This post is dedicated to documenting Alice at one year old:
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-Clothes Size: Right where you'd expect, she's wearing 12 mo clothes.
-Favorite Activities: Alice loves music and dancing/spinning in circles on the floor while laying down. She likes swinging in her patio swing and going on stroller rides. She enjoys playing at nearby lake/river beaches (she loves feeling and eating sand and rocks, and splashing in the water), and banging cups and spoons together in the kitchen. She loves bath time, being in the front pack, and playing with her brother. When Jack is at school she likes being in his room and going down his bunkbed slide. She gets giddy in the evenings--this is the best time to get her laughing with weird noises or movements.
-Skills: This week we learned that when asked, she can identify and point out, Jared, Jack, Savvy, and her lovey (Love-Love) in pictures. She does an army crawl and a normal crawl, and she can crawl up the stairs but not go down. She can stand up against furniture and step alongside the furniture, but no independent steps yet.
-My current favorite physical thing about Alice: Her cheesy, toothy, dimply grin (2 teeth on top and 2 on bottom). Also the funny noises she makes. Her laugh still sounds a lot like a Donald Duck cackle haha.
-Dislikes: Mom walking away from her. Car rides trapped in her car seat. Jack picking her up and carrying her away if she's in the middle of playing with something.
-Food: Her favorite food is shredded pork. She has always preferred to feed herself instead of have someone else feed her. She's never been all that interested in purees so we've mostly done baby led weaning (she eats what we eat if she's not allergic to it, with her hands. Cut into small pieces if it could be difficult to eat, or left whole if it's something soft). She gets frustrated if she sees that we're eating something that she doesn't have in front of her, which can be sad because usually the reason she's not eating what we're eating is because she's allergic to it. She seems to got tired of the same food if she has it too many times in a row. She has a big appetite, like her brother did at her age, which makes sense because like him, she tends to stay very active throughout the day. She still breastfeeds whenever she wakes up, and gets a bottle of formula before bed. She's showing signs of self-weaning soon so we will probably start giving her oat milk until she can tolerate cow's milk better. (Oatly creamy oat milk is a great alternative to cow's milk for little ones, except there's not as much protein. She's getting plenty of protein from meat and beans though so we're not too concerned.)
-Food Allergies: IGE allergies to peanuts, sunflower seeds, eggs, almonds, tomatoes, beef, and soy. Severe sensitivity to uncooked dairy. (She'll be getting bloodwork done this fall to determine the severity of the tomato, beef, and soy allergies. We know the peanut and sunflower allergies are severe, the egg allergy is moderate but we're actively working on pushing against it, and the almond allergy is unconcerning. The allergist wants bloodwork info on her tomato, beef, and soy allergies before giving us guidance on how to approach those foods.) I'm sure I'll do a post dedicated to what types of foods we've been eating this last year at some point. Sometimes we feel overwhelmed trying to work around her allergies, and sometimes it feels like not a big deal. The most frustrating times are when I decide not to work around her allergens when I make a family dinner and plan to just give her something different. But then when it comes time to eat it's actually kind of annoying to have to come up with something totally separate for Alice, especially since she does tend to have a big appetite so I can't just throw her a handful of cheerios and a banana. For a long time my fallbacks were canned black beans or canned chicken, but she's had those so much that she won't eat them as readily anymore.
-Sleep: Taking 2 naps. Waking up 2-3 times a night. Waking up for the day usually between 6:30 and 7:30. Bedtime around 7:00. She has a few "loveys" (small blanket squares) in her crib, and can always be found sleeping with one in her arm. When she cries for me during the night, usually she's sitting up waiting for me when I get in there, and when I reach in to scoop her out she makes a wild sweep to grab one of her loveys at the last second so she can hold it while I feed her. It's very cute.
-Siblings: Jack and Alice make each other laugh so much. I know I've said this before, but Alice reminds me a lot of her brother at this age, just to a milder extent. Not particularly cuddly, never seems to be excited about bedtime, loves to be moving and/or eating, seems curious and smart, loves music and being outside.
I still do the "Alice voice" when we're together so Jack and Alice can be in frequent conversation. Now that Alice is crawling and getting into things we're approaching the phase where Jack prefers not to have her in the playroom while he's playing. He knows what me and Jared do for work, and that his "work" is playing with toys. I've told him that Alice's "work" as a baby is to destroy things. He thinks the concept is funny and it does help when she knocks down something he's built for him to know she's just doing her "job" as a baby, and that in a few years her "job" will shift to more often building things instead of destroying them. He mostly handles it pretty well and has learned to move himself or her away when needed. And she loves when he includes her or comes up with a game around what she likes to do. They're best little buddies.
