Today you turn one. You are one year old! We just can’t believe it. How did our tiny, little baby turn into this big, talented girl—full of personality and energy, always crawling around and exploring? We adored you as a newborn, of course, and marveled at your miniscule fingers and toes and were awed just by your focusing of your eyes, or your gripping of our fingers. Now we are even more enthralled. Your Daddy and I often find ourselves whispering outside of your room about how special you are, reporting stories about your activities and skills, delighted and proud to be your parents. Happy First Birthday!
You’re 19 lbs. 11 oz. now, and 30 inches tall—that’s exactly one foot taller than when you were born and more than 11 pounds heavier! You’re tall and thin for your age, in the 75th percentile for height and the 25th for weight. You’ve just started standing on your own without holding onto things; this usually happens for a few moments when you are doing something really fun and you need both hands, like when you bang blocks together, a big grin on your face as you hear the loud sound you are making!
Today, on your birthday, you worked a lot on standing while you played with play-dough and practiced walking to Mommy and Daddy before bedtime in the yellow light of the late afternoon in the playroom. You will take a step only if you have a soft parent to land on! Sometimes you fairly leap onto us. Mostly you crawl with great speed and pull up onto all sorts of things to get around. You are very fast! Once I found you scaling the bathroom counter at your Grandmama’s like a little rock climber.
You’ve been going up the stairs with alacrity for a while, and are starting to learn how to go downstairs safely. I think you have been figuring out how to do this (by backing down, not going head first like you keep thinking might work) by spending time hanging out with the two-step step-stool in the kitchen. That’s your special spot, and sometimes you’ll stand holding onto the top step while you hold your cup with the other and watch the goings-on in the kitchen, like the dogs and cats wandering around. You like to be in the center of the action!
This last month you spent a lot of time with your great-grandparents Lala and Granddaddy. Your great-grandfather was very impressed that you are an ambidextrous eater, and your great-grandmother just couldn’t get over how much you eat, and how you will eat just about anything! We just keep putting food on your tray (chopped tomatoes and spinach were a favorite this month) and you just keep shoveling it in! Lala says you’re “an eatin’ trick.” After you eat you are always a mess since you feed yourself with your fingers, so we take you to get cleaned up in the kitchen sink. There you love to bend down and drink from the faucet! You think this is very funny and do it in the tub, too!
When you like what you are eating you say “yum yum yum” and you imitate our speech a lot. You definitely understand more, like requests and reciprocal play, like passing a toy between us, and you are getting better at communicating what you want (to be picked up, to have more food). You say “uh oh” all the time, and a version of kitty cat “kih kah” or “kee” and also you’ve tried saying “kisses”. You wave “hi” and sometimes “bye bye.”
The most gorgeous golden curls are growing thicker on your head, clustered at the nape of your neck and sticking out around your ears. They are just adorable. You must have inherited them from your Farfar, who also had very curly hair as a child.
Yesterday was your first birthday party and you had fun—lots of your little buddies (the twins that are a few weeks older than you, Z who is Mommy’s good friend’s D’s son, and several others) came and you shared your toys very nicely with them.
You are very friendly and give everyone sunny smiles. You love animals and you crawl after them. Your giggles are the best sound in the world and we get to hear them often. You still love belly buttons and hunt for ours under our shirts! We’ve started calling you by name, too, sometimes, though mostly we say “Baby Nora” now, or “Princess.” We think you are the most incredibly wonderful creature on earth and are so very lucky and delighted to have you. We wish you great joy throughout your life and are doing our best by you.
We love you Birthday Girl!
Mommy
