Baker Bea | 12 Months

Wow! I let this post completely get away from me but the past two months have been a little chaotic for our family. We’ve had vacations and birthday parties, and are in full-swing fundraiser mode for Rwanda, but also dealt with some really hard things like job loss and the death of my grandmother. But I made it 11 months, so I have to finish recapping Baker’s last month as a baby. (Cue tears) You’ll have to excuse me if this post isn’t as detailed as the rest, but the months have started to collide together in my brain .

Twelve.
Twelve months. One whole year. Excuse me, while I cry in the corner and beg for someone to hold me. My baby is officially a toddler. How can that be???

OUR TWELVE MONTH GAL STATS

Weight: 21 lbs 10 oz (60%)
Birth: 8 lbs 6 oz

Length: 29 3/4 in (70%)
Birth: 21 in

Head: 17 7/8 in (65%)
Birth: 13.5 in

Other than Baker being slightly anemic, we have a very healthy one year old!

She is in size 3 diapers and 12 months clothes. She got a few 18 month outfits for her birthday and can wear them with room to grow. She still only has two bottom teeth but she is cutting all four of her top teeth. Yeah, it’s been real fun.

The longer her hair gets, the better her bedhead gets. She truly gets that from her mama.

I could just eat these cheeks up, I love them so!

Baker has definitely become more clingy the past couple of weeks. While she will still go to anyone, she loves her Mama and Daddy and likes to be close to us.

She is definitely a snuggler (see sleeping section below ?) and likes to be touching us, especially when she is sleeping. Y’all, this just melts me.

LOVES Baker loves to talk- she jabbers nonstop. This girl has so much personality and we can’t wait until we can actually understand what she is saying! …we think…Cory is afraid that when we can understand her we’ll find out that she’s being ugly!

She loves her Bunny (Bun Bun) and  has become very attached. She carries it around with her pretty much every where we go. We have to bleach it at least twice a week because it’s always in her hand, being gnawed on and dragged across the floor.  She has really enjoyed being in the water this summer (after the first time of getting used to it) and had a blast at the beach. She really likes being outside in general, and we are looking forward to cooler weather so we can enjoy more of it!

She loves waving at EVERYBODY and ANYTHING. She really does not meet a stranger…that little hand is always a-going and she will even say “Heeeey”! We got out of the car at church the other day, and as soon as I got her out of her car seat, she was waving. Gotta make sure she doesn’t miss anyone!

Baker has really settled well into her babysitting schedule and loves, loves, loves the people she gets to spend her days with! Maybe even more than she loves me and Cory.

Baker has discovered my makeup bag and while I’m getting ready in the morning, loves pulling things out (she’s actually starting to discover this with every basket/drawer that she finds). The other day, she had one of my brushes in her hand and was watching me put some powder on. I looked down and she was putting the brush in her hand in my powder and putting it on her bunny’s face. It blew my mind (and scares me a little) how quickly she picked up on what I was doing! Little eyes are always watching.

She also loves hairbrushes (seriously, she has one in her hand a lot, just toting it around the house), books, dancing to any beat she hears, and looking at herself in the mirror!

HATES  Baker still hates to be told “no” although we are working on that! And by working on it, I mean just having to tell her no and let her cry. There are some times that we just have to stop her from doing what she is doing. I feel like this is the first month where we have seen much more moodiness from Baker but I can definitely see the sass that is fixing to shine through. And the drama! Lord give us patience in her teenage years because this girl is dramatic. 

She still really, really hates to have her hair messed with- washed, towel dried, fixed. Oddly enough, she doesn’t mind having it blown dry.

EAT Baker is still such a great eater. We really don’t have any issues with food because she loves. to. eat.

We introduced her to goldfish at the beach and she loves them! We’ve kinda let Baker set the stage for how much/how many bottles she takes a day. After a week or two of Baker not showing much interest in her afternoon bottle, we decided to cut it out and only give her three bottles during the day. She still gets one in the morning, one after lunch and one at night. We will probably do the same thing when we cut out her day bottle.

We have tried a few times to give her breastmilk in a sippy cup but she won’t take it.

I’ve tried cold and warm but she refuses it either way. She was obviously more excited about the banana. I have enough breast milk to get her through another two months or so and once we run out, I will probably take the bottle away as well. Can I just say that I haven’t missed pumping at all? After spending this much time attached to a machine, and actually longer because I didn’t use this app for the first few weeks, can you blame me?

It all feels like something I did ages ago and it’s only been about 8 weeks since I pumped last. It amazes me at how quickly we, as parents, adjust to the new normal. The new normal that changes every few weeks. Ha!

SLEEP Sleep is hard for me to talk about because I’m writing this section 2 months late and sleep has not been our friend. I feel like I can’t even remember how she was sleeping at 12 months (that’s probably the sleep deprivation kicking in). In all honesty, it hasn’t been that hard. Just different.

Early in life, Baker started sleeping through the night and then around 10 months, she just stopped. It would get better for a week- she went to bed at like 7:00pm for a week straight and then she’d go back to waking up around 3:30-4:00 every morning. When she started cutting these four top teeth, we noticed it getting significantly worse. It’s not that she necessarily won’t sleep through the night, but she won’t sleep through the night in her crib. When she wakes up, she immediately goes from asleep to screaming her head off- it’s not just whining. It seems like the time she wakes up keeps shifting further and further up to where when she wakes up, and even though we sometimes try to soothe her or rock her back to sleep, we end up bringing her to our bed and she sleeps all night with us.

Not that there is anything wrong with co-sleeping, but Cory and I don’t enjoy it every single night. Yes, there are nights when we eat up the fact that she wants to be near us and sleeping cuddled up to us, but then there are other nights when we just want a good night’s sleep and the bed to ourselves–especially since we call Baker our human fidget spinner and most nights she ends up sleeping like this between us…

PLAY/DEVELOPMENT Watching Baker develop into a toddler has been so much fun. Each new milestone, developmentally, that she achieves makes us so excited and in return, makes her excited! A few new things that she is doing is pointing to objects and babbles, even though we can’t understand a word of what she is saying, I’m pretty sure is “talking” about the object she is pointing to. She also notices when she hears something and turns towards the sound. Baker will also give kisses (or sugars as I like to call them)!

After months of trying to get Baker to crawl, she finally took off one Friday night (June 16th!). She had been scooting around on her bottom for a few weeks, and started getting up on her hands and knees and we just knew it was coming!

I said earlier that day that I thought it would be that weekend that she started crawling and sure enough, she took off that evening! It took her a few more weeks to crawl completely on her hands and knees…she used one foot to push her off!

One night a few days before her first birthday, she pulled up on Cory when he was laying on the floor and took 6 steps around him. After crawling so late, it seems like she is getting the hang of pulling up a little quicker.

Cory’s mom picked Baker up this walker and she took to it real quick. She will zoom all around the house in this thing! She’s already run over everyone’s toes and knocked the dog water bowl over about a dozen times.

A FEW FIRSTS DURING MONTH 12

We spent our first weekend by the pool- no, not our little blow up one!

Baker helped Cory celebrate his first Father’s Day. I was so worried over finding Cory the perfect give that when this came in almost a week early, I couldn’t wait to give it to him. It seriously brought tears to my eyes (and his) when I opened it.

Baker spent her first afternoon with me at work (and hopefully the last for a while)- that was hard! We got in a bind and literally all our babysitters were at the beach so she had to come hang out with me for a few hours. Everyone in my office really hated it, too. Ha!

She had her first lunch date with Uncle Mack. I’d say she was a fan!

Baker took her first beach vacation to Panama City.

We celebrated one last evening with our baby girl with dinner and an extra long snuggle/rocking session.

We celebrated Baker’s first birthday with a flamingo and pineapple party!

To Baker:

Watching you change from a tiny little newborn to an independent and silly, loving and personable, opinionated, and dramatic little girl has been not only the greatest blessing, but the greatest honor that we could have ever asked for. Every day we can see little pieces of ourselves and each other in you, intertwined with your own little personality and your own beauty. No matter how much you change, you still bring light to every room you enter. Don’t ever lose that. We commit to raising you to be compassionate, open, kind, and full of love for everyone you come into contact with. So far, it doesn’t seem like that will be very difficult for you. Thank you for the blessing that you are and the wonderful changes you have brought to our lives. Here’s to next year with Baker Bea!

Our very own sour patch kid…sour at first then sweet.

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