Emery {12 Months!}

Well, Emery is ONE! What a crazy fast year it was!! How is is that it's already been a year since she was a teeny tiny baby who kept us up all night long?!

Now, instead of keeping us up all night, she keeps us going all day long! She is a busy baby and always on the move!

She's really happy most of the time, unless she's getting a tooth or if we're at a photo shoot with a photographer that we're paying. Yeah, she waits for those times to be a complete grumpy pants. And it's also awesome that she doesn't even crack a smile when I make a complete fool of myself trying to get her to smile by doing all the goofy things that usually get her every time. 

Here's her last weekly picture collage! I put all of them at the end of this post. It's just so amazing how fast these sweet little ones grow!

One Month Update

Two Month Update
Three Month Update
Four Month Update
Five Month Update
Six Month Update
Seven Month Update
Eight Month Update
Nine Month Update
Ten Month Update
Eleven Month Update

Here's what's been going on with Emery the last month.

- We went to the doctor a few days after her birthday and oh my, thank goodness for Puffs! They were very slow at this visit and we wouldn't have made it through without the blueberry Puffs! :) She weighs 22 pounds and 1 ounce (75th percentile) and they said her height was 31.25 inches. We measured her a few days before her birthday and came up with 29 inches, so I'm guessing she's somewhere between. Either way, she's a tall girl! Her head circumference was 18.25 inches. I think she's starting to know that shots are coming. She used to never cry until the shot happened and this time she cried as soon as she saw the nurse and we laid her down on the table. :(

- Most of her clothes now are 9-12 month and 12-18 month. There are a few things that are 6-12 month that she still wears. The 12 month clothes are just right and she's got a little room in the 12-18 month things. She's still in a size 3 diaper.

- She's still on the same schedule that she's been on a for a few months now. As usual, though, her sleep schedule is pretty unpredictable. We've had a couple of days where she's slept until 8:00 or later and some days where she's up before 6:30. Typically, she wakes up between 6:45-7:30. Her naps are still hit or miss. A couple of days she took 45 minute naps and that was it, but most of the time she will take two naps that are an hour or more. We had a couple of really good 2+ hour naps this month, too. She goes to bed between 7:00-7:30.

- As soon as we go in her room in the morning or after a nap, she drops down on her bed and crawls around like crazy almost like she's doing laps. Or she'll lay flat on her stomach, kick her legs and move her arms like she's trying to swim! It's so funny! She also usually throws all the stuffed animals she sleeps with out of her crib. She does this before she goes to sleep sometimes, too, and we have to go in her room and put them back in her crib before she'll go to sleep.

She got this bookshelf for her birthday. I'm still working on filling it up and putting pictures in frames!

- We were back at the doctor this month for another sickness! :( No ear infection this time, just more coughing and congestion. We learned a lot from our last experience with amoxicillin and it went much smoother this time...straight in the bottle or mixed with a little applesauce and she did great! The doctor did say at her well visit that it looks like she'll have allergies. We kind of expected that because Daniel and I both have them. So, we are now giving her Zyrtec in the morning during allergy season.

- I was really worried last month about transitioning her from a bottle to a sippy cup. The last couple of weeks before her birthday, she just naturally seemed less and less interested in her bottle and more interested in regular food. The transition to whole milk has been super easy! I did get her a sippy cup that has a spout that's more like a bottle and that's all we've been using since the day after her birthday. She holds it herself if she's laying down, but she has a hard time tipping it up enough if she's sitting up. We're planning to switch out the spout to one that's more like a sippy cup in a couple of weeks. She's drinking 2 cups of milk (most of it in the morning and before bed and the rest just randomly throughout the day) and eating three meals plus a couple of snacks a day. Some of the things she tried this month are eggs, macaroni and cheese, blueberries, grapes, peas, pasta, blackberries, rice, sausage, chicken, banana muffins, tomatoes, corn, guacamole, quinoa, chocolate, green beans, pancakes, pickles {she loves them!}, cake, and ice cream. She didn't really like the eggs (I'm hoping that changes!) and she's not crazy about meat. She did try some sliced deli turkey and ham and really seemed to like both! Her new favorite this month is definitely green beans! She *loves* them!!! And of course, cheese is still the favorite. :) We also gave her some peanut butter a couple of days ago and she seemed like she could take it or leave it. No signs of an allergy-so thankful for that! She also got to try an oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip M&M cookie a couple of days ago. I had them on cooling racks on the kitchen table and it was like she knew it was something really yummy even though she'd never had it before. I think the Easter M&Ms made them look super fun to her! We finally had to move them because she kept reaching out for them and wouldn't eat anything else. She was definitely a fan of the cookies...just like her mommy and daddy! :)

-She really prefers to feed herself. She's willing to try almost anything that she can pick up and eat herself. She'll let us feed her with a fork or spoon, but she'll usually grab for it after 5-10 bites. She does great eating off of a fork herself, but a spoon gets a lot trickier. We can usually hold her off for a little while by giving her something to hold or play with while we finish feeding her with a spoon. She *loves* this snack cup!

