously. While we learned at this point that you apparently have a pretty high tolerance for sugar, it did manage to keep you up long enough to get through the party. Just so you know, if you develop diabetes as a result of today, it’s totally Grandpa’s fault. And probably Uncle Jon’s too.

After some of the guests had left the party and things had quieted down some, you discovered a new toy that your Aunt and Uncle had brought - one that had previously been overlooked in lieu of all the Fun! Wrapping! Paper!

They bought you a stuffed Eyeore that’s really soft and has a long tail. We could see you make the connection almost immediately when you truely looked at it for the first time:

It’s a Blue Kitty!!!

Tired as you were, you actually giggled as you enveloped the Blue Kitty in a huge bear hug and tackled it to the floor, rubbing your face in the fur. You dragged Blue Kitty around with you for the rest of the evening, clutching it to you, and even tried very hard to pull it up the stairs with you - a very arduous task, as the toy is the same size as you are, and climbing stairs is hard enough when you’re too sleepy to keep your eyes open and move your limbs at the same time.

Happy Birthday, my little munchkin. It’s been a fun and full day, and I have a feeling you will sleep very well tonight. And so will I. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this exhausted.

Love Always,
Mama

I refuse to believe that my daughter is almost a year old. It’s simply not true, stop telling me that it is, I’m not listening, LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

We went to the park yesterday and she had the time of her life, clomping around in her new shoes. Though she’s been walking for over a month now, shoes are a novelty - being completely unneccessary until now.

See, we don’t DO “outside” unless the temperature in the shade is UNDER 3600 F …so no need for shoes until recently. But now that we’re approaching fall, it’s getting to be a bit more reasonable, and we can venture outside without the risk of getting stuck to the pavement.

She’s getting more talkative. She’s had her own language for a while now, but we’re really getting the idea that she’s starting to assign specific words to specific meanings. Bah-Bah is bottle. Mah is Light (which we only know because she points at the light on the ceiling every time she says it). Her latest additions are “Dot” and “Dude.” I don’t think they’ve been assigned meanings yet, she’s just enjoying the sound of them right now.

“Wow, Button. That’s some wild hair you have there.”

“Doooooood.”

She’s able to understand a lot more words than she can say. I can ask her where her duck is and she’ll go to the toy bin and retrieve it. When asked, she can point to our eyes, nose, mouth and ear…but her favorite is nose and she’ll often start pointing it out without the suggestion. She also really likes pointing to all the babies in a book or magazine.

She’s trying to grow out of her morning nap. I don’t neccessarily mind this if it means with certainty that she’ll sleep for at least 2 hours in the afternoon. On the days when she DOESN’T do that, I can feel the pigment in my hair start to fade.

She’s starting to understand the concept of “NO” and insists on testing us as often as possible. She’s more than willing to tow the line at every oportunity, to see EXACTLY where that line is. When I make her lay still and quiet in her bed at night, she’ll try rolling over. When that doesn’t work, she’ll try flinging her leg over. When that doesn’t work, she’ll look at me and TWITCH. I’m beginning to fear the teenage years.

She’s still not sleeping through the night. Or rather, she has not RETURNED to sleeping through the night since she started teething several months ago. It’s like a bad joke to get a taste of sleeping through the night and then have her suddenly quit doing so for an indefinite period of time. Last night she slept until 4:00am, which was a miracle. Actually, at 2:30am, I got out of bed and went to make sure she was still breathing, thinking surely something MUST be wrong. By 2:30am, she has usually woken up at least twice. But no, she was sound asleep, doing just fine. Button, if you want to make a habit of that again, I’d be in full support.

She’s teething again, which we only know because we can see the little nub of a tooth poking in on the top. It doesn’t seem to be bothering her at all, which is nice. And she hasn’t had the drooling symptom that accompanied the last round of teething. Also nice.

We finally had to give in and purchase a new vehicle when she grew out of her car seat, since the next size up didn’t physically fit into our 2-door coupe. We ended up with a Hyundai SUV and I’m absolutely LOVING it. I think I will probably never go back to 2 doors. It’s also nice to be able to fit more than just the stroller in the trunk. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone grocery shopping, lugged the huge cart full of my purchases out to the car, and opened the trunk to find that I’d forgotten to remove the stroller and had no room for the groceries.

