The big o-n-e!

Sorry for not updating yesterday, but I was feeling pretty rotten from the constant sinus pressure of my head cold, so I didn’t feel much like sitting at a computer after I got home yesterday. I still managed to work out (somehow), but couldn’t muster much after that.

Baby B is a year old. We had a good time celebrating her birthday over the weekend. On Saturday morning, we took her for her one-year photos, which went pretty well. Plus, we had our sitting fee waived and they didn’t charge us for the one portrait page we wanted above the package we got, all because The Husband (an IT dude) sat down and fixed their computer! (Actually, all he did was sit down and didn’t really touch the computer yet, but perhaps he just has good computer energy, and his mere presence fixed the error. In any case, we saved about $35 this way.)

On Sunday (her actual birthday), we had a few friends and my parents come over during the afternoon for cake and presents. She received some great gifts, from toys to books to kid dishes, and she loved our main gift to her, the My First Anywhere Chair. She kept laying her head down on the back of it and smiling really big. It was great to see!

After that, we did the cake. I wanted to do something a little healthier than a chocolate cake (for example), so I made an applesauce spice cake with homemade cream cheese frosting. She had a little double-layered cake of her own, complete with a colorful candle and a dusting of pink sugar on top to give the cake some color. She was quite dainty with the cake-eating. She’d stick her finger in the frosting and lick her finger, then do it again. We cut the cake open for her so she could see there was something inside, but she never went for it head-first or anything. And I know a lot of parents help their kids get messy with the first cake, but with The Husband and I both being neat people, we decided to pass. She was having enough fun as it was, and so did we. It was a nice little celebration, enough to acknowledge this milestone but not so much that it was over the top for the occasion.

On Monday morning, I took Baby B to the pediatrician for her one-year check-up. She weighed in at 18 pounds, 7 ounces (less than last week, probably because of being sick recently), which falls into the 10th to 25th percentile, and was 28 1/2 inches tall (25th to 50th percentile).

He said her ears were close to being healed from this last ear infection, and he did recommend that we see an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) doctor about her history of infections. He said he had a practice in mind to send us to, and I mentioned that I’d had a good recommendation from a co-worker and my mom, and it turns out the doctor works at the practice the pedi was going to recommend, so I take that as a good sign. I called the ENT office and at first they couldn’t get us in until late March, but they had a cancellation show up in their system for February 14 while I was on the phone with them, so we took that.

We met all the weird milestone questions just fine, and the pediatrician said she looked to be in great health. She had three shots after that, one in the thigh and one in each of her upper arms. I wasn’t expecting the arm shots, so that kind of threw me off. Doing it that way made the process slower, so Baby B had time to think about her shots this time, so she cried pretty hard while getting them, but she calmed down fairly quickly once I picked her up. Next scheduled appointment is for 15 months at the end of April.

On Monday at daycare, Baby B went to visit the toddler room for the first time during the afternoon during their free-play time because she’s scheduled to make the switch to the next room on February 11–less than two weeks! She played with her friend Big Buddy (who moved rooms a month ago) like they’d never been separated, so they think she’ll transition just fine. She’s an independent one, so I think she’ll do great. She’s pretty much at one nap a day at school, which is perfect because that’s how the toddler schedule is set up, and she’s been eating the school lunch for a few weeks now. We still send her milk (half breastmilk and half whole milk) in bottles, but she’s been drinking it all from the sippy cup, so I guess she’s not had a bottle in a couple of weeks. It’s funny, but I just now realized that she seems to be off the bottle. Boy, the milestones come fast and furiously at this age, huh?

So. I am now the mother of a one-year-old. A toddler. Not a baby. But somehow, I think she’ll always be my baby.