Happy Birthday Baby!

Eleanor turned one year old yesterday!  We had a party for her on Saturday with about ten people, mostly family.  It was a good party and she got tons of new toys and clothes!  She spent all day yesterday playing with her new push toy (from mommy and daddy).  She loves to walk around behind it.  She is so close to taking her first step on her own, but isn’t there quite yet.  Hopefully soon!  For now she moves much more quickly crawling so she doesn’t have much incentive to walk.

She’s now saying dada and versions of mom (mama, ma, nen, even Jenn recently), as well as “hi” and “up”.  Her little voice is so sweet!  She learned those last two in just the last week or so, so she seems to be learning quickly now.  I’m looking forward to hearing the next word!

She doesn’t have another appt until the end of the month, so I weighed her (on our Wii Fit, haha) and measured her myself.  She’s now about 18.5 lbs (13%) and 29″ tall (59%).  So she’s still  skinny, but not as much as before (she was 16% weight and 87% height at 9mo).  We’ve been feeding her a ton but I guess she might need even more.  Yikes!

We gave her soy milk for the first time the other day and she loved it.  I’m hoping to swap out a couple nursing sessions a day for it, but so far she seems to be treating it as more of a supplement than a meal.  Now that I know her stats, maybe that’s a good thing.  I’m planning on continuing to breastfeed for the foreseeable future, hopefully until she’s about two, which is the WHO recommendation.  We’ll see how it goes.

She popped her first molar on the 12th, which brings her grand total up to nine teeth!  Her sleeping is still all over the board, largely from the constant teething.  Though apparently I was a horrible sleeper as a baby too, so it could just be that.  I am so thankful that I’m able to stay home with her!  Besides the fact that I love being here with her, I would be a zombie at work most days.

I can’t believe my baby is one, but I also look at her and see a one year old.  This year just went too fast.  I hope the next one is a little slower, and I can’t wait to see what it brings!

What a year to be born!

I think it’s awesome that Eleanor will never know her country as a place where a minority was not president.  McCain is a great man who deserves our respect and admiration for everything he’s done (and will do) for our country, and I feel sorry for him for losing.  In the end however, I was and am an Obama supporter, so obviously I’m very glad he won.  Go Obama!

And now back to our regularly scheduled Nora-vision: her new trick is to grind her teeth!!  LOL!  It drives me insane, but she seems to love the new sensation.  Also, today I quickly bounced her up on my hip – she was squirming a bunch and had almost succeeded in getting away – and I heard her teeth clack together.  Guess I need to be more careful!

Yesterday she figured out how to pull herself to standing using her little activity table.  She’s been using us and other lower things to do this for a couple weeks now, but had never been able to leverage herself with something so high.  She’s also gotten up on her hands and knees and started rocking recently.  I think my days of leaving her sitting on the floor with a few toys while I shower are drawing to a close…

Last little bit of Nora news: I cooked and ground up some chicken for her today, and she seems to hate it.  We’re mostly skipping cereals, so I want her to get iron from something.  Maybe I’ll try mixing it with something she likes.

It’s been too long!

I’ve been busy enjoying summer and early fall with Eleanor, and lost track of this blog!  I’m sure all you mommies out there understand.  : )

We’ve all been doing well.  I’m still BFing Eleanor, though she’s also eating some solids now.  She’s eating one “meal” a day, though yesterday she had two and we’ll see what happens today.  So far she’s liked everything but avocado, though she loved the taste of guac John gave her the other day.  I make most of her baby food, and have successfully stuck to all organic things to date.  We’ll see how long I can keep it up!  She’s still sensitive to dairy, though it’s not as bad as before.  Nw if I eat it she gets a little fussy and gassy for a few days, which is mean to do to her but not nearly as ill as she used to get.  I’m hopeful that she’ll outgrow it by the time she’s a year old, though I’m planning on BFing well past that so that we don’t have to wean her to other milk.  I’d like to avoid giving her cow/goat/soy/etc. milk for a while (she reacts to cow and goat cheese, and we’re not completely sure about soy), and rice milk has almost no nutritional value.

Eleanor is trying to learn how to crawl right now, though we won’t be surprised if she walks before crawls.  She loves to stand up and can do so for a few seconds completely unsupported now, though it’s hit or miss.  She stands at her activity table until she gets bored, or tries to lunge for something else and topples over.  She doesn’t seem to quite get that she can move her feet *before* moving her body, lol!

She’s gaining well and growing like a weed.  I’m not completely sure what her stats are right now (forgot to take them at seven months), though I think we’ll be moving her into the next car seat soon.  We got her a Britax Marathon, which I’m happy about.  I feel safe moving her into it.  I’ll miss the ease of carrying her in her infant seat, but she’s getting too heavy for me now, anyway!

Nothing else much is going on in our lives.  I’m a  political junky, so I’m loving all the election stuff.  I’ve also been sewing diapers for Eleanor, since I finally figured out I could probably do it better on my own and for less.  (Bamboo fleece is a wonder fabric!  It absorbs so much liquid, and is very thin.  For once my cloth-diapered baby doesn’t have a huge bubble butt!)  Oh, and we’re heading to Disneyland for Christmas!  I’m so excited about this!  We haven’t been in probably five years, and of course this will be Eleanor’s first time.  I think she’ll be too young to enjoy it, but we sure will.  : )  We’re going with my immediate family, and also visiting some relatives down South for a week after, so it’ll be a long trip.  Should be fun!  I just hope it isn’t too stressfull with Eleanor.  We’ve taken quite a few smaller trips with her (across the mountains to see Grandma and Grandpa), but nothing like this.

I hope to be a better blogger in the future, though I’ve always been bad at this sort of thing, lol!  Maybe I’ll expand out a bit from just writing about Eleanor…