Stories of a Happy Home: Joanna turns 1 year old!

First off, let me just apologize to the blog addicts out there (aka my grandparents) who depend on these pictures and updates to get by. It has been a LONG time since I have posted and A LOT has happened! I have been busy cleaning up sawdust, packing, moving, unpacking, cleaning up more sawdust, growing another child and keeping the one I have alive. So far, so good. I have lots of pictures to go through and posts to create and I promise, I will go back and update you on whats been happening. But for now, lets live in the present and tell you about whats going on NOW!

Not sure when it happened, but I no longer have a baby. I now have a living breathing, moving, talking TODDLER! She hit the 1 year mark and all the sudden she decided it was time to become an actual person with places to go and things to do! I am amazed how things have changed.

Lets just quick review the last year. Joanna spent the majority of her first four months crying, itching and not sleeping. We found out about her food allergies when she was 4 months old and immediately made changes to her (Mama's) diet. She became a happy baby almost instantly but was still very rashy and woke up 4-6 times per night. Summer was over and Mama had hip surgery. That was fun. As mama was recovering on the couch and we had constant house guests taking care of Joanna, she decided it would be the perfect time to start her sleep regression. She went from waking up 4-6 times I night (which at the time I thought was hell), to waking up 8-10 times per night (now that was hell). She also became very difficult to get to take a nap. BUT she was happy, very happy. Joanna started crawling around 8 1/2 months and was officially on the go. She soon became faster on all fours than her recovering mother on two! She also started standing up and furniture walking! Fast forward a few more months and Joanna is now a year old and continues to furniture walk with ease and has taken a few single steps here and there but has not quite made the jump to officially walking. She did, however, flip a switch as soon as she turned one and started sleeping better at night. She is now all the sudden waking up 2-3 times a night! A new record!!! She is super happy and giggly (except when she doesn't get her way of course!) and makes us laugh all day long. We have come full circle in the last year and it sure feels good!!!

This post has a lot of reading and most of you don't read it anyways so this is a good spot to take a break for a preview of some 1 year old pictures. Skip ahead to the bottom for the rest!

Here's a little more info about our happy 1 year old:

Eating: She has self weaned from nursing 8-10 times per day to about 4 or 5 times! She now drinks coconut milk out of a sippy cup with her meals. She definitely has her favorite foods and is becoming a slightly picky eater but her food choices are quite limited by her allergies and lack of teeth. Her favorite foods are applesauce, Kashi fruit bars, black eyed peas, cheerios, blueberries, and bananas. She is a very messy eater, just like her father!

Movement: Crawling faster than a speeding bullet! Standing up and walking along furniture and occasionally taking a step or some might call it a "diving step!" She is also quite a climber and has ZERO safety awareness.

Talking: Joanna is a chatterbox! She is rarely quiet for longer than 10 seconds. She has mastered most sounds including the typical, mama, dada, nana, mimi, ect and some more interesting ones such as "tucker tucker." She most recently started saying baaaayyybeeee which I think might be her first official word!

Teeth: She now has 1 3/4 bottom teeth and about 1/4 of a top tooth! Teething has been no fun :(

Play: Joanna's favorite is still books! She is such a good little reader! She also spends a lot of time with her baby and climbing around her playhouse. She loves all the toys that make music and dances around and claps to the music. And of course, anything that she can push around the house (walking toys, chairs, boxes, ottomans, ect) are also a favorite!

Here's the rest of the the pictures that I took. We all know I have never been good at choosing favorites so once again, I have A TON of almost the same picture for you to look at! Enjoy!