Happy first birthday, Charlotte!

Friday marked Charlotte's first birthday. She, of course, had no idea. But Elisabeth was very excited about it. She became less excited when she realized that a vast majority of the presents were for Charlotte. It was actually a difficult morning for her, hearing us say things like "no, you can't open that, or "no - let Charlotte play with it!"

But, Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed her day, I think. I mean, there's nothing like starting off a morning with a sugar high. When we put the piece of cake in front of her, she looked at us with this look that very clearly said, "and where have you been hiding this for the past year?!?!"

So, at a year old, here's what Charlotte likes, dislikes, the tricks she performs, etc.

Picture on her first birthday:




Favorite food: probably pizza. although, she doesn't turn her nose up at much of anything. Cereal with milk is a big hit too.

Favorite activity: she loves going for walks in the backpack. She also loves sitting on the jogging trampoline and bouncing. She enjoys playing with musical toys and bangs on her new xylophone like it is her job. But, I'm going to have to say that her absolute favorite activity is climbing into the bathtub, especially when she's not supposed to. The silver medal for favorite activity goes to flopping down on pillows stacked up on the floor and then bouncing.

Favorite toy: Discovery House - especially the flushing toilet, which we hear over, and over, and over, and over again. It makes me laugh whenever I hear it.

Words: she says cat, dog, and dada very clearly. Well clearly for her mom and dad. She doesn't say "cat" as clearly and precisely as Elisabeth did. She says "ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca ca" over and over when sees the cat and "dogdogdogdogdog" when she sees any dogs. Dada is quite clear and clearly intended for her daddy. Now, she might be saying mama (intended for me), wawa for water - but it is a yell that you might mistake for just hollering, and mack-in for food and in particular mac and cheese. They're all fairly consistent, but we're not quite ready to call them words.

Tricks: she waves, claps, signals when she wants more food or water, and Doug claims she tells him when she wants to be picked up by pulling on the front of her shirt. I believe him, but she doesn't do it to me and I haven't seen it. She communicates that she wants me to pick her up by flinging herself at my feet and yelling. She can go up and down stairs (crawling). She takes one step, but not two. She's also a climber - she is now only 6 inches away from being able to climb up on the couch (as gauged by the highest thing she is capable on climbing up on so far). Luckily she's really short, so we have a bit until she can actually climb on the couch.

I'll have to update with her size statistics tomorrow, as she's going for her one year appointment tomorrow.

Here's a few more birthday pics: