Wow! Kemble is one year old! Actually, one year and two weeks because last week Momma was too busy recuperating myself and my house, and this week I decided I might as well wait on getting the pictures from Shar to post. I actually typed most of this up early last week though, promise! Here are pictures from her photo shoot with Ellie, as you can see, she stopped cooperating for the actual Ellie part....
On Friday, which was Kemble's real birthday I made pancakes and we all ate them before Daddy left for work. Grandmomma was here too helping us get ready for the party. Kemble had her first birthday song and candle in her pancake, and she was pretty confused and did not like the candle, but she did love the pancakes!
Grandmomma went to Chick Fil A and got lunch and Kemble loved her first of many Chick Fil A meals - she had chicken strips and chicken noodle soup!
Her birthday party was a huge success! Unfortunately, it rained all morning, so my plans for it all being outside in our back yard fell through. I kept waiting to decorate, hoping the sun would come out and we could decorate outside, but it kept sprinkling and the ground was getting muddy, so we made the house look as festive as we could, and it turned out fine. It wasn't what I envisioned at all, but it was great! Everyone was a little crowded, and it was loud, but no one complained :) We had a Mad Hatter tea party. We served tea, of course. We had almond tea, citrus green tea, orange spiced tea, and plain tea. We also had chicken salad, almond bacon cheddar spread, fruit, sandwiches, and of course cake and ice cream. The cake went so smoothly, I couldn't believe it. It all went together and looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. I have been so excited about, yet dreading this cake for months, but I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out.
Most importantly, Kemble had a great time! I don't know if it ever hit her that the whole thing was all for her... maybe at the point when she blew out her candles (or when I did mid-song when she freaked out about the flame) and everyone was singing to her and staring at her, she realized something was up. She was hesitant to dig into her cake at first, but once we gave her a taste, she dug in and loved it! I think she ate way more icing than cake though.
the damage....
a classic kemble face!
Here's everyone at the party (minus Shar and Melissa, who were taking pictures).
time to rinse off and get an outfit change :)
All of Momma's best friends and Kemble's future best friends!
She got wonderful presents - I mean it, I was so shocked and thankful for everything she got. Tons of books, electronic books, lots of cute clothes and fun toys, a whole set of musical instruments, an awesome wagon, an adorable rocking horse zebra, & two baby dolls. Mamie gave her a printed copy of the entire blog from the past year in a special keepsake box so she could enjoy it in the future! One of Kemble's favorites was a Jack in the Box from Patrick (and Grandma Gail and Grandpa Bert) that she just loves and thinks is so fun! She was a great sport about opening her presents, with lots of good help from Callianne. Here is a picture of her checking everything out the next morning after I cleaned up the hurricane that was the birthday party.
I was so excited to give her Bitty Baby, her first American Girl. She doesn't really know what to think about it - she's not crazy about it, but it's almost like she is scared of it. Stephen thinks she think it's real.
It was a great first birthday! Thank you to everyone who came early and helped with so much! (especially Momma, Melissa, Chris, & Shar)
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Kemble at 12 Months:
Wow! While it seems like you have been a part of our lives for a lifetime, and in a way, the exciting day you were born and all the long, weary days spent in the NICU really do seem like ages ago, it is still somehow shocking that you are a year old!!! This has been the most wonderful, yet the most trying year of my life, but I wouldn't trade a single thing, because you have become the most wonderful, beautiful, happy, smart, silly, tough, smiley, loving, and feisty little girl. I'm so proud of you and all you have learned. You're full of personality and you love to talk and dance. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to be your mother. I was just telling Daddy the other night that I feel like I am so blessed to be YOUR mother... not just any mother of any sweet, cute little girl, but YOUR mother, because you are the sweetest and cutest of them ALL! You make Daddy and me better, stronger, & happier.
-At your one year checkup you weighed precisely 20 pounds (30th percentile), you were 28 3/4 inches long (45th percentile), and your head was 18.25 cm (80th percentile). That head sure did catch up and surpass everything else! Dr Adams said you were perfect! You had to get 5 shots, which we both hated.
At the doctor - you were excited to play with the waiting room toys!
-You are saying lots and lots of words. You talk constantly and deliberately. I know you are trying to say something, I'm just not sure exactly what it is most of the time. You make every sound and use them all. The words you say sometimes change from week to week, but the ones you say most often are: hi, hey, more (mo), down (nnn), easy (when you stroke my hair, because i always tell you to be easy instead of pulling -- love it!), no (nie or nuh), bunny (nunny - which is what you call all of your stuffed animals), dance (dac), mama and dada (you finally are saying it to me, i think....), yummm, milk (mik), water (wawa), zebra (zeza), bath (bab) and last, but absolutely NOT least, you repeat I love you (i wu u) to us when we say it to you. I even got it on camera the other day!
-You often will repeat words that we say to you, so you're going to be learning quickly I think!
-If I ask you what a snake says, you say "ssssss" and if I ask you what a bee says, you say "zzzzzz". Of course you won't ever do it when I have the video camera out or when I'm trying to get you to show off to someone! One day you picked up a bee toy and said zzzzz... I'm not sure if it was a coincidence or not.
