Eve at one year old

Dear sisters,

It’s hard to believe, but my sweet baby is one year old already! I’m thinking a lot about the end of her infancy and the start of toddlerhood. I want to share with you all a little bit of what life is like with Eve these days.

I took her shopping with me. Here she is about to pick out some pants.

Mostly, she continues to be a delightful, happy child. She is so much fun to take anywhere. She loves people! She tries to catch someone’s gaze, and when they look at her, she smiles and waves. She is starting to do a few tricks on command: she claps her hands, she blows raspberries and she is just starting to play peek-a-boo. She has the cutest curls around the back of her head. I get a lot of comments that she is a Gerber baby.

Mama’s keys, the best things ever!

We lucked out and seem to have another book-lover child. When Miriam was a baby, we took time to sit and read with her every day. Life has been a lot more hectic with two kids plus moving plus both of us working full time, so we have not been as good about reading to Eve. Somehow she still picked up on loving books, though! She will scoot over to the stack of board books, grab one, and bring it over to wherever I am sitting. She pulls to stand, throws the book in my lap and says, “boo.” I think “book” is her first real word that is not mama or dada! This is amazing. I can’t resist any request to read to her. Right now her favorite books are Blue Hat, Green Hat, The Going to Bed Book and Alaska 123.

I managed to catch a video of Eve saying uh-oh on command a few days ago! She’s not super consistent with saying uh-oh so I was surprised when she did it. 

She is still doing her butt-scoot instead of a real crawl. She gets all over the house like this. She pulls to stand and cruises along furniture and sometimes will briefly let go of one piece of furniture before grabbing the next. Also sometimes she will walk pushing something ahead of her. A few days ago at the mall I let her out of the stroller, and she pulled herself up on the front of the stroller and started pushing it across the floor, walking behind it! It’s so fun to see her stand up and move. The more mobile she becomes, the more she gets into everything. Nothing is safe. Trash cans, tissue boxes, toilet paper, the cat food dish, her sister’s toys…she is a little hurricane and I am remembering how exhausting this stage is. Constant vigilance!!

My view these days

She is a wonderful eater. She eats almost any solid food. She weighed 19 lbs 13 oz at her one year well visit yesterday–2 lbs heavier than her big sister was at one year. People remark that she’s small but she doesn’t seem small to me!

Sleeping is still not going so well. We have plans to move her into her own room. Her room got a fresh coat of paint and the crib is finally set up in there. Sleep training will begin in earnest in the next week or so. I think it’s going to be hard for all of us. She has been sleeping in a pack-and-play by our bed, and usually halfway through the night she wakes up, and I bring her into our bed for the rest of the night. I nurse her a few times in there, I’m not sure how many times exactly. But she doesn’t really need to nurse at night anymore, and we would like our bedroom back to ourselves again. The transition is probably going to be a bit rough but we will get through it, and then maybe I’ll get to sleep a full night again, in my own bed! Amazing.

Another thing that is not going so well: she shrieks, very loudly, when she is restrained and wants to get out. Like in her carseat, or in her highchair at the end of a meal. We try and try to get her to say or sign “all done” but it hasn’t worked yet. She just yells. In the car, she starts shrieking about 5 minutes after we get going. I sing to her, I talk to her, I turn on music, and sometimes it helps. She can be very loud which is really distressing to her older sister. Miriam has always been very sensitive to noise. When Eve screams, Miriam screams back at her, and car rides get intolerable really quickly. I am telling myself that it will get better soon. On long car rides, Miriam watches movies on the iPad with headphones, and she doesn’t notice Eve’s screams as much. That helps us endure. Oh, the joys of having two children: when they scream together, it’s pretty much unbearable.

But. Right now, both of my children are asleep, so things are good. And at Christmas, we will get to watch all the babies crawl all over each other and there will be moments of unbearable cuteness. I can’t wait.

Love,

Rachel