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My baby girl is 1!! She has been in our lives for 365 days (well, actually 367 now). So much has changed. She has gone from a tiny, helpless infant to an adorable, talkative, on the go baby. One thing has remained the same she is still super cute and super sweet.
Weight: 18lbs 3oz (9th percentile)
Height: 28 in (25th percentile)
Head Circumference: 17.25 in (23rd percentile)
Anna had her one year well child visit today. Our doctor confirmed many of the things we already knew. Our baby girl is tiny. I think she is going to take after my mom and my father-in-law’s sides of the family and be petite. The doctor was very impressed with her communication skills. She was showing off all her verbal and nonverbal communication skills, her favorite being pointing and saying “dat” (that). Physically she is perfect. Growing on track, eating very well, advancing in her gross and fine motor skills. She’s perfect, but I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that, I’ve always known it 
Anna has really changed and grown up in the last few months. She is crawling all over the place and boy can she book it when she has something in her sights (usually the cat). She is pulling up on things and has started letting go for brief moments to stand all by herself. I think it’ll be a while before she is walking, she really isn’t interested in it at all yet. That’s fine with my, I’d love to keep her my little baby for a while longer. Verbally she is very advanced. She has a vocabulary of about 10 words including mama, dada, Maya (usually pronounced ah-ya or most recently mah), hi, bye, that, kitty and all gone (pronounced gong gong). She also has a few signs she uses frequently including “all done” and “up”. It is usually pretty easy to figure out what she wants, which makes thing so much easier.
She still has the sweetest personality. She is very cuddly and loves giving mommy, daddy and Maya hugs and kisses. She is always smiling and chatting away. Her favorite things right now are her blanket (to watch her cuddle with her blanket is so sweet), any thing that plays music (including her walking toy, her sister’s singing Belle doll and this little princess microphone of Maya’s), balloons and our kitty Lily. She entertains herself very well but loves to play with mommy and big sister too.
I can’t believe she is already 1. I feel like just yesterday I was cuddling with her for the very first time and now here I am watching her very quickly becoming a toddler. Time does something crazy when you become a parent, it speeds up in ways I never thought possible.
Love you to pieces sweet baby girl. Looking forward to watching continue to change and grow.
Anna has a mouth full of teeth. Well, not a really a mouth full, she has 4 teeth 
But, since her big sister didn’t cut her first tooth until 2 days before her 1st birthday having a baby sporting a smile full of teeth versus a big ol’ gummy one makes me think Anna has a ton of teeth.
Her first little tooth, and very shortly after the second tooth, popped through at a little over 8 months. Tooth 3 and 4 joined the fun just a couple of weeks ago. And, boy, does love to show off her little teefers with her mega watt smile and her goofy little “I’m being silly face.”
Love it when she shows off her little toothies
I’ve been lucky when it comes to teething. Neither of my kids have had trouble when those nasty little teeth move and then cut through. We never knew when Maya was teething until the tooth popped through, teething didn’t bother her at all. We usually know when Anna is working on new teeth. Teething doesn’t bother her too much, but she does tend to run a mysterious fever for a day about a week before she gets a new tooth and she is usually a little fussier.
Based on the copious amounts of drooling flowing out of her tiny baby mouth and the red, swollen gums she is sporting I’m pretty sure there are a few more waiting just below the surface to join the mix. I’m just waiting on the telltale mysterious fever to hit.
We parents often get sucked into playing the compare game. A mother in the waiting room of your pediatrician’s office, holding a little one about the same age your own bundle of joy, strikes up a conversation with you, before long you find yourself comparing milestones. Playing at the park with your child you observe another child about the same age and begin wondering why your child isn’t able to ride a bike like that, climb that rock wall, etc, etc, etc. It is so easy to fall into a pattern of second guessing your child, your parenting, and comparing your child with others. When you have more that one child it can become easy to compare your own children to each other. Baby A hit this milestone at this age, why is Baby B still not doing that. We spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others so it isn’t any wonder that we fall into the same trap with our children.