- Emery has five teeth now! Two on the bottom and three on the top. I think she'll be getting another one of the top very soon.

- She's not walking yet, but she's a speedy crawler! She's really good at walking behind her elephant walker, and she can cruise around furniture pretty quickly! She can stand unsupported for a few seconds at a time, but she doesn't do it that often. She can take her time, as far as I'm concerned! It's hard enough keeping up with her crawling! :)

- She still loves to read books, but her patience isn't quite what it used to be. She flips through the pages and wiggles out of our laps a lot sooner than she used to. She loves books with textures and will feel almost every page, even if a book doesn't have anything to feel. I think it's so funny!

- Her hair is getting longer and thicker and there's just a tiny bit of wave in it in the back! So cute!

- She jabbers all the time! She's learned a few more words this month. She can say quack, moo, nana, purple, cracker, bite (sounds like "t"), and puff. She'll answer us when we ask her what a duck or cow says? We probably ask her 100 times a day! :)

{Please excuse my quacking and mooing...especially the mooing!}

- She still loves playing peekaboo and will do it herself now! She'll cover her eyes with the backs of her hands for about a second when we ask her if she can do peekaboo! She also gives five! If we hold out our hand and ask her to give us five, she'll slap her hand down on ours. :)

- Emery will give hugs and kisses, too! She gives most of her hugs to her stuffed animals and Nana and Gampa, but we get a sweet hug and kiss every now and then, too.

- We got her a pair of shoes this month! I don't put them on her all the time, but she does just fine when she's wearing them. She's fascinated with them, too. She'll keep messing with them when I put them on her. It was so funny the first time I she wore them, I think she thought she couldn't crawl with them. She kept looking at them, then moving forward like she was going to crawl, and then she'd sit back again and look at her shoes.

- She learned how to take her socks off and does it all the time! We just find socks in random places around the house (kitchen drawers!).

- Speaking of kitchen drawers, she's developed a fascination with one of the drawers in the kitchen. She loves to play in it and crawls off for it almost every time she comes in the kitchen. There's nothing dangerous in it, so I let her play in there. I think her favorite thing is just taking everything out and looking at the mess she made!

- Emery loves to get into things she's not supposed to. Her favorite things are the window blinds and a lamp cord in the living room. As soon as we say no, she'll usually put her hands up {I surrender!}, clap, or put her head down like she knows she wasn't supposed to be doing it.

- Diaper changes are becoming a hard part of the day! She has started to cry as soon as I lay her down. Usually I can distract her with something else on the changing table, but goodness, she's strong and wiggly!

- She reaches up for us when she wants us to pick her up. I love it so much! I'll hold my hands out and wait for her to reach for me because I think it's so cute when she reaches up. <3

- She claps a lot, especially when her toys play music, when we say "yay!", or when we're watching Wheel of Fortune and she sees the contestants clapping! Ha! :)

- She's developed a new favorite song this month - "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". She *loves* this video on YouTube (she likes almost all the Super Simple Learning videos!) and I love that she'll snuggle with me when it's on. <3 Seriously, though, this song really calms her down. She was fussing in the car the other day and once I started singing it, she calmed right down.

- We *love* to make her laugh! She loves it when she touches our nose and we say "beep beep" and she thinks it's hilarious when we tap our fingers on the table toward her and then tickle her. Her cheeks are really ticklish, too, and sometimes I'll point to her eyes, ears, nose, lips, hair, etc... and then tickle her cheeks and she laughs so hard. She loves it when we chase her around, too. She'll start laughing so hard that she can't crawl anymore and she'll be all sprawled out on the floor. She loves it when we make monkey noises or talk like Cookie Monster...unless it's during a photo session, of course. Then it's not funny at all. ;)

Here they are...our precious girl growing up week by week and month by month. She's so much fun, and a lot of things really have gotten easier, but I wish time would slow down just a little.