Miss "I"ve Got Something to Say"

Hana's vocabulary has suddenly sky-rocketed. Either that, or I just wasn't understanding her before. In the past few days, she's learned the words orange, cheese, and broccoli. Today she learned "all done," which she has so far used (with prompting) to say when she was done nursing and when she wanted to get out of the bath. And, cutest of all, when I sing "Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are" I don't have to sing the next line. She sings "Up above the..." and that's as much as she can say, and then I have to finish the rest. But still, that's a lot of syllables for a 1-year-old!

In addition, she is now an expert mimic. Just about everything we do she has learned to copy. She sees shoes, she tries to put them on. She sees us making her bottle, she shakes her hand to indicate that we have to shake it up (although we don't actually have to do this anymore, since we switched from formula to cow's milk, we still do it since it's part of the routine). Not to mention all the mouth noises, blowing kisses, etc. She's really getting into books - we say "Hana, go pick out a book" and she goes to her shelf, gets one, and brings it to us to read. She also understands "stomp your feet" and "clap your hands."

Here are some pics of Hana in her new sandbox, a birthday present from Grandpa Don and Grandma Sharon. So far, her favorite part is climbing in and out of it. Same with the blow up pool from the Bishops. Climb in, climb out, climb in, climb out.

Hana's Birthday: The Last Pics

What can I say? This girl was so wound up at her birthday party. All the other kids her age were lounging around, relaxing, eating, hanging with the adults, at least for part of the time. Not Hana. Running up and down the path. Climbing on the rocks. Stealing the soccer ball away from the other kids. Sticking her hand in the trash. Playing with the balloons. Rolling in the dirt. She was filthy and had to have a bath when we got home. She had a blast, a really fun day. Strange to think she won't remember it.

Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us! You really made Hana's day.

Party Guests

The One Year Old: Cupcake Time!

The One Year Old: Pre-Party

Movies

Hana the 364-Day-Old

It's pretty much impossible to believe that this time last year, about 5 hours from now, Hana came into the world a mere tiny 6 pounds and a few ounces. I recall her being unusually alert for a newborn. She didn't seem to sleep much the first few days, because there was just too much to look at and take in. From the start, she was gobbling down milk like crazy. She gave us a run for our money with the colic for the first 3 months. Practically from the start, she was a little ball of energy - kicking her legs (even at night while sleeping) and trying to sit up and crawl and move weeks before she actually had the motor skills to do so.

She has changed so much, and yet, the core of her personality has been there all along. It turns out, the alertness was not just a newborn phenomenon. She is just in love with the world around her. Everything is interesting and captures her attention...until the next thing comes along and grabs her. She continues to be a good eater. Her favorite food is cheese. The colic, fortunately, was not a personality trait - PHEW. But the energy remains. As an example, today I left her in the living room for 10 seconds. 15 tops. When I returned, she was standing on top of the table!!! To be fair, it was the kids' table from her table and chair set, but still...this girl is a mover and a shaker and a climber.

Even her physical characteristics have come full circle. She was long and skinny then, and she is long and skinny now. In between, she was quite the pudge ball. She had a lot of hair when she was born, then it thinned out and fell out, and now she's got another full head of hair. The only difference is it's very blond, and it was dark at birth. Her eyes stayed blue.

Pete and I were congratulating ourselves tonight for keeping her alive for 1 year. It's quite a feat in this day and age, when it seems that the logistics of meeting an infant's survival needs are a little bit insane, what with the pumping, trying every bottle under the sun until you find the one that the baby will drink out of, working so you can pay the bills, finding child care, trying to prepare food that's not full of synthetic chemicals and pesticides...but we did it.

And to be perfectly frank, I'm exhausted. Parenthood is filled with many joyful moments and events. Sleep is not one of the perks. It's weird - Hana is a great sleeper, all things considered. I never have to get up in the middle of the night with her (knock on wood). If she does wake up, she whimpers herself back to sleep. So why am I so tired?

I've pondered this a great deal. I think there are two reasons. First, even though she doesn't wake up in the middle of the night, I STILL DO. (grumble) A fair amount. And it's not uncommon that I have trouble falling back to sleep. I think it's habit, from night feeding (and when I hear her whimpering or rustling on the monitor, I wake up). Second, I have literally not slept past 6:30 am in months, and usually I'm up by 5:30 or 6. It's not really even that early. But if my natural wake time would be 7 am or so, that's about an hour every day that I'm losing, and I don't get to make it up on the weekends. Naps help when I can get them, but it's just not the same as a long uninterrupted stretch of sleep.

OK, enough of the complaining, because in the big scheme of things, we are the luckiest parents on earth. Hana is a happy, spirited, loving child and we look forward to each new day with her.

Latest Movies - On hold

One question: How is it, that even though we watch her closely almost every second of the day, when I took out the diaper pail this morning there were two items of her clothing in it? Ew. I had to go in their and fish them out. She is fascinated with the diaper pail. Loves to put things in it. I just thought I was really good at preventing her from doing that. Apparently not.

I wanted to post a few movies of the little squirt, but blogger's got a bug or something. Have tried the past 2 days with no luck. Will try again another day.

We Managed to Snap a Few

We're Terrible Picture Takers

With Hana being so mobile, and running all over the place all the time, it's becoming increasingly difficult to capture her on film. If we want daily pictures, I think we're going to have to hire a live-in photographer.

And it's really too bad, because she's doing so many new things! She's says "Bye Dada" and lots of other words - eieio, yucky, yes, no, kitty, caw caw (for the bird sound), woof woof, hi, bye, uh oh, whee, ball, ba ba (for bottle), baby, and wow. She's also said bird, deer, car, okay, good, and oh boy according to Pete. Quite the budding vocabulary. It's seems implausible at this young age, but we swear she says "What is that?" And she's FINALLY starting to call me mama!

Her favorite book is one about a baby that says "This baby is hiding" and then she lifts the flap and it shows the baby and it says "peekaboo." Then "This baby is hungry" and under the flap it says "yum yum" etc. She loves to lift the flaps. When we get to the page that says "This baby wants her mommy" and under the flap it says "mama," she turns around and smiles at me and gives me a hug. So cute.

She can blow kisses and play ball. Grandma Sharon taught her ring around the rosie. She is starting to try to put lids and tops on things. She's right on schedule with the separation anxiety - which tends to rear it's head at the exact time when I need to get something done and she won't tolerate anything less than me holding her. Then it disappears the second I have time to give her attention, and then she spends a lot of energy trying to run away from me. Apparently this ambivalence is very age-appropriate. It requires a lot of parental patience and chasing skills.

She's got yet another tooth coming in - 8 total is what she has now. I'm not sure when the molars start coming in, but it will be nice when this teething thing is over. She's usually only fussy for 24 hours or so when she has a tooth on the way, but you can tell it hurts her and she's very sensitive and clingy. Fortunately, a little motrin seems to do the trick.

All my moms' group babies are turning 1 in the next couple of months. We are off to our second birthday party tomorrow. It's hard to believe that Hana is turning 1 in a few weeks. Crazy.