My Baby is 1!

*This post ended up being crazy long...if you only feel like skimming, I've bolded for your convenience!

Avynlee's birthday is September 14th.  I can't believe my sweet, tiny baby is one!  I need to get pictures from her party uploaded.  We had a Hawaiian themed party at a park.  It was so much fun.  Avs got a bunch of wonderful gifts, we had a whole bunch of food, and the greatest pinata ever.  Avynlee loved the attention, pizza, endless cake, messiness, and all the kids.

My super friend, Carlye, took these adorable pictures of Avs.  They're brilliant.  She's brilliant.  Ask her to take pictures of your babies.

I am completely smitten with this little nugget.  She is beautiful.  All moms think their babies are cute, but seriously, this baby lucked out.  Look at those amazing eyes!  I just love her.

Our funny girl is learning so fast and picking up on so much.  She is currently in the habit of calling most animals she sees "dog" and will say it and look around when she hears barking.  She seems to love dogs and gets so excited to look through windows them or see them at a distance in momma's arms.  In fact, she is a bit petrified of them.

This brings me to Av's scared face.  I LOVE it.  I might have AK scare her one day while I have a camera handy.  I'm not mean enough to do it yet but the face is worth capturing.  She gets very wide eyed and concerned looking and quickly brings her little hand to her mouth...picture damsels in silent movies.  So far, the two guarantees are those seriously giant stuffed animals (Adam hid behind one and said "rawr"...seemed like a good idea at the time...now she hates them), and this little frog toy her great grandparents Robert got her (it opens it's mouth, shifts it's eyes, and croaks).

Avynlee loves being outside.  She loves playing in and picking grass.  She especially loves rocks.  They are one of her all time most favorite things ever.  We have tons of the small landscaping rocks in our front and back yard.  She loves to sit in the rocks, clap them together, and attempt to consume them.

When it is exactly naptime and exactly bedtime and we are home and she is in her crib, Avynlee sleeps like a champ.  She goes to sleep and wakes up like clockwork.  She has her bedtime routine down to a science and gets bugged if we try to drag it out or skip something.  "Bah" or "Juice" will start the evening.  Then we brush teeth.  I sing a little diddy of my own making.  When I'm done, she gets a turn to practice.  After I rinse of the toothbrush, she sucks of the water.  Twice.  Then it's on to story time.  We switch up the stories.  If we read a short one and try to read it twice, she gets inpatient, but she will sit through the entiretly of one reading of any book.  Weirdy.  As soon as the book closes she flops over on to Adam to give him hugs and kisses and immediately starts waving and saying "Bye" to him in her best Southern accent (I don't know how it happened but I'm glad it did, it's adorable).  If he wants more kisses, she blows him off.  If I try to get her to say "bye" again, she ignores me.  In her room, I rock her and sing to her.  She used to sit through several songs.  Now she can tolerate about 30 seconds before she squirms and tries to get in her crib.  She goes right to sleep 98% of the time and sleeps all throught the night.  On the road, not so much.  She does okay at my parents house and is getting better at sleeping at the cabin.

Avynlee is still an amazing climber and it's sometimes a bit of a problem.  She can pretty much get into anything and still really loves to summit Jacob's piano.

Avynlee can walk.  She's maxed out at around 20 feet.  Although she is definitely capable of walking, she still crawls plenty.  I don't mind one bit...although she is a bit heavy.  I can't remember her exact stats but she's a bit more than 21 lbs (roughly 50th percentile) and 31 ish inches tall (92 percentile...she's finally on the charts for height!).  She is super tall and pretty slender.  She looks solid but a lot of her 12 month pants are still too big around for her.

Avynlee loves being read to and being sung to.  The same songs and books are often repeated many, many times before she feels like moving on to something else.  When she wants to be read to, she grabs a book and climbs up on one of us.  When she wants us to sing, she tells us...she even picks the song.  She'll say "bitsy!" and make the little hand motions when she wants Itsy Bitsy Spider (her current favorite).  She will has say "Pat" and clap for Pat-a-cake, make popcorns for Popcorn Popping, and hold her hands in a little ball for Ball for Baby.

Her current most used words are bitsy, dog, cheese, and juice.  She really is getting great at communicating with us which I love because she has also discovered screaming.  It's awesome.  She does it to express many emotions.  She's mad, she'll ball up her little fists, tense up her neck, and scream.  When she happy, she'll giggle and merge that into a nice little scream.  I'm not going to be totally bummed when the screaming stops.

She listens/obeys fairly well.  I tell her to turn around when she's trying to get down the stairs of off the bed or couch.  She promptly does it.  If I tell her it's time to do insert some task here, now come with Momma, she usually does.  It's very sweet.

I can (obviously) go on and on about how amazing our baby girl is.  She is the light of our lives.  I sincerely enjoy every single second I get to spend with her...even if she is a wake of distaster following being every chore I attempt to complete.  We love our little Avynlee more than we can ever describe.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl!