Alynne Tiffany- 13 Months
This month flew by! It has been strange not writing weekly about what Alynne has been up to, so I am excited to be blogging about it now! We certainly had a busy month, so here are some of the things that happened!
-We celebrated Alynne's first birthday in NYC! We had an alligator themed party at the Schmidt's apartment, and so many wonderful friends and family came to celebrate with us! It was so much fun!
-We weaned Aly off formula onto almond milk the day after her birthday. The first time we tried, I think I was a little bit too ambitious. I gave it to her just straight almond milk, straight from the fridge, and in a cup. She wanted nothing to do with it and just kept spitting it out. So the next couple times, I offered it to her with half formula, warmed up, and in a bottle, and she did fine. By the next day, she was drinking just almond milk from a bottle. We have been a bit lazy trying to switch her to a straw cup, maybe we'll be better about it this month haha
-Alynne had her 1 year check up. She weighed 19 lbs 4 oz and was 28.75 in long. She had to have a few shots and her blood taken. She did wonderful with all of it, and our pediatrician is so great with her!
-This month Aly has had 4 top teeth coming in. It has literally taken all month for these guys to come through. In fact, I think only 3 of the 4 have ruptured so far (it's hard to tell because, she hates when we try to look!!).
-Alynne had a crazy combination of teething and a reaction to the vaccines that caused her to sleep for 36 hours straight. Yes. 36 hours. It was insane. I woke Alynne up to give her her morning bottle in bed with me, and then as soon as she finished drinking it, she fell back asleep on my pillow. This almost never happens, so I figured she must really need it and I would let her get some extra sleep in. By 10am, she was still asleep, but I wanted to get up, so I got her up and transferred her to her crib not really expecting her to stay asleep. Only, she kept sleeping! By noon, I began to get a little concerned, so I emailed our doctor and we decided to bring her in at 2. When I got Aly up to take her to the doctor, she continued to sleep on me the whole ride there, something she never does!! She was nodding off the entire time the doctor poked and prodded at her on the table, it was just crazy! But everything was fine with her, like I said, perhaps just a bad combo of teething and shots. So the doctor told us to just let her keep sleeping if she wanted! By 6:00 that night, we decided to try to get her up for a little bit so that she would hopefully go back down for bed; however, once Ron changed her diaper and put her on the ground to play, she just laid down on the floor continuing to sleep!! So we gave up and put her back in her crib, where she slept all the way until the next morning, for a total of 36 hours. It was so insane. What one year old does that?! It was nice in the sense that I got a lot of work done that day and even got to relex a bit haha, but the there was still the emotional/mental side of things where we were worried about why she was sleeping so much!
-We celebrated Alynne's 2nd Thanksgiving this year! My brother came up from D.C. and stayed a couple days with us, and we all went out to Long Island to spend the holiday with Ron's side of the family! It was a great time with family, and Aly loved the turkey, but was not a fan of mashed potatoes!
-This month Alynne started doing a fake laugh. It's pretty cute.
- I guess the cute fake laugh makes up for the high pitched squealing scream she learned this month too. Though, as I'm writing this, I've realized that she doesn't do it as often as the first couple weeks she learned how to do it. Thank goodness.
-On Thanksgiving Day Alynne took her first steps!! It was so exciting!
-One of Alynne's favorite things right now is to tickle toes. I can say "Aly, go tickle Papi's toes!" and she will drop whatever she's doing and crawl over to Papi and tickle his toes and grin as he laughs. It's honestly quite amazing how much she understands these days. I find that she understands a lot of my directions and conversations. It is so fun! And one of these days, she'll say her first word =]
-Though Alynne cannot talk yet, she can definitely communicate with us. She claps when she wants more, and probably the biggest sign she likes to use is one she made up. She holds her hands up and twists them around when she wants us to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider, and believe me, she uses that sign a lot.
-This was the first time Alynne went to see Santa! Last year she was so little, and we barely got out of the house. So we trekked down to Macy's Santaland and got a photo with Santa! Aly was very intrigued by him.
-One weekend Mom, Justin, Jason, & Lexxie came up to visit and celebrate an early Christmas here. We had such a great time! It was a jam packed weekend full of eating and shopping, and Alynne handled it all like a champ! She even got to have her first smoothie, courtesy of Gigi and Pops!
-Alynne loves story time at the library still. I am always so amazed that a one year old can sit that still and intently listen for so long, especially while all the other babies are crawling around. But Alynne loves stories and loves to read. After every story the librarian tells, Aly starts clapping for her! She is so precious and I hope she is always a light to others as she is right now.
-Speaking of her love for books, she will now bring them to me to read to her. She will come scooting along with a book in hand and crawl in my lap to read to her. I love it!
-Another one of Alynne's favorite pastime's is circling our ottoman. She seriously does laps around it all day long. So silly.
-While Aly loves to tickly Papi's toes, she loves to blow raspberries on Mami's arms. She does it to me all day long with the biggest grin afterwards.
-Alynne is very ticklish under her chin, and she willingly tilts her head back for you tickle her.
-We opened Christmas presents early this year, and it was so darn cute watching Alynne open her presents. She would hand every tiny piece of wrapping paper to Ron as she went.
-Last weekend Alynne turned over a new leaf with the walking. One day, I could just see something different click with her. She actually wanted to walk, versus us trying to encourage her to practice. She would purposely let go of furniture and take wobbly steps while grinning ear to ear. And then a couple days later, Aly mastered the final piece, being able to stand up without holding onto anything! So I would say that Alynne is officially walking now! She is definitely still wobbly, but she is loving the new mode of transportation!
-With that new walking skill came Alynne's first bad fall. We were at the park playing and she was walking to me, but then she just turned towards the slide and dove right at it, hitting the bridge of her nose on the slide. Ughhhh. I don't know who it was worse on! It welped up and bruised so quickly and we sat there in the park crying together. I am thankful it wasn't worse, but gosh, it is just so hard to see your child get hurt! The swelling has gone away, but you can still the bruising in her photo up top! I guess it's just part of learning to walk, right?
-When we say "How big is Aly?" she throws her hands up in the air as we say "sooooo big!" and she also grabs the sides of her face or head when I say "oh no!!"
-Finally, today we took a family outing to visit the Plaza and the FAO Schwartz. We had a great time, and Aly loved the Big Piano!