Speaking of groceries…she’s eating more solid foods now, including finger foods. Which I fear may be leading toward the seemingly inevitable disaster in my near future: the neccessity of cooking.

I don’t cook. I never intended to start cooking. In my book, cooking is a complete waste of time.

You spend all this time and effort preparing a meal, and standing over it for an hour just makes you so ravenously hungry that you can’t wait to actually get it all on the table before consuming it, so by the time every part of the meal is complete, you’ve already eaten 90% of it and don’t get the chance to just sit down and eat for a few minutes (even if you’re good and resist the temptation of eating it before you get it to the table, you still don’t get the chance to sit down and enjoy it because the kid - who has had to be otherwise occupied during the hour you spent preparing the food - is now tired of whatever you’ve managed to distract her with previously, and requires full attention). And then you’re done and it didn’t taste nearly as good as it would if the restaurant made it and now you have to spend the rest of the evening cleaning up the kitchen.

But it’s hard to come up with healthy finger foods for a toddler that require no preparation, yet aren’t just sodium & carbs (yes, Cheerios, I’m looking at YOU). Child cannot live on Cheerios, string cheese and dried fruit alone. Though the more I imagine cooking on a regular basis, the more I’m considering pushing the limits of that theory.

Well, we were right. Button started taking steps during the last few days of her 8th month, and by mid-9th month she was a walking pro. For a while we called her our Little Frankenstein because she walked with her arms sticking straight out in front, but she has since become quite adept at the skill and chooses it as her preferred method of mobility. And she loves mobility.

We had our house painted this month and our would-be dining room is now a rusty red. It looks great, especially since it actually matches Button’s Pack’n’Play now. I know that may seem a bit unneccessary, but the reason we call it a “would-be” dining room is that as of yet, the room remains unfurnished with anything but her 500 million toys.

Speaking of toys, we have decided that this is going to be a rather inexpensive Christmas for her, as she seems to have little interest in actual baby toys. She would much rather play with a comb, a post-it note or a pool ball any day than the above mentioned 500 kazillion toys. She’ll pick a half-empty water bottle over the latest fangle-dangle-sparkle-spangle baby toy any day of the week. Occasionally, she comes to work with me and my co-workers have been known to ask what I’ve done to her, since her favorite toys appear to be office supplies. My little future secretary in the making.

Monday we took Button with my parents to one of Dallas’ premier photographers. The photo shoot was the fulfillment of a gift certificate J and I gave my parents for Christmas, with the intention of getting a portrait made with them and Button. The shoot was a success and Button did very well. In fact, the photographer was so taken with her that she invited us back in two weeks so Button can model for a workshop she’s teaching.

While her new walking skills are exciting, she has managed to pick up a few nasty habits in the last month, including an almost total strike from solid foods, and the propensity to eat any and every particle she finds on the floor…even geckos. While she’ll jump at the chance to shove a bit of grass in her mouth, her new favorite delicacy is carpet. It’s becoming an obsession. I’m sure we could recarpet our house with the amount of fuzz bits we have pulled out of her mouth. We were beginning to wonder where all these magic strands were coming from (it’s not like we never vacuum, despite what my mother may tell you) but recently the mystery has been solved: THE CAT TREE.

Yesterday, I was awarded the Worst Mother in the History of the World Award by my daughter, after blocking her access to said shedding cat tree with some kitchen chairs. There ensued much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ok, the gnashing might be an exaggeration, I think you have to have more than two teeth to properly “gnash.” But it was not a popular move.

Actually, our house is beginning to resemble a battered fort, barricaded at every entrance with random pieces of furniture, toys, boxes, and whatever else was around at the time. Since she’s walking now, Button has discovered a whole new realm of exploration, and we have chairs and gates scattered about to discourage her access to some of her favorite items: the fireplace, the speakers, dog food, a wobbly table, the water dish, cat tree, candlesticks, stairs, etc. So if you come over, don’t expect a place to sit. All our chairs are taken.

One of her favorite games now is playing a variation of Peek-A-Boo with the sheer curtains on our windows. There’s something about being able to see through fabric that really tickles her. It is the source of many laughs and consequent wrestling matches.

