Amelia is ONE!

(Sniff, sniff)

My baby is one today! It is an emotional day for me, remembering the day a year ago she was born.

Amelia - we are so proud to be your parents and watch you grow. We look at pictures of you from a year ago and can't believe the spunky, loving little girl you have become. We look at you today and wonder what clues you are giving us about the girl you are going to become. You love:

Dancing
Playing with your brother
Water: swimming, bath time, washing your hands, drinking from an open cup and splashing in puddles
Books
Music
Eating anything that looks different on your tray
being held


What a difference one year makes!

hours old
one month old
two months old
three months old
four months old
five months old

six months old
seven months old
eight months old
nine months old
ten months old
eleven months old

twelve months old

Amelia is very observant about what other people are doing. She picks up on every little thing. Rustling coming from the closet? She is there to check it out. Going to the bathroom by yourself? Think again. In the last month she has noticed the rest of us use utensils while we are eating and has decided she needs some too. She is quiet proud to use the fork and get food to her mouth (I put the food on the fork when she lets me, she isn't able to do this by herself except on rare occasions). She has also picked up on that no one else at the table is wearing a bib while they eat. I've almost entirely given up on making her wear one because she can pull it off faster than I can get it back on her. I now only insist on her wearing it when we are eating something super messy (spaghetti, etc). The utensils and the bib are funny/interesting to me because only in the last 6 months did William start using silverware by himself (and still doesn't always use it) and William quit wearing bibs at meals maybe 4 months ago. He probably would still be wearing them if I insisted. He doesn't care - it's about the food/eating with him.

Speaking of William, Amelia still idolizes her big brother. She wants to be right with him ALL the time. Whatever toy he has, she wants it. Whatever he is doing, she wants to do it too. It all gets to be a little suffocating for William and we've had some real struggles lately in sharing toys and being kind to each other. We're working hard at this, but I have to tell you - it is exhausting. Physically, emotionally and altogether exhausting. What did you do today? I refereed the use of a toy shopping cart for nine hours. A process which included multiple time outs, much screaming, crying, yelling, throwing of toys, several attempts at biting and a large quantity of Advil. In the end, the shopping cart is going to spend the next few days resting in my closet. Not that it will make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things. We have exactly 5465465465654651168465461 other toys in this house to fight over.

Amelia does not struggle much with communicating. She says:

Moo (when she sees a cow or horse)
Kitty (any animal with the exception of a cow)
Pretty
Mama
Dada
Ball
Baby
Hi
Hi there
Nono
bye bye
tickle

Signs

Washing hands
phone
hi/bye
up

and when all those fail the ear piercing shriek often does wonders at getting things done in a timely manner. She also entertains us with the silly faces she can make and the mimicking of our actions. For example, when you pick her up? She'll grunt right with you from the effort.


Amelia took her first steps earlier this month and is walking more and more. She is getting braver and choosing to walk herself (rather than me bribing her to). One concern I had about having a second child is that the milestones would seem less exciting or amazing because we had already been through it with William. I will now say without a doubt I am just as excited about Amelia learning to walk as I was when William learned. My worries were unfounded. The milestones are not as neatly and precisely documented as William's were, but my excitement is not at all diminished.

Sleep has been a major challenge this month. I would estimate on average Amelia has slept through the night roughly 20% of the time in the last thirty days. I think I have paid back all of my debt from Amelia's first weeks when she slept through the night so early. She is typically up once or twice a night around 2am/4am. Right now we're not really doing anything about it because she is also getting in all four of her gigantic molars at one time. Once these teeth are fully in, she is going to be in for a tiny bit of tough loving at night. This Mama needs to sleep.