And just like that we have an “almost one year old”! Dang that went fast! Hannah sure is acting like an almost one year old these days. From month-to-month her development keeps changing more and more rapidly, it seems. This girl is turning into quite the little spitfire!
Hannah’s stats:
- Weight: heavy!
- Length: not sure!
- Clothing size: 12-18 month
- Shoe size: baby size 2
- Number of teeth: TWO!
- Eye color: bluish turquoise – it totally depends on the light and her surroundings
- Words: dada, Ben, mama, yeah, hello, banana
- Favorite foods: cheese, strawberries, smoothies, ham, bananas, bread, blueberries, watermelon
- Least favorite foods: jalepeno, sadly – egg 🙁
Hannah’s BIG personality comes out more and more as the days go on. She is a spitfire! Hannah knows just how to get what she wants {we’re going to have to work on this as she gets more into signing!} and is not afraid to ask for it. She’s becoming quite adept at communicating.
Lately, Hannah has been talking more, which is the sweetest thing. She’s been saying “Ben” but it sounds more like “Nen” and she started saying “mama” which, naturally, melts my heart. I swear she’s trying to say “water” – she gets out the “w” sound and looks at her water bottle. I’ll take that to the alternative, which is a bit more demanding. Yesterday when she was eating a banana she pointed to it and said “banana” – her communication seems to be taking off lately.
Just like her big brother, Hannah seems to be rather independent, especially for a baby. She’s cool just cruising around the house, finding her own thing to do. She’ll happily go to a toy basket and find something to do and entertain herself. I will say, though, just like her brother, she’s turning into a wrecking ball knocking things off the table, pulling books off the bookshelf, dumping out toy baskets. Oofta! That sure happened quickly.
Of course there are times throughout the day, usually when she’s hungry or tired, when she’d prefer to be carried around. Lately when she wants some love she’s come up and clung to my legs like a little baby koala bear, which is so stinking sweet. She has also started raising her arms up when she wants to be picked up.
When we’re out and about and she wants the attention of a stranger she’s not afraid to let them know she’s there. She will squak and make her presence known! Occasionally she will wave at people – it’s about 50/50 at this point, but she will clap on command. I love watching her clap her hands – she gets so excited.
New this month – Hannah is pulling herself up to stand! It’s SUCH a big milestone. She has had the lower body strength to stand up for quite a while and now put it all together and can push or pull herself up on things. She’s super sturdy and is able to push off and land on her bum when she’s ready to crawl around again.
I’m so excited for this milestone because it gets her closer to walking. I can’t wait to hold her little hands and help her take practice steps and watch her do some furniture cruising and be able to have a different perspective on the world.
The first day Hannah figured out how to stand up on her own she’d keep practicing standing, then plopping down and laughing hysterically at her new trick. She has the funniest little cackle when she’s just being silly, but her giggle is the sweetest sound in the world.
This is our last month before we can introduce cow’s milk to Hannah. This is going to be such a big change to start transitioning away from breastfeeding. I think both of us have enjoyed that journey tremendously and it will be hard for both of us to say goodbye to those sweet moments we have together every day.
We’ve recently started working on having Hannah put herself to bed. We’re not using any particular methodology or strategy – sometimes she’ll fall asleep nursing, other times she won’t. The times when I put her in her crib when she’s awake I stay in for moral support until she falls asleep. I think it’s our goal pretty soon to remove my presence for the most part. We’ll see how that goes…
Hannah is sleeping really well – the nights she puts herself to bed she typically stays asleep until morning, but when she falls asleep nursing she’ll usually wake up briefly within 30-45 minutes. Very occasionally at home she’ll wake up in the middle of the night. When we’re at the mountain house it’s much more common for her to wake up once in the night. Hannah is typically taking a short nap at some point in the day and then a long two to two-and-a-half hour nap at some point in the day. I’m working on getting her long nap to take place in the afternoon and have her take a short cat nap in the morning.
Hannah is the proud owner of her first two teeth! Her bottom front two teeth are mostly all the way up. She handled teething like a champ!
Hopefully having a couple of teeth will come in handy with eating; however, I don’t really think Hannah needs any support in that area. She is such a good eater and loves to feed herself. She will try anything I put in front of her; however, as she gets older, she’s really beginning to develop preferences.
Hannah typically has 3 meals a day plus at least one snack. These days she is very much into fruit. I have to hold out on giving her fruit until the end of her meal, otherwise she wouldn’t eat anything else. She really does like most things, though I’ve noticed recently she is starting to really develop preferences. Her preference is always for fruit! She’s got a sweet tooth, I think!
For the last couple months Hannah has really mastered using her water bottle. It’s been really fun to watch her drink water. I realize that seems like such a trivial thing, but it’s such an important life skill that takes a lot of practice. She loves water, too, which is just icing on the cake.
Lately Hannah has been so, so into her big brother. The other day we were having family story time and cuddles on the couch and Hannah launched over, grabbed Ben’s arm and gave him a big raspberry! It was so funny and adorable and perfectly Hannah. She sure has a big personality.
Jackson is another pal to Hannah. She LOVES our dog, Jackson! He’s not always so sure about her, mainly because she’s working on being gentle still.
We are going to thoroughly enjoy this last month with our baby girl before she’s not really a baby anymore. It has gone by so unbelievably fast and we’ve had such a wonderful year with sweet baby Hannah here in our family.