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):
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