Monday, May 28, 2012

My Little Big One Year Old!

Sure enough, a whole year has passed by since our sweet baby girl was born.  It's gone by really quickly, and although I'm kind of sad that she has moved on past the snuggly little baby stage, we are always so excited to see her reach her next milestone.  It's so fun to see what she has learned, to see her be excited about things, to watch her pick up on something new everyday, and to get to know her personality better. Right now, she loves:

"Seats" of any kind:
But they don't actually have to be a seat, just any defined space where she can sit:

In the dog's bed under our computer table:


And again a different day: 



In her Bumbo-facing various ways: 


On her dad's arm: 
 

 On the top of her little slide (sorry for the blurry, she doesn't hold still much):


In the toy box: 

And again: 


On a box: 
On pillows, on shelves, pretty much anywhere she can get herself onto!
Food: Pretty much any kind she is given.  She unfortunately has a fairly restrictive diet due to her allergy issues, but she particularly loves the corn puffs made by Gerber in the Veggie Dip flavor, and Goldfish crackers.  If she sees you eating something, she'll say 'yum!' to indicate that she thinks you should share! Hopefully she will continue to add more variety to her diet as we continue to figure out what she can or can't have!

Her pink bunny:  Her Aunt Marcie gave her this bunny around Easter, and we frequently see her snuggling it at night, and she will grab it on the way out of the crib in the morning.  If she sees it somewhere around the house, she starts squealing and hugging it!  It's incredibly cute!







 Babies:  She loves pictures of babies, real babies, mirrors, videos of babies (mostly of herself), and she even has a baby doll (that used to be mine) that she loves and squeals and talks to.

Trying to walk:  And she is so darn close!  In fact, she has taken a few steps, and stands on her own often, but she isn't quite there yet. So any available object she can push around in a walking position is her 'favorite'.

Baths/Water: She loves playing in water, and gets SO excited when I start filling up the bathtub for her!

Books: She will pull books of any kind out and flip through pages.  When she has access to them, she crawls up the stairs, goes straight to her room, and starts pulling out the books.  She also has some downstairs, and they are often the first thing to come out of the toy box in the morning.

Music: Any tune or jingle is good enough for a dance for this girl!  She dances for commercials, toys that play music, cell phone rings.  She has learned the word 'dance' and gets a great big smile when there is music to dance to!

She is quickly picking up on words as well, she signs 'more', 'dog', 'all done', and occasionally 'food' and 'water'. She says Mama, Dada, yum, uh-oh, go, and a whole bunch of other gibberish that I'm sure means stuff to her, but I just don't understand!  She has started 'social laughing', when she laughs because we are laughing, she has figured out the power of pointing, and she likes trying to imitate anything and everything that we do!

It is so fun to see the excitement about the simple things in life through her eyes, it has definitely made us appreciate all the small things we take for granted each day. We love our sweet girl, it has been the best year, and we look forward to all the ones to come!




Sunday, May 20, 2012

Mahalo!



Once again, it seems like time slips by way too quickly...so it's been almost two months since we left for our vacation in Hawaii.  It was beautiful, fun, crazy, relaxing, and SO nice to spend time with the ones we love!  Between Jon's two jobs, my one job, and all the other stuff we cram in between, we hardly see each other, so a week together was such a nice break from the craziness! The location was just beautiful: 



Sunset from the backyard:

 


The backyard in the day: 

  

We snorkeled, we relaxed, we went to the beach a few times:  




 


 

And Sofia LOVED the water!  Unfortunately our camera lens had water on it in this shot, but she was just always so happy in the water: 

  

And again: 



So, while the plane ride there was a little challenging with an almost-one-year-old, it was most definitely worth it!  We loved it, and we are so grateful to everyone that helped make it possible.  We definitely owe them a big MAHALO!