Jana cracks me up

Here's one of my silly girl eating dinner last night. She managed to make it through all of dinner with a piece of corn on her nose. Have you ever noticed that a lot of my pics are of her eating? It's the only time this kid sits still enough to get a picture of her face!

As requested... new pics

Here are some new pics of my little girl. We hope she's heading into a growth spurt because she's an eating machine. She's chunking up so much! Those cute little chubby cheeks are back.

Here she is last weekend playing the piano with Grandpa.



Here she is taking apart Dada's robot he built with mega blocks. The little stinker stands up to do everything and is constantly on her feet and cruising around, but refuses to walk.




The mohawk hair during bath time! (This goes into the Boyfriend album - to be shown to any boy who wants to take her out! Hee, hee. So evil!)



Brushing her teeth like a big girl after bath time!


Every kid needs one of these - the spaghetti face picture. She LOVES whole wheat rotini with meat sauce. I swear this kid would eat it for every meal if she could.

Jana's 13 months old

I can't believe my baby girl is already 13 months old.

She's such an amazing joy to be around!

We're starting to see some toddler fits and we're not doing a good job of managing them. J and I find ourselves working very hard to keep from laughing hysterically! She even has the lie on the ground and flail her arms and legs. Where do they learn that?

She's like a little parrot! She mimics everything, unless she has an audience of course. On her own, she'll say: mama, dada, baby, doggie (but loves to do the baby sign more), hi, bye bye, and yes. The words she'll repeat after you all the time are: Tigger, banana, please, thank you, moo, baa, roar, up, sheep, Maiya (the dog), and somtimes even Maiya no (oops, we must say that way too often!).

She is definitely a fine-motor kid! She seems to develop by reaching the fine motor milestones before the works on the gross motor skills. She loves to take things apart and put them back together. Her favorite toys at my in laws are their candles. My mother in law has these little tea light seasonal candles (for all seasons) and then the tea lights in the plastic containers. Jana loves to take the tea light out of the holder and then take the candle out of the plastic. Then she puts them back together so she can do it again. She also loves mega blocks where she can put them together and take them apart.

However, we're not really making any big movements toward walking. She cruises everywhere and now that we brought the coffee table back in, she's always standing at it, playing with her toys. She freaks out if she can't reach something and will drop down to crawl to it.

She's doing so much better on food these days. She still loves toast, banana bread and grilled cheese sandwiches, but is expanding her tastes. She still loves all fruit, but is now trying all kinds of vegetables successfully. She now eats peas, carrots, corn, green beans, and lima beans. She LOVES baked potatoes and pasta. She loved lasagna last week when I made it. We actually discovered that she loves plain chicken. I just cook up some plain chicken tenders and she loves them.

She's actually off bottles too! She was a champ switching from formula to milk. We had one day that she was grumpy about getting her milk in a sippy cup instead of a bottle before bed, but after that she was awesome. We gave up the morning bottle this morning with no problem. (Knock on wood! I'll keep my fingers crossed that it stays this way.)

Here are some new pics of Jana

Here's her last bath in the bath seat.

Here she's being a big girl and pulling out all of her toys. This was moments before she up ended herself into the basket.

Smiley girl!


Jana's first attempt at coloring. I LOVE the color wonders, by the way. She couldn't believe we were actually giving her a pen and taking the lid off.

Unfortunately, she also likes to shove as much food in her mouth as she can fit. This was after she shoved in three pieces of her toast and couldn't close her mouth to chew.

Boo boos

Jana took a big spill last night. She was done eating and wanted out of her booster seat, so we set her on the floor. She crawled around, so she was sitting on the floor between J and my chairs, with her feet underneath her. Out of no where, she flopped forward and hit her head on the leg of my chair. She managed to somehow hit it two spots.

You can see the beginning of her bruises: one above her left eyebrow and the other is on her right cheek.


They definitely look worse today, but haven't gotten pics yet today.

Learning Everyday

I wish it was just Jana that was learning everyday, but she seems to be teaching us plenty... about how we are so incredibly not prepared for an active, inquisitive, and some times devious toddler.


Lesson #1:

First, she decided that she wanted to do laps around the futon. Three out of the four sides are not a problem; it's that last side that told us we need to either block it off completely or make it passable by the squirt.


This is looking down at her. The arm of the futon is in front of her and the sliding glass door is behind her. And yes, she is kneeling in the basket full of dog towels


Now she's trying to get out of the basket on the other side by using her music table.