Basically, this month has been very full and our daughter has grown up more in these last few weeks than we could have thought possible. Sometimes we wish she would just SLOW DOWN ALREADY, but every thing she learns and discovers is so much more fun.

So…I didn’t write a 7-month newsletter.  It’s certainly not because nothing momentous happened.  It’s just that I didn’t manage to find the time.  And here I am, already late for the 8-month newsletter.  Tsk, tsk. 

I do apologize, since I know you were all counting down the days and eagerly awaiting the appearance of said newsletters.  WEREN’T YOU.  YES.  YOU WERE.  Ahem…

Anyway, the past two months have changed our lives forever as parents.  Button is growing and developing in so many ways, we’re afraid to blink for fear we will miss the part where she sprouts wings and flies away.

 

As of about two weeks ago, she started crawling.  She figured it out one day and hasn’t stopped since.  Actually, it’s kind of an odd looking crawl, because she’s mortally afraid that if her left knee touches the ground a land mine will go off.  So she more or less does a 3-legged hobble around.  It seems to work for her though, as she is quite mobile.  More mobile than, say, we’re comfortable with.  Let’s just say that I’ve embarked on a new exercise plan…it’s call “Chasing Button and removing things from her little fingers.”  I do approximately 10,000 reps per day.

She pulls herself up on everything that she can get to, including tables, chairs, toys, the fireplace, my leg, and the dog.  She has also become quite good at cruising around said items to get closer to whatever else she wants to be hanging on to.  She habitually locks me in the shower in the mornings by pulling herself up and leaning on the shower door.   I can’t open the door without knocking her backward and she seems to derive great joy out of my predicament.  Or maybe it’s the charades I go through in the attempt to get her to move that she finds so entertaining.

They say that babies go through a period of interrupted sleep patterns (i.e. no sleep for parents) when they are learning to crawl, or walk, or when they are teething.  Button is currently in the process of all three of those events.  The day after she started crawling, she also began cutting one of two teeth that are now quite visible in her mouth.  Our nights haven’t been the same since, and we currently finding ourselves crawling into bed while it’s still light outside out of sheer exhaustion.  Only to be awakened an hour later by She Who Formerly Slept Through the Night.

She holds her bottle now.  Well, sort of.  She does hold it, but spends more time twisting it around and popping the nipple out of her mouth so that milk shoots all in her hair, than actually drinking from it.  Baby steps.

We went swimming with her this month for the first time.  As long as it’s not too cold, she seems to equate the pool with a giant bath tub, and can’t get enough of it.  She adores baths and starts bouncing up and down when she hears the bath water.  Sometimes we forget how mobile she is and look down with surprise to find that she has made it accross the room and is now standing by the tub looking in with great enthusiam, in about 2.3 seconds.

She says “Mama” now.  And she says it a lot.  Unfortunately, she seems to think it’s some kind of curse word, as she only uses the term when she’s exceedingly displeased.  J has been trying unsuccessfully to get a “Dada” out of her. 

The letter “D” is just not in the picture right now.  “Baba,” however, is a favorite, and comprises most of her vocabulary for the time being.  She recognizes certain words, like “Puppy,” and looks around for the dog when she hears it.

 

She absolutely adores books, and enjoys being read to for long periods of time.  Unfortunately, “Go, horse, go; Go fast, go slow,” isn’t exactly thrilling best-seller material, so it can get a bit tedious after a while. 

Her other favorite toy is Baby Tad, who is the biggest wimp around.  She loves to push him over, trample and body slam him - to which he responds, “I LOVE YOU,” “Let’s snuggle,” and other passive phrases.  It’s a co-dependent relationship in the making.  We’re just glad she’s the dominant partner.

She’s a very affectionate child.  She gives great hugs and huge, sloppy, open-mouthed kisses.  It’s very cute.  I often think about how cute it is afterward, as I wash all the drool out of my hair.

So…crawling, pulling up, cruising, teething, talking and attempts at walking - much of which occurred within about a week’s time.  It seems that every time we sneeze, she’s picked up a new skill, or a new way to most effectively get into things we would rather she stayed away from.

We’re expecting her to finish her doctoral dissertation in about a month.  After that, she has plans to be the first woman president.  Watch out, Hillary.