Happy 1st Birthday, Rhys!

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear Rhys,

Happy Birthday to you!!

Rhys Kathryn is 1 today!

I cannot believe a whole year has gone by. I mean, wasn't it just yesterday that we were up at 4am prepping for the hospital drive?? In some ways it feels like yesterday that she was an itsy bitsy baby, but at the same time its hard to remember those days (maybe because of the lack of sleep!).

Rhys is determined that she will walk soon.  Last night she was taking 4 - 5 steps before face-planting and before that she was doing 2 - 3 steps for the majority of the week.  She has actually been practicing walking backwards too! She pulls the art easel around while stepping backwards, and likes to pull the little pink doll stroller that way too. It's pretty funny to watch.

And her crawling skills really picked up the past 6 weeks or so. She's up on all fours and is pretty darn fast. She usually crawls (quickly) to where she wants to be, and then she stands up and cruises around. She actually "walks" around the house holding onto all of the walls and furniture and if she can't make it from one spot to another, she drops down and crawls really quick and then she is back up and walking.

All of the extra activity of walking and crawling and learning tires Rhys out pretty well. She's been taking really good naps, even for her mama. It used to be that she would sleep really well at daycare and then just cat-nap here and there for me, but we seem to be past that - at least the last week or so. She typically takes a 2 hr nap in the morning and again in the afternoon. I hope she continues to be a good napper for quite a while yet!

She is getting 2 teeth!  Her top left tooth was first, and now the bottom right is starting to poke through.  Too bad Halloween is so far off - she'll look like a little jack-o-lantern soon! ha!

The past few weeks Rhys has been starting to sign.  She waves hi & bye, signs all done, and this past week she's been doing "milk"  (usually just clenches her fist reallly tight and then when I ask if she is saying milk, she will do it again). 

She is loving the bath these days...one of us will go in and get the water going, and she makes a beeline to the bathroom.  Sometimes even when there is no water, she'll even just go in the bathroom and stand up at the tub and try to get in!

Rhys has a great talent for emptying things out.  Especially the toy box and laundry basket!   She just stands there and starts tossing things over her shoulder until she is surrounded by stuff!  And when she can't reach any more stuff to toss out?  She starts picking things up off the floor and putting them back.  It's impossible to fold laundry or put it away when she is near because she tries to "help".  I let her play in the tupperware cabinet the other day; she thought that was pretty fun too.

As far as food goes, she's pretty much eating anything we give her.  She's not too interested in being spoon fed, so it's mostly finger foods.  She does like to suck on those mashed up food pouches.  We hadn't ever bought them before, but I tried them when she was still spoon feeding and she seemed to like them.  I handed her one about a month ago and she sucked it right down all by herself.  So, I keep some of those on hand for when I need her to occupy herself, or if we are on the go it is easy to take with us.  But, for the most part she eats any and all fruits, veggies, meats, cheese, yogurt, bread, pretty much everything!

And, we made the sippy cup transition!  No more bottles!!  She really likes the silicone tops, but she's also doing the Playtex plastic lids really well too.  Sometimes we hold her and feed milk like a bottle in the sippy, and other times we just give it to her and she sits to drink it.  She knows to tip her head back to drink.  She also loves the straw cups.  She's drinking milk 3 - 4 times a day and we give her water sometimes too.

When we first switched to straight cow's milk, she had a couple of days that seemed like she wasn't going to deal with the lactose very well.  We aren't sure if it was because of the lactose, or maybe just extra saliva from teething?  Either way, I gave her lactose-free for a week and things seemed better.  Now we are mixing about 50/50 with lactose-free and regular milk.  Much better. Maybe when we run out, we can try straight cow's milk again and see how that goes.

The past week we made the transition at daycare - she gets milk and food and snacks from daycare now.  No more packing special Rhys-food!

We are having a family birthday party for her this weekend.  Natalie thinks it is a birthday party for her.  She keeps telling us we are having her birthday cupcakes.  Hopefully when the time comes, Natalie will let Rhys enjoy her party too!

1 year stats - she goes to the Dr. on Monday, so we can get the "official" numbers then, but as far as I can tell:

Height:
Weight: 19.5ish
Diapers: Size 3
Clothes: Size 12 mo
Shoes: somewhere between a 2 and 3

I'll post more 1 yr pictures after her party this weekend.  I still cannot believe she is already one!!