Week 52:
I put all her books back on her bookshelf because otherwise how would she be able to take them all off again. She waited patiently until I was done and then went to work.
She has started headbutting people. I'm not sure where she got it from and I hope you doesn't hurt her little head, but I know she is having a great time with it.
She is talking more and more. It's so fun for her to try making new words. Ah-bomb-buh-way is still my favorite so far.
Watching her move some of your food around is really funny. Out of the bowl, one by one, and some go on the right side of the tray and others on the left. Some then get put back into the bowl.
When she woke up after her nap on Monday I noticed that a molar had broken through on the bottom right. She wouldn't let me inspect to see if there were any more.
The doctor said that her problems with bedtime are that she is trying to show her strong will against us. We just have to show her that when it's time for bed, that is what we are doing. We were warned that once her social urge grows she will fight us on it more and more. We were given permission to let her complain about it up for an hour and that once we told her Good Night that we had to be strong and not go back in until an hour had passed.
At her one year she was 19lb 6oz(43%), 30.75"(93%) tall with a 18"(71%) head circumference.
She's starting to remember if a toy has more than one part to it. There is a little puzzle toy where you put a cylinder with a tiny knob on it into a matching hole in a block. At one point Tank distracted her and she left the block in her room and lost the cylinder in the hall. She found the cylinder on the way back into her room and then looked for the block so she could continue playing with them.
She has seen us "hide" things behind our backs often enough that when she snags something that she thinks we will take back, she will now put them behind her back.
She has experienced me wiping her arms off when she is splashing after meals enough times that she has started doing it. So far she only helps wipe the top of the right arm, but it's better than nothing.
Week 53:
While at Texas Roadhouse for Steven's birthday she got to try the honey butter. I think she liked the roll better. She also got better at using a straw in a cup.
She is getting really good at shaking her head "no". She gives us a big smile after she does it.
She has been having a lot of fun playing on her own by putting water bottles upright. She will also move them from one spot to another. She has noticed that the ones with more liquid are easier to do, but will do it when all of them.
We took a long road trip to Kentucky. On the way Miss Spud was yelling and though she was trying to tell us what was wrong, we didn't follow what she was saying. We stopped at the first Rest Area we saw. While we were letting her crawl around on the grass a little girl wanted to give her a flower. The little girl ended up getting too nervous to actually give it to her, but we got it from her family member. Her other family member joked that he didn't give other men's women flowers, so that's why he couldn't give us the flowers after he cut them for the little girl.
Week 54:
She enchanted Missy and Heather at the Lee House Inn. She went right into the kitchen after breakfast and showed off her stepping skills. Missy mentioned that she keeps telling them to get a high chair and booster seats for the few times they get babies or other little ones.
On Saturday Frankie's Invited Guests put on two shows of Rocky Horror. We only stuck around for the first one. She ate a bunch of snacks in her wagon during the show and even helped with callbacks during it at one point. When we got back to our room she then ate 1.5 chicken strips. She insisted on putting the last bit into a cabinet. She would open the door, drop the piece in, and then close the door. When I told her that she needs to eat her chicken she would get it out again, but then put it right back.
Her playard was in the flow of the AC unit and it felt a lot colder in the room on the second night. I gave her a bottle and she was mostly out. I had to nurse her some after transferring her. She woke up again as I was finishing zipping the opening. I crawled back in to let her nurse some more, but she just laid down and was out again once I blocked the airflow.
On the drive home I saw Miss Spud licking her toes. She had her mouth open with her tongue hanging out and was moving her foot back and forth across it.
She is using her big brain to figure out how to get into things she ain't supposed to. She's tall enough to reach things near the edge of her short bookcase. To help her overcome this she has taken to standing on the breast pump or a Tupperware container that we keep forgetting to take down to the kitchen. I moved them so she wouldn't stand on them, but she just climbed into the crate and stood on them and became even taller.
When she was smaller, she would try and roll when we would go to change her diaper. She stopped doing that and it and I felt relieved because it wasn't too hard to hold her down, but it was inconvenient. She has now started rolling again. The problem is that she is much stronger now. She tilts her head back as a pivot point and uses her legs to flip herself over. If you hold one leg up she just swings the other one over. If you try and hold her other leg down, she just changes which direction she is rolling in. She giggles and is having a wonderful time, until she isn't. When she starts to get frustrated because you won't let her roll over and stand up on her changing table she will start to flail and roll. She kicks anything else on the changing area off; like her wipes, piddle pad, and new diaper. I've tried to give her very distracting things, but she wants to roll to pay attention to them. The really funny thing is that once you get her diaper changed and she is all cleaned up is when she becomes fine to just lay there.
