Nora: 12 months

Weight/Length: 19.14 lbs (51%) and 28.75 in (31%)

This girl that never stops is impossible to photograph and usually ends up being a blur in each photo that I take. This is as good as I got during our 12 month photo shoot.

Medical Issues: Healthy girl! Our doctor visits are always quick, easy and painless (unless it’s time for a vaccine) because we have a smart, healthy, growing girl. For that and so many other things, we are truly thankful.

Sleep: Some days Nora still takes two naps and others, especially Mondays and Wednesdays when she goes to MDO, she’s okay with just having one. It usually depends on what time she wakes up in the morning. Occasionally, she’ll sleep in until 8:00-8:30. Those are usually one nap days. If she wakes by about 7 or before, she usually still needs the morning nap.

And speaking of waking up in the morning, sometime between 11 and 12 months, Nora started sleeping through the night like a champ. She is pretty consistently sleeping from when we put her down (7:30-8:00 if it’s just a normal night) until the morning. She usually wakes and will nurse around 6:45ish in the morning. Sometimes she goes back to sleep for another hour or so, and other times she’s ready to get up. Either way, I’ll take it.

Diet: She’s down to just nursing once or twice a day in the morning and evening. If you had asked me a month or two ago, I probably would have thought she would never be weaned, and I certainly had no idea how to go about it. She obviously just knew what to do and started cutting back. I’m fine with continuing with morning and night feedings for a bit longer until she’s ready to be done. I’m just going to follow her lead.

Along with cutting back on nursing, it seems like she’s started to eat a ton of real food. She eats 3 meals and usually 1-2 snacks per day. She usually eats whatever I put in front of her and has even been eating some meat lately. Breakfast seems to be a favorite, and she usually eats pretty soon after waking (like mother like daughter.) We rotate between eggs and toast, oatmeal and banana, or cereal and yogurt (or some combination of those things.) For lunch and dinner, I usually try to give her a protein (beans, turkey, etc), vegetable (carrots are a fav right now), fruit (grapes, apple, banana, etc) and a grain (crackers, brown rice, toast). Snacks are usually a fruit, dried fruit and cereal, cereal bar, apple sauce, etc. She drinks quite a bit of water every day, and occasionally will drink a few ounces of whole milk throughout the day. I think she’s getting all the calcium, fat, etc from the yogurt, avocado, etc that she eats, so I don’t push the milk too hard. If she wants it, great. If not, that’s fine too.

Milestones:  She’s making and imitating lots of sounds. She definitely says hi and dada. I think there’s a few other things that she tries to say too (like fish, duck, shoe), but I might be the only one who understands her.

She makes a fish face when we start talking about our beta fish, Alvaro, and ask her where the fish is or what a fish does. She understands a lot of what I tell her or ask her to do, and she can express some of her wants and needs, whether through whining, grunting or even pointing.

Likes: going on walks, swinging, being outside, dancing, remotes,  iPhones, Violet the leap frog puppy, her loveys, keys and making our cars honk by pushing the buttons, any kind of button or knob in general, light switches, bath time, climbing, sitting on her own (especially in her new chair from Nonnie and Poppy!

Dislikes: Bibs, having her hands and face cleaned off,  diaper changes, PB sandwiches, having her hair rinsed or in general having anyone touch her face.

Nicknames: Chicky Girl, Neeny, Nori and Nor,

Mama’s Thoughts: What a year! People always say how fast time flies, but I don’t think you truly know how fast it can actually go until you have a baby. When I think back to the early days and being so sleep deprived and distraught over the fact that Nora refused to take a bottle, or whatever the current issue was, a year seemed like forever. I wasn’t sure I could make it. Now here I sit with a one year old. We survived, bottle refusal, night wakings and all, and looking back, a year seems like nothing, such a small sacrifice in the whole scheme of things.

It was certainly a year full of challenges and a year of learning – about love, about myself, about Luke, about family. I think we stood up to the challenges and are better, stronger and closer as a result. And we got the best reward, sweet, beautiful, absolutely perfect in every way, Nora.

First birthday recap and pictures to come sooner than later (I hope!)