And now for some pictures of our Sweet Baby Al (and some other pics from our week):
Happy First Birthday to Alice Lark Lambert! We celebrated Alice's birthday over the weekend. We decided to keep things low-key and celebrate just our family at home on Saturday and video call my parents when she opened their presents (I wish I took a picture of the adorable white fur coat they gave her!). Then we had Jared's parents and brother over for a little "Alice in One-derland" tea party on Sunday. I liked dong it this way because I wanted to be able to reflect on the year and enjoy my baby on her birthday, and then Sunday I was ready to jump into more of a party-throwing headspace.
It's been a good first week of school. Jack's quality of life is directly tied to the length and quality of his recesses, which was going great until his teacher apparently decided to instate a daily class picnic for the first half of their second recess, making it much too short for Jack's wellbeing. (Jack's claims seem dubious, but I do believe that there just isn't and will never be enough recess in the day! Not for Jack Jared Lambert! He has the same amount of recess that I got during 3-hour kindergarten back in the day, and he's in school for 6.5 hours. It really isn't enough.) Luckily flag football started this week, so I'm hoping that will adequately fill in the gaps from not enough recess.
I've been surprised by how much of a life change going from preschool to kindergarten has been. I think I naively expected the kindergarten experience to be basically the exact same as the preschool experience, just longer. But there have been many logistical adjustments. For example:
1. Alarm clocking. For the first time in years, I am setting an alarm to wake up on weekday mornings instead of relying on my children to be my wakeup call. I mean, my children still end up being my actual wakeup call on most of those days, but I do have to set an alarm as backup just in case to be out the door by 8:15.
2. School pickup line. About half an hour before Jack's school lets out, it's time for me to head to his school to try and get a good spot in the pickup line. Unfortunately, Alice still hates sitting in a stagnant car so she ends up screaming for most of this time. The pickup line life is NOT the life for baby Alice Lark Lambert. We already filled out the official forms stating that we would be picking him up at the school before I realized how annoying the experience would be. So now I get to jump through some logistical hoops to see if we can switch to a different way:
3. Bus life. We do have the option of sending Jack on the school bus to and from school. It was an option we had written off for two reasons: (1) we never took a bus to school growing up, so I guess we didn't give it the consideration it deserves, and (2) our school district has a pretty rough reputation for bullying (oof). But we know lots of kids on the bus he would take and I think it would be ok. It's just a K-2 bus after all. Plus Jack's been begging me to let him take the bus home with his friends since he apparently doesn't get enough unstructured social time at school. I think we're going to give it a try if we're not too late.
4. Snack and lunchbox olympics. In preschool we sent Jack with a daily snack. He usually ate it right when he got there so I really didn't have to worry about keeping anything cold. Now that he's got 6 hours of school that includes a snack AND a lunch, there's a whole new sport of extreme lunchboxing I'm learning about. Ice packs, leakproof seals, easy-open, insulation--all top of mind this week. We ended up going with the popular "bentgo" brand for most of our lunchboxing needs. We got the boxes on sale at Costco and some cute dino ice packs on amazon. We also went on a bender of a Costco trip this weekend to stock up on healthy snacks.
Half of me wanted to have him get school lunches because that's what I did k-12 and it would make my life simpler. But hot lunches are kind of expensive in Washington, and on the first day of school Jack somehow accidentally ate his lunch during snack time and ended up being put in the hot lunch line later. When I picked him up he did the funniest lil' smirk when I asked him about his day and he said, "I got a cheeseburger for lunch. And a chocolate milk. And an apple." He was so pleased haha. At first I was like, "Cool, he knows how to do hot lunch now. Maybe that's the route for us after all." But upon further investigation it was revealed that he ran out of time after he finished his chocolate milk and threw away the cheeseburger untouched. So basically he ended up having a $3.50 chocolate milk for his lunch and I think we'll stick to home lunches this year haha
5. Papers and forms and homework, oh my! What am I supposed to do with all the papers being sent home daily?! In preschool Jack came home with a piece of "art" he had done pretty much every day. I just kept a big basket under our entryway table and put it all in there. But now (and maybe this is just a first week of school thing) I'm getting important documents sent home daily. Homework, too. Nothing crazy, but maybe a "Get to know Jack" bag to fill here, and an early reader book to practice and send back there. Perhaps a school calendar, or a "sick day policies" sheet. Things I have to actually keep track of. Plus art. I've decided to hang an enormous magnet board in our dining room with hanging baskets underneath to stay organized and have a designated spot for everything. We're going for function over form this year.
