Lillian's First Birthday Party

We were so lucky to be able to celebrate Lillian's first birthday with a great group of friends and family. It is amazing that it has been a year already. Our little lady is so very advanced for her age - walking around and signing/talking up a storm - and our lives have changed so very much for the better.

Thank you everyone who came out to make the day a special one!

More Frosting!

Chilling at the Hamilton Pumpkin Patch Event

We only opened one present the day of her party -
a Minnie Mouse from KD that sings a song.

She loves that singing Minnie Mouse so much. 
Alan took it to cut the tag off and she ran after him begging more 
when he walked away with it - she got it back as soon as the tag was off. 

Lillian is One Year Old!

For Lillian's actual birthday the only present she opened was the one from Simon. We gave her porcupines, which she totally loved (because she's a Basque) and I made her a cupcake without frosting.  I think she had a great day  - but will be blown away by her party on Saturday!

Here is a summary of our girl at one year...

1. She walks quite a bit and prefers it to crawling though will resort to crawling if she needs to go really fast (like to get to something before we can stop her).
2. She says dog, clearly and frequently. She loves dogs and will talk about them for a while after having seen one. She is very reliable - when she says dog there is a dog, even if it is way down the street. Though occasionally she will call a squirrel a dog but to be fair there are some pretty squirrelly looking things on leashes these days.
3. She partially says a lot of other words - she tries to say Simon (Si), Jessie (Se), Hi (iii, with the right intonation), Up (ph!, mostly a lip smack) 
4. She has been having a rough time sleeping lately. She goes to bed around 6 and falls asleep well, but will be woken up when Simon goes to bed (or he prevents her from falling completely asleep). On those days she will be up late - until 8 or 9 some nights. She has been waking in the night and while she isn't unhappy, she is not sleeping. Which makes morning time awful. She wakes up tired and is often only up for an hour or two before going down for her morning nap. About half the time she'll sleep for 3-4 hours and the the other half the time she won't sleep at all. She rarely takes afternoon naps. 
5. She is such a climber. 
1. She will laugh when you leave the gate open and walk/crawl as fast as she can to get to the steps before you can catch her - if you hear her laugh you better find her and stop her!
2. When she does climb on something and gets stuck she will sit there and wait to be rescued making an 'oooohhhh' noise, it sounds like the second half of uh-oh but longer and just as worried as you can imagine a one year old being. 
6. She is quite tough and will usually take a fall like a champ. Even falls that would make me cry she just shrugs off. (She falls more often than I do though so she has more practice.)
7. She spends 8-4:30 Monday through Friday with Jessie and LOVES her.  
8. She loves to gather up many things in her arms and walk around with them all, usually they tumble out of her hands as she walks and she drops the rest while she tries to pick up the one she dropped first. 
9. She loves shoes, she will still lick especially shiny shoes but usually now she tries to put them on her own feet or carry them around. 
10. She loves people and is so very friendly. She walks right up to new people with a book and climbs into their lap expecting to be read to. 
11. She will bring you a book and climb into your lap for you to read it to her. She usually wants to decide what page you are on and likes to flip back and forth. 
12. She signs book, down, more, milk, waving hello/goodbye, and hungry/food. Occasionally she will sign drink or all done, in addition book looks very similar to more right now (both very similar to a clap). She also does a lot of pointing at things.  
13. She loves being tickled and if you make a tickle noise (for me a bee buzz and for Alan a rocket and explosion) then she will make that noise at you when she wants you to tickle her. 

Oh, she does like cake.

Happiest One Year Old!

So many pictures after the jump...

Dinner and funny faces

Lillian's First Year

For the past year, I've been taking a random picture of Lillian a few times a week every week, from when she was a day or two old until her first birthday today. 

I then used an app to sew them all up together to make a couple little videos showing Lilly growing up over her first year.  One of them flies through the year in 15 seconds to see the development from tiny infant to cheerful baby, while the other is longer and spends more time on each picture.

She's changed so much in just a year... can't wait to see how she grows in her second year.

Videos of Lillian - signing book and blowing on bananas

Here is Lillian walking up with her book and asking me to read it to her....

She had some hot eggs for breakfast that I was blowing on. When I gave her the banana she blew on that too and it was super cute.

Playing with Blocks

Saturday Running around on the field

Trying to escape