Week 55:
Bev asked if I was raising the perfect baby at knitting. She was happy enough to eat her lunch and snacks in her wagon and didn't fuss to be let out the entire time we were there. I kept waiting for her to get restless, but she just kept playing.
She has been practicing her walking and is starting to get pretty good at it. It is still slower for her than crawling, so if she needs to get somewhere quickly, she will still choose her stomping crawl.
She knows about object permanence, so she loves to put things into bags and pull them back out. She has taken to trying to pull on our clothes to see what we may be hiding in there. Pockets make sense, but she will also pull up the bottom of your shirt, pull down the neck of a shirt, or try and pull down pants/shorts.
She is not gentle on books. She has fully ripped apart her LovEvery Squish book. She was trying to get another book to close the wrong way and snapped the pages off the spine on one side. I've had to stop her from ripping mine and Bill's books already too.
She's getting really good at helping us to dress and undress her. She loves putting her arms through sleeves and will sometimes try and pull something over her head. In the morning, if we unzip her sleep sack, she is able to pull it off all by herself. She will even try and hang it over the side of her crib, like she's seen us do.
We went to lunch with Auntie Mary and she ate so many pieces of my sushi rolls. She had 4 avocado roll pieces, 3 California roll pieces, and 2 eel roll pieces. Since we got a late start for lunch, all of that was after her banana and peanut butter puffs she had at home.
We were low on diapers, so I left her to play with Tank in her room and the hallway while I finished getting dressed and brushed my teeth. I noticed that everyone was being too quiet. When I got out I saw the door to the hallway bathroom open. She had opened the door and was grabbing fistfuls of litter pellets to dump onto the ground. We then took a bit of time to wash her off before we could head to Giant.
She is starting to really understand when I ask if I can see what she found on the floor that I would like for her to put it in my hand. She doesn't always let go of it when she taps it on my hand. This really helps when she finds a bead or some fiber tufts from Tank's scratching post. When she finds snacks then I ask if she would like it back, if it's something she shouldn't be eating I tell her it's yucky and take it away.
Week 56: First Part
She is starting to learn to get things when I ask for them. I can ask her Can you get that for me? and point to something. She doesn't always get it, but it's starting to come together for her.
The dinner group we sometimes meet with had a gathering for the September birthdays. Miss Spud was being more fussy than usual and only ate three quarters of her banana and some rice. When everyone else was mostly done eating she got a hold of one of the small balloons on a stick. She was having a great time moving it around and inspecting the seam on the side. She really started having a great time when she got a second one. She was hitting them together and was waving them around, hitting everyone around her. She played with them in the car on the way home and was determined to keep ahold of them at home, even though they made walking and crawling harder.
I was going through her clothes and pulling the ones we knew were too small. In the back of her drawer I found the long sleeved shirts Bill had picked out. They were 9mo and I was nervous that we had missed the chance for her to wear them. However, her Old Navy 12mo pants still fit, and her 3-6mo Cloud Island long sleeve onesies fit her width wise, but won't snap anymore. The only thing we had on Sunday night for her to wear under her sleep sack with long sleeves were the shirts. I decided to give them a try and though the sleeves are verging bracelet length, the shirts still fit. The torso is even a bit baggy.
I didn't get to see it, but before Bill left for work on Monday he was watching Miss Spud gently pet Tank. She then laid her head down on his stomach. I remember doing that to Snowflake when I was little a few times. When he went to get his phone out to take a picture she got excited to see the phone and lifted her head.
At boardgame night Miss Spud was having a great time crawling over to the stairs and going up them. She giggled so hard when we would catch her. She even got to practice safely going down stairs.
When checking out at Wegmans she managed to grab the Grana Padano off the conveyor belt. The cashier noticed it and Bill gave it back to her to hold after it got scanned. By the time we had finished paying and got to the truck, Miss Spud had managed to pick at the packaging enough to get the plastic torn in a corner and was getting small pieces off with her fingernail. Bill took it right before she was going to try and take a bite out of it. She was annoyed with us the whole ride home.
I was packing for her and she managed to grab a large skein of white yarn off the table. She was then laying down and using it like a pillow when I looked back. I tried to get a picture, but she got too excited when she saw my phone and wouldn't lay her head down again.
