One Year Old!!

Amarys is one!  Happy birthday beautiful girl!!  We are so happy to celebrate our sweetheart!


I made a mistake I didn't discover til later: she was born at 01:54


Amarys is pretty amazing.  She's wonderful and smart and strong willed and firey.  She's spicy.  I love it.

This month she leaped forward in many ways.  She left crawling behind and walks full time now, including standing, squatting, plunking down and getting up again, and turning mid step.  She loves to be carried and is constantly asking to come "up," with this princess version of the sign language for 'up:'

Generally with as sad a face as possible.  It totally works. 

Generally accompanied by an urgent "Uh, uh, uh," grunt.  Alternately sweet and annoying.

She has expanded her baby sign vocabulary: she has used the "milk" sign since November and has recently added "all done" after meals, "up" as mentioned, and "bye bye," and her first word aside from mamamama and dadadadada was "hot!" in reference to a cup of coffee.  Which she was verrrry tempted to touch anyways.  It is quite funny to watch the physically obvious push-pull between desire and very basic impulse control when it comes to a hot cup of coffee and a one year old. 

She likes kisses and will offer open mouthed smooches out of the blue numerous times a day, and she gets kissed so frequently that often when we lift her up, she smacks her lips because she knows a kiss is coming.  When you are one and being lifted "up," a kiss is a foregone conclusion.

She is not our most flexible child, so changes in routine, visitors, playdates, and trips take her awhile to adjust to.  She asserts her opinions strongly and I do believe her first temper tantrum was in utero.  She used to kick me fiercely if anything was resting on my belly, or if I kneeled down and smushed her a bit.  We like that she is ferocious and opinionated, but I must say that I'm very grateful she's #4.  We have been well mollified by years of parenting various personalities.  =)

It takes her awhile to wind down at night, even with a predictable routine and regular nap and bedtimes, and I think this is the hardest parenting task for me at the moment.  It regularly takes me approximately 45 minutes of nursing and singing and back patting and putting up with being stomped on, scratched, bit, and head butted before she will very abruptly fall asleep.  She still sleeps well the majority of the time, waking once to nurse and sleeping long and hard.  A minority of the time, however, she will wake at night and decide playtime is fantastic and proceed to beat us up, screech, laugh, and head butt for an hour or two.  It doesn't happen frequently enough to render us non functional, but when it does happen it is pretty debilitating.  She's keeping us on our toes.

She taught herself how to descend stairs in the past few weeks.  I didn't realize this until one day when I was standing at the front door talking to a friend, and Amarys simply appeared at my side when I thought she was at the top of the stairs on the other side of the (as it happened, unlocked) safety gate.  Well, hello, little girl!  Where did you come from?  She sits on the top step, slides down one step, stands, walks carefully forward, sits down, slides down another step, and repeats until she gets to the bottom.  Creative.  And cute.



G C photography


She loves food.  She will eat anything except lettuce.  And she is not very keen on rice.  I love that she is an easy eater and credit baby led weaning for her tolerant palate.  We now don't limit her diet at all, and she eats cheese and nuts as well as all the other foods we love and tolerates them well. 

She has had a productive cough since November.  I'm hoping she doesn't develop asthma (right after saying we don't limit her diet at all; I hope those two happenstances are not related!) and I am REALLY looking forward to spring, with increased sunshine, vitamin D, and time outdoors to help clear up her lungs and help her get completely over her cough.  She was on inhaled medications for two months but although they help her symptoms, the infection itself never completely cleared and I don't want her on steroids and ventolin indefinitely so we just quit using them after two months.  But man I hate the lingering, rattly cough.  And it sounds like I'm bringing an infectious pneumonia victim around with me wherever we go, which is embarrassing, but we can't stay home ALL winter!  

Anyways, she weathered her birthday celebrations like a champion and was particularly possessive of her toys.  She got a soccer ball, tea party set, books, several outfits, and 'girl' lego (duplo lego with pink pieces, baisically).  She didn't care about the clothes but she was particularly possessive of the toys.  Her favourite is the soccer ball, as she is a big fan of balls in general and until now owned no ball of her very own.  She's such a peanut and is so vibrantly full of personality that it is a joy to have her around.  It is so hard to remember what it was like before she was in the world.  



Also by G C Photography

 She has five teeth.  She has discovered that she can remove her diaper.  Her hair is finally long enough for a ponytail.  She climbs.  She loves water but gets bored in the bathtub.  Her laugh is infectious and best and loudest in mischievous circumstances.  She says "Nonononono!" if she doesn't want you to do something, and bites if frustrated.  She will tap you if she wants your attention.  She doesn't like strangers.  She will not perform on demand.  She's ticklish.  Especially above her knees.  She likes to kick things and people, and prefers to have her feet on the table while eating.  She LOVES shoes.  LOVES them.  She will hold up her little foot and hand you her shoe to put on at every opportunity and she stomps around proudly once they are on.  The Robeeze weren't doing the trick anymore because it is so wet this time of year and she so badly wants to WALK ON HER OWN rather than be carried.  Of course she loves buttons too, and will commandeer phones, remotes, and computer keyboards at every opportunity.

Brent made a slideshow of her first year, as a surprise for me.  It is so beautiful!  ♥ I will try and post it separately, as it is taking forever to upload and I would like to publish this post today!