The One Year Old

I am officially the mother of a one year old! I got over most of my sadness on Amelia's birthday after writing my letter to her and talking to some friends on the phone. Then Amelia and I met our friends Ali and Anna (who just turned one on Monday) at the Denver Botanical Gardens--their children's garden is my favorite place to take her in Denver. We had fun playing and talking, and then Amelia slipped on a block and got her first big knot on her head. On her birthday! So life goes on.

Amelia had two birthday parties. First she had a party at her Grand-aunt Linda's house. Then Sunday afternoon, we had a little party for her. A few Book Babies friends and neighbors came over for about an hour. We had cupcakes. Sadly, I have pictures of neither party. I have pictures in my email of the first party that I don't know how to download, and I have picture of the second party but not any with Amelia alone, and I don't think I should post pictures of other people's babies on the Internet without asking their mommas. So here are some recent pictures of Amelia in her high chair.







What a funny bear.

Amelia at one is a lot of fun. Dean and I agree that we could keep her at this age.

Oh, she said her first word: Ball! She shouts it. She definitely says it when she sees a ball, so we know it's a real word, but she also says it when she sees a dog, and about 7,000 other times a day. She said it as soon as she woke up this morning. Ball! Ball! We got her a basket of balls for her birthday, so there are plenty of chances to say it.

In other Amelia news, she taking baby steps between pieces of furniture but has yet to venture out on her own two feet. She drops to her knees to crawl if she wants to get somewhere far away.She has learned to play with Suki a little by throwing a ball to her (which also gives her a chance to say Ball!). She still seems to be transitioning from one to two naps. We had a pretty successful one-nap day Monday when she napped from about 11:30-1:15. But since then she has had two naps. She went down this morning at 8:30! Which is how I am able to write this. It seems that if she sleeps till 7, she will have one nap, but if she wakes up earlier, she'll take two. Who knows. Night sleep is okay--she has been waking at 11:30, crying for a just a minute, and sleeping again, then sleeping till 3:30. I have been breaking my 4am rule. We are going out of town again next week, so my new rule is 3:30am till we get back from that trip and can reestablish things. Having a baby is hard.

All right, I want to try to catch up on a few more posts before A wakes up...