So I never posted acknowledging the fact that seven days ago Shanna turned one year old. I continue to be impressed and delighted with her. The day after her first birthday she decided, “Enough of this crawling business–that’s for babies and now I’m a toddler.” It’s been remarkable.
She is now saying something that sounds a lot like “up” when she wants to be picked up. When she eats food that she thinks is especially tasty she goes “Mmmmmm!!!” She babbles pretty much non-stop when we are home alone but she is somewhat more shy when around people she doesn’t know well. She now understands and correctly follows the command, “Gentle” when touching people or animals; it’s quite sweet.
She is nursing substantially less though her last round of teething screwed up her sleeping through the night and she is back to at least one nursing session in the middle of the night. We are unlikely to stop nursing any time in the foreseeable future as the continued benefits of nursing far outweigh the fairly minor inconveniences of nursing (for us–I am not judging other people who choose to wean I swear).
She is only up to five teeth and I have no idea when she will be getting more. Lack of teeth doesn’t seem to slow her down much in eating just about everything she wants to eat. She has favorite foods, of course, namely: bananas, dried cherries, ice cream (duh), mini-meringues, sharper cheeses, and all things bread.
She is playing with her toys more and more. She cuddles her dolly. She adores the dump truck that sings a song when you push a button. I kind of want to throw it out the window, but she’s having a blast so instead I just pray for the batteries to die. 🙂 She loves her xylophone and ball smacker thing.
She noticeably recognizes Sarah the best and she treats her as a perfectly adequate mommy-substitute in crowd situations. This pleases me enormously for many reasons. I love that her monkey sphere is expanding because it means that she is developing actual attachment to someone other than me and that shows me hope that she will stop being as dependent on me soonish. 🙂 At this point I’m not sure she has “stranger anxiety” but she no longer eagerly goes to all people she meets as a matter of course. She has a strong preference for people who are familiar and it takes her a bit to warm up to new people.
She now shows a decided preference for going in the potty and will hold her bladder/bowels for a bit trying to get a chance. Unfortunately she isn’t signing consistently yet so we still have a lot of misses because I don’t offer enough. I should start working on this because she shows all the signs I can see of wanting to be done with diapers. It’s really cool.
She shrunk back into 12 month clothing. This is cute and kind of neat only… I sent pretty much all we had to Texas for the arrival of Noah’s brother’s child because I thought we were done with it. Oops. Luckily I have friends with kidlets and we received another batch and some of hand-me-downs so she is certainly not running around nekkid (well, at least not more than she would be any way).
She starts vaccinations next week. Of course I am nervous about this, but I’m going to hope that the universe sees fit to keep her out of the group of kids who has side effects. Before the hysterical pro vaccination people start harping on me about mercury and autism (neither of which hit my radar in terms of worry) I will point out that the package inserts for vaccinations mention Guillain-Barre syndrome, Encephalitis, Encephalopathy, SSPE, and death. There are other serious reactions to vaccinations like Lupus, MS, arthritis, blood disorders, seizures, diabetes, pneumonia, life threatening rash, paralysis, and a few others mentioned on the package inserts. None of these things are hysterical reactions from ill advised people reading faulty medical information. Yes they are by and large rare; I don’t think I will feel comforted by the thought, “Well it’s only about a 1 in 100,000 chance that a child will have a severe reaction to a vaccination” if my kid is the one damaged by a vaccine. So I’m nervous. It’s time to start though. She is starting to get out and actually interact with the world and that means she needs more protection than just my milk. Though my milk continues to be awesome for her, of course.
She loves to “read” her books and she goes back and forth between her board books and older picture books. She is rather gentle with our books at this point so I don’t feel cranky when she pulls down a grown up book or two to play with.
I think that is about all I have the gumption to write about right now. Maybe I’ll put up pictures later (and hopefully I will be sent pictures from the birthday party. 🙂
