Happy First Birthday, John!

John enjoying one of his birthday presents and showing off a Christmas present. Christmas present? Why, yes, that IS a custom T-shirt. Speaking of presents, here's the loot:

 

 

 

 

the canvas

 

 the final product. again demonstrating a failure to distinguish "sprinkle" from "pour."

photo credit Person A.


photo credit Person B.
any opinions on who got the better shot?
[In fairness, Person A got to work with lots of warm ambient light.]

Today, when I came home ...

from dropping Adam off at daycare, I found that Naomi had passed out asleep on the floor ...

right next to her father, who was home sick with a cold, ...

and that Adam had earlier vandalised our bedsheets ...

and that my anniversary present had arrived in the mail.

Sorry about the photo quality but I've lent out my camera and used Adam's.

12 months check-up and check-in for Naomi

Naomi had her 12-month check up visit earlier in the month and got a clean bill of health. And these are the stats: 19.5 lb (under 20th percentile) and 30.5 inches ( over 90th percentile)*. Uhm "delicate" as someone very delicately put it.

Naomi is a lovely little person. She's very affectionate, self-sufficient, active, adaptable, and good-natured, which makes her strong will even lovelier. I should mention that we do call her the squirmiest baby in the world. Dion even calls her the squirmiest baby ever, but come now, that's got to be an exaggeration.

Naomi's babyhood is almost gone and it's almost never been. She's just not into being a baby. She never took a pacifier or a bottle, sucked her thumb, had a blankie or a lovey. Well she kinda has a few favourite soft toys in her crib (a bear with a bunny-ears hoodie, a turtle, and a small fabric doll we call the Jester) but they're not really comfort objects. Luckily, she rarely needs any comforting or soothing.

But she tenaciously hangs on the worst of all babyhood traits: NOT SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT. Seriously? 13 months old now. Cut me a break. I don't know if she has ever slept more than 5 hours straight. And those 5 hours, when then come, are never 1am to 6am or even 3am to 8am. 6:30pm to 11:30pm, maybe. On the upside, she'll tolerate naptime or bedtime shifts and she goes to sleep very easily. She usually goes into her crib quite happily and puts herself to sleep - no need for rocking, or stroking, or singing.

Here's a verbal snapshot of Naomi at around 1-year old. (Visual snapshots will have to wait.)

Likes
- dancing
- kids' songs, especially If You're Happy and You Know It and Five Little Monkeys
- kids' music videos on Youtube
- cheese, grapes, noodles, pears, water, milk, legumes
- ride-on toys and playground features
- splash pads
- bubbles!
- climbing
- new! books. Moo, Baa, La La La is a favourite
- soft toys
- pushing buttons
- keys
- shoes
- bathtime
- doing things BY HERSELF JUST THE WAY EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT, TYVM, especially self-feeding
- whatever Adam is doing

Dislikes
- being dressed and diapered, having her nails trimmed. NB: all of these requiring staying pretty still.
- pooing
- sunglasses and hats

Newish and Developing Skills
- using a fork
- drinking milk from a cup (half a teaspoon at a time) or a straw
- matching clothes and shoes to people and their parts
- giving kisses
- waving at socially appropriate moments
- stamping feet, pouting, and giving dirty looks
- a few words (in descending order of clarity): Up, Mum/Mumma, Dada/Daddy, Ada(m), Baa (the sheep sound), Bottle (for her water bottle), Book, Bear, Turtle, Grape, Music, and I think "Did it!"
- pushing a train around the track, sometimes without destroying said track which has been carefully constructed by Adam

*It took me a while to figure out why this wasn't displaying properly. I had used less and greater than symbols but then blogger took them for a non-sense html tag and deleted everything between.

Happy Birthday, Naomi!

Naomi had two nice birthday celebrations. The first was at the Gerrard Resource Centre on Friday the 18th.


I made the same cake as I did for Adam's birthday - Apple Spice. In fact, I had frozen the excess cream cheese frosting and saved myself quite a bit of time. The mini cupcakes turned out even better because I reduced the baking time to 18 minutes.

This was the only time Naomi so much as touched the cake. She just wasn't into it.

Adam, on the other hand helped himself to about four cupcakes while Naomi focused on her beloved cheese. I guess he figured it was payment for helping her blow out the candle.


The next day, on her actual birthday, we went to the CN Tower to celebrate. Here she is trying to do anything Adam is doing, as is her way.

[Dear future 10-yo Adam who has stumbled across the archives of this blog,
Do not complain that your sister's first birthday was oh-so-much-more-glamorous than yours. Trust me, lunch at the CN Tower was at least as much about you as it was about her. ]

[Dear Auntie Joan, do not look too closely. You will be horrified to learn that her dress was not ironed.]

Naomi scored the onion rings that came with Dion's steak but barely touched the nine-dollar serving of green beans we ordered for her.


still not so sure about this cake business.

Survey says....?

How could I have been so misguided? Cake is the bomb!

Happy Birthday, Munchkin!

Thanks for the laughs!