The Simple Life: Twelve months

Abby is one! It's hard to believe that her birthday has come and gone already. With the hustle and bustle of the holidays her birthday snuck up on us. We had a really fun Christmas with my family spending most of our time over at my Grandma's house all together. It was really special for me to watch the girls experience Christmas much the same way I did as a kid at my Grandmother's house. Ellie had so much fun opening stockings and gifts and got completely lost in the excitement and would try to open anything in sight (gifts that weren't hers *achem*). It was pretty epic for them and they got WAY too many gifts. I had hide some away for another day because it was toy overload. It was Lucas's fist time visiting San Jose and it was so much fun to have them around and spend more time with "Little Boy". The girls were so cute with him and I think he enjoyed being around them (once he adjusted to all their noise and crazy). I can't wait until they are older and can really interact with each other. Cuteness overload!

Abby's birthday has gotten me a bit more sentimental this time around. It's likely because I know that Abby is our last baby and she is now no longer a baby. She is moving like a bullet train towards toddler-ism. We celebrated her birthday by taking the girls to the Children's Discovery Museum and later that evening I baked a cake for her to do a cake smash. It was hilarious and she loved it until she couldn't get the frosting off her hands. She doesn't like being sticky. Ha ha. The following weekend we had a party with friends at Oak Meadow Park. The kids had fun riding the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad and Bill Mason Carousel and playing at the park. We got really lucky and the weather was beautiful and we enjoyed snacks and cupcakes after the train ride. It was a really perfect and low-key celebration. Just what we wanted.

Just a few days before her birthday Abby started walking on her own and is now walking almost full-time. She is getting quite sturdy and can even stand up from a sitting position. She is quite pleased that the world is more accessible to her now. This seemed to be a turning point for her because she is now no longer content being a passive participant - she wants to do everything her sister is doing. Her speech is becoming more clear and she can say a few understandable sounds. I'm pretty sure her first word was "dat" meaning "that" which she says constantly while pointing to things. Meaning "take me to that and show it to me". She can also sound out "ding dong" which we say while pressing her belly button. It comes out sounding like "dee dee". It seems like she understands everything. I can ask her to do a simple task and she can usually complete it. I'm more impressed by the fact that she knows what I'm asking her to do. She can stack blocks, put Legos together and she tries to put puzzles back together. I think I'm mostly impressed by her interest in doing tasks much more advanced than she is capable of. She can usually keep up with Ellie pretty well. She recognizes songs and sometimes I catch her trying to sing them. She knows that the "adios" song means we have to put our toys away and she actual helps put things away. Again I think this is mostly surprising to me because we didn't have or do many of these things when Ellie was this age so I'm just surprised that she can keep up or understands. She loves to dance and bops up and down to music. She also loves to "read" or pull all the books off her bookshelf. I remember Ellie doing the same thing at this age. She is basically all over, trying to get her hand on anything that she can.

She is growing well but has started to loose some of her baby chunk. She is still breast feeding four times a day in addition to eating three meals. A few times she has accidentally drank some of Ellie's milk out of her sippy cup and was NOT a fan. Weaning her is going to be a tricky business. This will be new territory for me since Ellie basically weaned herself. I figure I'll let her go as long as she wants to and hope that she just gets tired of it at some point. Here are her stats for this month:

Head circumference: 47 cm
Height: 29.02 inches
Weight: 20.2 lbs

I am looking forward to what this new year will bring. I'm hoping that as Abby gets older the girls will continue to play together more and more (making my job easier). Ellie adores Abby and I think she'll love it when they can play at the same level. Now that Abby is walking it will make going to the park a lot easier and outings together will be more fun. It's the beginning of a whole new world for little Abs!