-You are really starting to understand what we say to you, even if you can't communicate back. This morning, when you woke up (with the tallest, most perfect mowhawk I've ever seen?!), you had your paci in your mouth. I'd given you a different kind than your usual because they are too small and you've been getting your lip all tucked up inside them, so anyway, I said "well I guess you like your new paci" and you held the other matching one that you were holding up and put it in my mouth, then you thought that was soo silly for mommy to have a paci! If we ask you where something is, you look straight at it. You are also starting to compare two things, for example, you were looking at your Baby Noah DVD cover (which you love to do) and I saw you looking back and forth from it to your new rocking zebra. I looked and sure enough, you were looking at a little pair of zebras on the DVD and realizing they were the same as your zebra. You now say Zebra and you have grown to love your rocking zebra all of a sudden the past couple of days after being a little leery of it at first.
-You are so affectionate. You give kisses pretty frequently, sometimes you lean your mouth in for a kiss, other times you just make a kiss noise with your mouth. If we pat you, you pat us back.
- You were eating really well, and you still are really, but now you have discovered that you have the ability to be picky. If you don't like what I put on your tray (or just think you don't like it, even if you gobbled it up the day before), you will either pout or throw or swipe it off your tray. Lately this includes ALL vegetables, including sweet potatoes, carrots, mixed veggies, etc. You also are NOT a fan of cantaloupe (you didn't like it, then you did, now you don't again.)
-However, there are lots of foods you love: black beans - really any kind of beans, cheese, cheerios, blueberries, peaches, pears, bananas , yogurt (you can't get enough), peas (sometimes), chicken, bread, noodles, rice, ravioli, corn (again, sometimes), graham crackers, scrambled eggs. And you were a pretty huge fan of the Brownie Batter (which was NOT a brownie batter, more like just plain chocolate) Blizzard that I shared with you the other night. When we took you to the fair the other day, you LOVED the corn dog crust!
-You often fuss about your food while glaring at ours, not realizing you are eating a simplified version of whatever we are eating. You want to eat exactly like we are. Sometimes if we show you we are eating the same thing, you will eat it, but sometimes you won't! I'm learning ways to sneak in some veggies, because that's really the only thing you don't like (and unfortunately you come by it honestly because I'm not a huge veggie fan either, but I don't give you anything that I don't like myself!)
-Your favorite things to do are: play ball (especially with Daddy) - you can throw, catch, kick, roll, and hit it, dance, read books, cruise around everywhere, walk in your "car" push toy to get the mail or all around the house, feeding the ducks at the park, , talk and talk, play with your musical instruments, pull all of mommy's books off the shelves, pull every toy/book out of your bins, pull every blanket out of your cabinet, pull every clothing item/bib/whatever out of all the drawers in your room, "help" with laundry by throwing it everywhere. Notice a pattern here?
- You can stand alone, but you still don't like to do it often, you just aren't confident enough. You will take a few steps every now and then but the 4 steps I mentioned before are still your record. Usually, you just reach for us or sit down, because you feel vulnerable I guess.
-You are sleeping pretty good. Some days you take 2 naps, some days it's just one, but you are sleeping great at night.
-You've been getting little diaper rashes more frequently. I assume it's due to the wide variety of food you're eating, and changing from formula to milk (which is going pretty well, and you haven't had a bottle in over a week! We're still working on getting you to drink more milk from a sippy, and getting some water in too, but Dr Adams said yogurt and cheese count too, so we're pretty close)
-You love to watch your Baby Einstein movies, and of course you still love your cartoons and Wheel of Fortune. You enjoyed watching the Aggie game with us last weekend until Daddy hollered and clapped and then you freaked out and it was pretty much bath and bed time after that!
-I recently got out a bunch of "baby" toys that you don't need or get too excited about anymore to make room for all your new birthday toys. Anyway they were in a pile in the living room, and suddenly, they are all you want to play with! I know this is how it always works, but now I can't bring myself to pack them away just yet.
-You love to ride in Daddy's car now - you have never been in it because the car seat would not fit in his car rear-facing. We put it in forward facing and you love to be able to see out and talk to us and look at us. I love it too!! Unfortunately, we realized that the car seat situation in my car is a mess!! First of all, we discovered that you are not supposed to use the LATCH system but instead the seat belts if you choose to use the rear middle seat, which we do because it's safest.... so for the past year she's been improperly secured. Second of all, I realized that we apparently have the only car seat in the world that requires a baby to be 22 pounds to face forward. It also says you must be 34 inches, but we may ignore that one, their website says they are currently reevaluating that measurement. Anyway, not only that, but the top anchor strap, which all of our car seats for forward facing have, only has anchors on the sides, if you use the center you have to anchor it to the very back of the car, which would be extremely inconvenient for getting the stroller or whatever in and out of the back, but I don't want to move you to the side either really, so I'm torn about what to do there. I never knew car seats were so completely complicated! UGH!
-You have one tooth on top that is coming in, one that just broke through, and 2 more on top and one more on bottom that look and feel like they will pop in any day now!
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