The thing about babies is that no two are exactly alike. When a baby learns to sit on their own, when they learn to crawl, when they start to babble, when they start to walk completely depends on the baby and will happen at different times for different babies. Comparing your child to your friends child, or a strange child in the park or the doctor’s office, or comparing your own children to each other, doesn’t do any one any good. Just because that 7 month old you encountered at the doctor’s office is already crawling doesn’t mean your 8 month old should be. Just because that 4 year old at the park can ride a two wheel bike doesn’t mean your 5 year old should be able to.
Obviously, if your child appears to be behind hitting developmental milestones it can be stressful and wondering why other people’s children are hitting milestones before your own can be an easy trap to fall into. The best thing to do, if you are worried or concerned about your child’s development, is to talk with their pediatrician and see if there is cause for concern and what you can do to help your child.
When Maya was a baby I did a pretty good job of avoiding the comparing game. As long as she was hitting her milestones within the normal ranges I didn’t really care if she was doing it faster, better or sooner than other babies her age. Now with Anna I’m taking the same approach.
Each baby will develop at his or her own pace and comparing them to other children isn’t going to make that happen any faster. Just do the best you can to encourage your child and give them the opportunity to learn new skills and they will get there eventually. And remember, if you are worried at all, talk to your child’s doctor.
When Maya was about 4 or 5 months old she developed an affinity for bouncing. My arms were not prepared for the endless jumping and bouncing, it was quite an arm workout. Given her love of jumping and bouncing we figured she would be a big fan of a doorway jolly jumper so we picked one up at our local baby retailer. We were right, she LOVED it. It was hard to get her to stop using it. At almost 2 she would still ask me to put it up so she could bounce and swing around.
It was no surprise when Maya wanted us to bring out the jolly jumper for Anna when she was still to young to even hold her own head up for any length of time. I started putting Anna in the jolly jumper for short bursts when she was about 4 months old. She wasn’t a big fan at first. Eventually she started to enjoy sitting in it but hadn’t really figured out that she could make the thing move. I would bounce it a little for her and she seemed to like that, but if left to her own devices she would just stand there with this look on her face like “What exactly is the point of this thing?”.
Then all of sudden one day she just figured it out. I put her in the jolly jumper and she immediately started bouncing, jumping and spinning around. She was completely delighted with herself. She looked at me like “Mom, why didn’t you tell me this thing was so much fun?” Now she loves going in the jumper. She’ll squeal when she sees me putting it up in the doorway and can jump like nobody’s business.
It is so cute to watch her jump away, it reminds me so much of her big sister at this age. Maya gets a huge kick out of watching Anna jump away too.
Anna has entered a very vocal stage. Since she has been such a quiet baby I wasn’t sure what to expect from her as she entered the more vocal babbling stage of babyhood. Though she is still a pretty quiet baby things have certainly gotten a lot louder around this house lately.
She has discovered a lot of new sounds and plays with a lot of different sounds. Her preferred form of vocalization is still squealing, however, she has discovered that she can make her voice very, VERY loud so the squealing around these parts has reached new ear-piercing levels. My favorite is when she decides to wake in the middle of the night and squeal to herself for close to an hour (can you sense the sarcasm).
Over the last couple of weeks she has really started to discovered a lot of new noises and sounds she can make and spends much of her day practicing one form of verbalization or another. Today it has been all about “mmmmmmma mum”. Yesterday it was little fake coughs over and over and over again. A few days ago she was all about blowing raspberries.
You should see the delight on her face when you copy a sound back to her. You can just see her thinking “Hey, that is the sound I just made!!”
Maya was a very vocal baby. She switched from cooing to babbling very early. By 4 months she was babbling with ma, ba, da, and ga. Anna has been a much quieter baby. She spends a lot of time observing and absorbing what is going on around her in her quiet little way. I love all the new little sounds she has developed. I love how she creates this perfectly adorable mix of peacefulness and sweet little babbling and crazy loud squealing as a soundtrack to her day.
I leave you with a small taste of Miss Anna’s crazy loud squealing. Happy Weekend