Monster is 1 year old

Dear monster,

You are now officially 1 year old. To say this past year hasn’t been what I expected would be correct. You are a very cute little girl, no longer really a baby, and you are usually in a very good mood. You have started smiling, laughing, and giggling with no provocation (that I can understand) and make those around you laugh/smile every time you do this. I didn’t know what to expect with having a baby, would you eat, would you sleep? Would we figure it out? Well, sometimes I feel like we have it figured out and other times I don’t. It hard to say what life will be like from one day to the next, but mostly it’s on the level.

You are learning to chew and swallow your food and getting better with each day. We still do baby food but you will take some regular table foods, like toast or bananas, as long as we give you enough time to figure it out. You will sometimes feed yourself but your pincer grasp has yet to show up. Slowly, you are learning to palm grasp foods and Granpat says you do very well You eat a lot but apparently could eat a lot more since you are very small. We switched you over to whole milk a couple of weeks ago and it has been a very good transition. You stopped liking to drink your formula during the summer but now, you grab for the bottle in order to have more milk. I think this is also going to help you bulk up. We haven't figured out sippy cups or straw cups with you yet, so we're going to stick with the bottles and open cups for a while. I hope we can all figure it out, because once you feed yourself and drink for yourself, i think we will all be a lot happier!

You grew a lot in the last couple months and you look very tall for your size. You are tall and skinny, only weighing in around 16 pounds. I hope you stay tall :-) you can wear clothing from 6-9 months all the way up to 12 months. It really just depends. Still wearing size 3 diapers and probably will be for a while since they say they go up to 28 pounds, and that is almost twice your size. 

Your development is really taking off lately. I have noticed a difference and see you get stronger with every day. You are about the stage of a 6-month-old and are reaching out for things and playing with things more and more. It's fun to watch. We work on sitting and developing the muscles in your low back and upper chest in order to get you to sit up on your own and eventually crawl. It looks like you are really working to figure this out! You love to work with Katie, Mary Jo, and Emily from Early Intervention and they are pleased with the progress you have been making.

I love you lots you little monster. I hope your 2^nd year on earth is as good or better than the 1^st one.

Always,

Mama