Lesson #2

Look very, very carefully to the side of her head by her eye and just below her eye. Yup, that's right. We learned how to take the lid off pens today!

Here are the close ups!



Lesson #3: No pics.

J has been getting on my case about being sure to close drawers. Well, after getting a knife out of the drawer, he forgot to close it and Jana closed her finger in it, slicing it open. Poor little thing has her first band-aid.

Another day, another set of lessons the mama and dada are learning!

To my wonderful daughter on your 1st birthday!

I am in complete disbelief that Jana is one. What happened to the last year? Where did it go?

At a year old, you:

* Crawl everywhere; you don't sit still anymore.
* Pull yourself up on everything - stead or unsteady.
* Cruise on anything you can get your hands on and are now starting to take bigger risks.
* Love to pull things out of your toy box and then put them back in.
* Want the dog - she is no longer safe anywhere.
* Crawl up all 14 stairs on your own and anytime we don't close the gate - little stinker!

You:
* Love bananas and cheerios.
* Love any food that is pureed, but refuse to put anything else in your mouth, unless it is a banana, cheerio or on a good day pear, apple, or carrot.
* Don't even hesitate to take your formula from a sippy cup.

You:
* Love your blankie and your Tigger in Pooh's costume.
* Love taking baths.
* Love to grab a book and turn the pages by yourself, but hate it if I turn the pages as I read.
* Pull the blanket up over your head to show us you are tired.
* Dance to any song that you hear - Daddy's singing, radio, CD, commercial, it doesn't matter.

You:
* have become a mama's girl - You yell if I leave the room, go upstairs, go to the bathroom alone.
* absolutely light up when you see Dada.
* adore your Grandpa Gary - you have him wrapped around your little finger already.
* love your Grandma Pam - you give her the cutest little smiles.
* love your Grandpa Bill's voice - you love to stare at him when he talks to you.
* love your Grandma Linda - she always rocks you to sleep.
* love to watch your cousin Tyler - the way he runs just fascinates you.
* love to smile - you smile with your whole face - your eyes glow, your cheeks get rosy. Even if you cover your mouth, we can still tell you're smiling.
* love to make people smile - you'll first smile at them. If they don't smile back, you start making faces at them. If they still won't smile, then you start talking to them.
* just started giggling all the time - it is my favorite sound in the world. You will start giggling if we're laughing.

You say:
* "Dada"
* "Mama" when you want something
* "Maiya" occasionally.

You will pant when you see the dog or if we say dog or Maiya (that's the Baby Sign for dog).

Thank you for the most amazing year. You have taught me so much, baby girl! You have shown me what's important in life and shown me a new level of love.

I look forward to the many more experiences we'll get through the next years.

Here are some pics from your first birthday, even though we didn't do a lot because we've been so sick.

The birthday girl - just a little skinnier after being so sick.




Her birthday "cake." It was banana bread in a heart shaped cupcake tin with banana flavored whip cream on top. She put her handin the whip cream and she started screaming. Then she wouldn't have anything to do with it again. Oh well!





Hanging out on Mama's lap. It's hard to scream with a binkie in her mouth! She missed her afternoon nap and she was such a crank pot!




Goofing around and giving a great big, stinkery smile for the camera!




"I see that camera. I want it."

Spoiled by the sun

Can I tell you how much I want it to be Spring?

We've had beautiful, sunny weather, but cold, for a week now and it's wonderful. The only problem that we run into is that since Jana is still crawling, it's very difficult to spend time outside with her. She tries to climb out of her stroller, gets very fussy if she is being held, and just wants to crawl around... that's difficult when it is still so cold out and she'll be crawling on the either frosty or wet ground.

I can't wait to be able to take walks again outside all the time. This last week, we've walked at least once a day, every day. It's been fabulous!

Here are some new pictures.


Hanging out with Aunt Laura and cousin Tyler.




Meeting cousin Justin for the first time.





"No, I'm not posing for the camera! What would ever have given you that idea?"





"My new favorite thing to do is to torment the dog. She's no longer out of reach, hee, hee! See, I even try to get to her when she's outside."





A trip to the park. Notice the car seat toys in her hand that she found when I was putting them into a box for the new baby. Now she won't go anywhere without them.





"I loved the swing! I giggled the whole time. Mama and I were on a swing together for a while, but since her lap is disappearing, it made it difficult. Plus, I got to be a big girl in the big kid swing... (okay, baby swing, but bigger kid than me:) )."




"Mama also took me down the slide. Good thing it was her backside that got frozen and not mine!"