Elise turned one on Memorial Day, and we spent the first half of the day up in Vermont and the second half driving home. But while it wasn't the most celebratory day of all time, we still had a good time, and her real birthday party is next weekend! No doubt I will recap that as well. In the meantime, I did still take my normal volume of month stat pictures, and then I tripled that amount for good measure.

Within the last month, she learned things in leaps and bounds! The most exciting one is that she is walking all over the place, and she seems delighted with her newfound ability to walk without holding on to someone's hand. I suspect she will move on to running in the next week with how fast she still likes to push her little cart.

She's added some more words to her vocabulary, and uses them with great frequency. If you visit our house, you'll likely hear her say, "Uh oh," "Duck," and "Wowwwww!" The last one is most often employed when hearing, seeing, or thinking about the construction vehicles that are currently working on replacing our formerly rotten wooden retaining wall along our driveway. That's another story for another time. If you were hoping for a visual of her saying her favorite word, look no further!

In addition to the spoken word, she has also created her own version of the sign for All Done. She makes this sign when she has finished eating a meal, wants to get out of her car seat, or has woken up for the day and would like to get out of her crib.

Since the weather has gotten warmer at long last, we've spent more time outside. She loves being out there, and this month she's discovered the singular joy of feeling the grass on her bare feet. She loves it, and we've already had several baths on non-bath days thanks to having dirt on her knees. I consider that a sign of a day well spent.

Her favorite food lately is cardboard. Yes, you read that right. While she often refuses tasty things like fruit, she will chow down on tags, board books, boxes, and church bulletins, and within seconds will tear tiny pieces off and swallow them if I don't catch her in time. Fortunately for the board books, she also likes reading, so I don't have to be quite as vigilant around those as I do around other pieces of paper. Nevertheless, most of her books have bite marks, evidently indicating to the world that they belong to her and her alone.

Her animal sound repertoire has increased, and in addition to lions and monkeys, she'll reliably tell you what owls and birds say when asked. Occasionally she'll remember what a cow says, so we'll be working on that one next.

Her sleep has also improved lately, which has been wonderful. It had been rather terrible between 10 and 12 months, with a typical night including two or three wake ups and getting up for the day around 5:30. In the last couple of days she's only been waking once and sleeping in a little later, so I'm hoping that will continue.

It's quite odd to think that this is the last of her month by month posts, since it seems a bit unusual to continue reporting beyond a year. Cue a barrage of thoughts about the speed of time. However, in lieu of actually writing those out, I present to you a stream of photos of Elise with a party hat or five. What could be better than that?

Happy very first birthday, sweet girl! We love you forever and can't wait to watch as you continue to grow.

Woodstock Writings