6. Online portals, message boards, text, and emails. The school and Jack's teacher are in communication with us daily (so far). I'm glad there are easy ways to stay informed and in touch, but the only contact we had with Jack's preschool teachers was seeing them in person during the in-person dropoff and pickup. Lots of new resources and messaging tools to juggle now.
7. The big-kid feelings of it all. In preschool Jack was happy as a clam playing with any/all of the other 15 kids in his preschool during outside time. Now there are so many more options, which is exciting to Jack, but he's entering the realm of friendship dynamics that he has feelings other than always just "happy!" about. He has preschool friends and church friends and flag football friends and new kindergarten friends, all of whom he sees at recess. In Jack's perfect world he would have time to play with all of them every day, doing some sort of game or tag probably. But it doesn't always pan out that way. He's resilient and social and it will be ok. Just different than preschool. Which is how it's supposed to be I suppose. Everything changes eventually.
It's going to be a great year! Jack is so excited whenever he has kindergarten the next morning. I love doing reading/homework with him. I've been a little worried that he might be bored this year since he's already mastered all the kindergarten skills, but his teacher seems excited to keep him challenged and is already sending home early readers for him to pass off so she can see where he's at (he's way past what she's been sending home so far but they'll figure it out). It's also fun to have some time with just Alice during the day. All good things. Here are some pictures from our week:
Time for the month of transitions! Last year my motto was, "Wake me up when September ends," because that was my month of being 9 months pregnant and having to go through childbirth and recovery. This year I'm really excited about September! The leaves are already starting to change, Jack starts kindergarten this week, and then football next week, so he should be a very happy little boy soon. And hopefully those things will do a better job of tiring him out than I've been doing. Jack continues to seem to be one of those people who just needs less sleep than everyone else. We have always prioritized nap/rest times and reasonable bedtimes. But lately it doesn't matter when we get him to bed for the night (usually around 8:00); he just isn't tired AT ALL until around 10:00. And it's not like he sleeps in late. He's almost always up for the day by 7:30 in the morning. So he sits in his bed for 2 hours, quite bored, talking to his stuffed animals, and requiring frequent check-ins from us. I feel bad for him. I've considered letting him stay up later doing a quiet play time, but with school starting this week it'll just be easier to keep that 8:00 bedtime. With more activities and the sun starting to set sooner I think he'll have an easier time falling asleep in these next few months.
We started this month with another fun transition: Bringing back the dairy! I'm so happy I could cry. I celebrated with a Little Caesar's pizza. Alice had an allergist appointment this last week. We had them test for 6 foods we were suspicious of that they didn't test last time: Dairy, soy, beef, tomato, and sunflower. (He also retested for egg to see if that allergy has improved since last time.) The bad news is that 5 of those came back positive for legitimate allergies. Sunflower was the worst. Almost as bad as peanut. And egg had gotten worse since last time too, ughhh. But I walked away from the appointment feeling lighter because if I could choose just one of those foods for her not to have to be allergic to it would be dairy, and she tested negative for dairy allergy! The last time we trialed dairy was 3 months ago and she broke out in intense hives. But dairy is one of the allergies that is most frequently outgrown in babies by the time they reach a year old, and it appears she has outgrown it so we immediately added it back into my diet and hers. She has responded just fine to dairy baked into things--even short bakes like waffles and pancakes. She had intestinal trouble after yogurt so we're going to back off yogurt/milk for a bit but try cheese next week and see how that goes. And I'm back to eating all dairy (in moderation for my own stomach's sake). I did not expect to come away from that doctor visit with dairy back in our lives so that was a very happy surprise.
More new transitions--Alice's top 2 teeth are ready to rumble, and she turns one this month. September marks the month Jared begins year 3 of his 3-year work contract, so if and when we feel ready we can start putting out feelers for Utah jobs (spoiler: Jared's already started poking around just to see if there's anything interesting there). I'm not necessarily ready for 8 months of clouds, rain, longer nights, and our children getting sick twice a month (yesterday a girl in our primary class announced, "I'm sick!" and then halfway through my lesson I looked down and saw her sticking her fingers in Alice's mouth--sure enough Alice woke up with a runny nose and a cough this morning. GOODBYE.) But fall in Washington is so cozy. I'm lighting up all my fall candles and leaning into this next season. Here are some pictures from our week:
