twelve months

Oh my gawd.  My baby is twelve months old.  One whole year.  Seriously?  Seriously?  Really, I knew it was coming, but I still can't believe it.

We had our one year well check today.  Ryann is weighing in at 20 pounds 14 ounces, and is standing 29 inches tall (obviously when we measure at home we aren't completely accurate).  She has dropped from around the 60th percentile in both, to the 48th, but she is still growing so nobody is concerned.  Especially considering she started out in the 9th percentile when she was born.  I put away all of her 6-12 month pants, even though a lot of the 12-18 months ones look a little silly on her.  The other ones were definitely turning in to high waters.  Only a handful of the 12-18 month tops fit her, and the dresses are all pretty much too big.  But her 6-12 month dresses definitely can't be classified as dresses anymore, they are long tops or tunics :o).  She is still in a size four diaper, and is wearing a size 4 shoe most of the time.

She is still hanging on to the two nap a day schedule.  Sometimes it is a bit rough, and she will skip the afternoon nap, but she really needs a little rest both in the morning and afternoon.  Her latest trick is to poop to try and get out of taking a nap.  Seriously, I swear she knows what she is doing.  This past week she has been going to bed around 8 and waking up at 5:37am on the dot.  Apparently I spoke to soon about her regularly sleeping past 6:30.  Come on girlie!  Cut your mommy some slack!  She goes down for her first nap around 9:15, and her second about 2:30.  Both of them are usually between an hour and just under two hours.  I wanted to mention that she hasn't woken up and called for us in the middle of the night since day three of sleep training (except for one night this past week when she was sick AND her teeth were driving her nuts).  Hello two and a half months of consecutive hours of sleep!

she was not feeling this photo shoot, AT ALL

We apparently have two food groups that are acceptable in our house.  Carbs, and blueberries.  I'm pretty sure Ryann is going to turn in to a blueberry, she loves those things so much!  Sometimes she will eat a chicken sandwich, or some of a Gerber Graduates bowl meal, but we only get guaranteed approval for carbs and blueberries.  I'm looking for suggestions on hiding veggies in food.  I've heard a lot of people going on the green smoothie kick, but I'm not sure that is the route we want to take.  Anyone have any great recipes that have veggies hidden in them?

This has been quite the teething month.  Our total right now is seven, but these last two that have come in made Ryann miserable.  Ry has always been a happy, crazy little girl around us, and it has been really hard to see her so cranky.  It can be frustrating for us, because she melts down quickly, but at the same time you know how uncomfortable she must be.  After the sixth tooth popped through, we had about a two day window where Ry seemed back to her old self, before the next tooth started giving her trouble.  Don't get me wrong, she is still fun to love on and be around, but I can tell a little bit of my girl is missing right now.

Right now Ryann is getting a bottle when she wakes in the morning, after her first nap, and before bed.  We traded the afternoon bottle for a sippy cup of milk and a snack (usually a nutrigrain bar or some applesauce).  We are also offering the sippy cup with milk at breakfast and dinner, for lunch she gets a sippy with water.  So far she will only takes a few sips of anything in the cup, but I'm hoping that when we drop another bottle she might become a bit more interested.  We recently started mixing some whole milk in her bottles, so she is getting half formula half milk.  However the pedi said if she doesn't start actually drinking a little more from the sippy, we might need to go the toddler formula route once we take her off bottles completely.  Oh, and if you ask Ryann what she wants for breakfast, I'm guessing she will say aw-fle (waffle).  She almost always does :o).

she got a leftover cupcake from her party on her actual birthday

Chris and Ryann's favorite thing to do lately, is sit on the bench on our porch.  Please warm weather, hurry up and get here because my child LOVES to be outside.  This morning she was cruising around the living room, went by the front door and tried to pick the blanket they had been taking outside with them.  She then started babble yelling something at me.  I took it as a "mom, outside, now, let's go!"  Hands down the quickest way to get her to calm down or be happy.  (Tied closely of course, with offering her goldfish.  Either will usually do the trick.)

she may not look at you, but goldfish will keep her in one place!

In the past few days Ryann is really started showing a preference for walking.  She will grab your hand and lead you all over the house.  Today she walked probably a good six feet from where she was standing over to me.  It all happened pretty quick.  I felt like she would never want to walk because she was such a good speedy little crawler, and she was always doing the diving walk (step step dive and hope someone catches me!).  But I'm thinking I will have a real walker here pretty soon.  Honestly I think she could do pretty well already, but she is too scared.  If you act like you're holding her hand she will pretty much walk.

Her favorite books this month have been How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight (she is so freaking cute when we read this one), The Tickle Monster, Dr. Seuss's ABC, The Very Hungry Catepillar, and Babies.  Unfortunately in the last week or so, she is having hard time sitting still for books and actually letting us read.  She still gets books out of her basket or off her shelf to bring to us, but she will only let us get about three or four pages in before she is trying to jump up and go get a different one or do something else.

A little over a week ago we went to visit my old assistant, Kenzie, and the preschool I used to work at.  Ryann giggled half the time we were there.  I'm pretty sure she would absolutely love going to preschool, or something of that sort.  After she got over the separation anxiety of course.  I'm sure it will get a little bit better as the weather gets warmer and we can do more things outside, but she cries and whines when I carry her in to our family room to play with her toys.  She is bored.  That of course makes me feel terrible.  So I think towards the end of the summer I am going to enroll her somewhere for at least a half day, at least two days a week.  It would be great for her to socialize and get to experience some other things, and I'm sure I'd benefit from a little mommy time (or at least a little time to clean!).

I'm pretty sure this is the face she made when we brought out the cupcake.  :o)

Baby girl I'm so proud to be your mommy.  You are most definitely going to keep me on my toes, you have quite the personality.  Happy twelve months little miss, I love you to the moon and back.