One year old.

   Pregnancy seems to last for a long time. Between morning sickness, feeling tired literally all. the. time., aches and pains, an expanding belly, and not being able to sleep by the end of it, it seems to take a lot longer than 40 weeks. 

   Once the baby arrives, it seems like the exact opposite is true. At the beginning the nights seem very long when you aren't getting a lot of sleep, but the weeks fly by and all of the sudden you have a one-month old, two-month old, etc. Now I have a one year-old and it is absolutely crazy to me. I remember the day she was born so vividly. I also remember the amazing things she learned to do (her first smile, her first giggle, the first time she said "Dada" and "Mama", when she rolled over, and the first time she crawled). 

   

   We celebrated her birthday with a zoo-themed party, which was a lot of fun. We ate sandwiches, lion veggies, cheetah chips and dip, kangaroo kabobs (fruit), and camel cake and cookies, and drank jungle juice and water from the watering hole. (I am not this creative. The ideas all came from here). A lot of our family and friends were able to celebrate Thea's birthday and we had a fantastic time. We hosted it at a pavilion in Murray Park and gave bubbles and finger puppets as favors, which the other kids in attendance loved.

   We also had the 12-month check up!

• Weight: 17.2 lbs (4^th percentile) – working on giving her more protein and fat (avocado, butter, peanut butter on bread/crackers, etc.)
• Length: 29.2 inches (44th percentile)
• Wearing all 9 month clothes, finally! Her feet are still really small and she is only just getting into 3-6 month shoes. But baby/kid shoes sizes are very confusing.
• Size 3 diapers
• Her hair is very light and coming in thicker. It's long enough in the back for pigtails but she isn't fond of us trying to wrap an elastic around her hair.
• Six teeth! Two on the bottom and four on the top!
• In the last week she has struggled to go to bed at night. We follow the routine (bath, books, bottle, brush teeth, bed) but she screams for a few minutes when we put her down. I usually go back in a couple times to give her the rest of her bottle and rock her and sing to her and she'll go to sleep. Once she's asleep, she will usually stay asleep for 10-11 hours.
• Loves almost all food we give her. She spit out Thai masaman curry (her loss) and kidney beans from a three-bean salad but likes pretty much everything else.
• She can almost walk on her own. She does it really well if we hold her hands, but she still walks on her tiptoes.
• She was getting too long for the baby bathtub so we transitioned her into the regular tub with just a little bit of water and lots of toys. She screamed the first few times because she seemed scared and unsteady. She now lays down on her tummy in the tub and kicks and plays with toys and is much happier. We also started playing music for the first part of her bath as she gets used to being in there, which helped a TON.