Alaina is 1!

Lainey Jane is 1!  She is our sweet little angel baby and acts as the baby of the family in every way.  We still call her a baby and think of her in that way too.
Here she is before her birthday...I was making her practice keeping headbands in before her big photo shoot...

getting emotional about me continuing to force her to wear the headbands...

This little girl is smothered in love whenever she needs it!  The kids are always excited to see her when she is up from her morning nap!

Thanksgiving day at my parents'....

Getting our Christmas tree...

She will climb all over Lilly and play with her as long as she lets her, and she actually lets her quite a bit!

Stealing a moment with mommy before her party starts...

She had a "You are My Sunshine" themed party.  We had an ice cream SUNdae bar which was quite a hit!

She loved the cake!

I made a scrapbook spread out of some photos from each month.  Now Alaina can say that I did something for her that I didn't do for the other girls!

With her Godparents...

Alaina continues to lag behind in gross motor development in that she still doesn't pull to stand very often and also doesn't cruise along furniture at all.  This is no surprise and something that we don't really think about too often.  We came to the conclusion a while back that this would just be something she does in her own time.  A few weeks after she turned one was the first time that I witnessed her pull to stand all on her own.  Here is a photo of it....:)

She loves to push around chairs and push toys while on her knees.  She also does a little "walking" on her knees.

 

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Besties....

Other things about Alaina...

- She doesn't drink from a sippy cup.  She really won't take milk or water from there and when she has one she mostly just plays with it.  She still nurses on her same schedule which is 4 times a day.  For the last month she has been getting up twice a night and breastfeeding but I just quit that again and she has been sleeping through the night the last couple days...we will see if it sticks this time.

- She is getting lots of teeth.  She has 3 top teeth coming through that you can see, just haven't broken skin yet.  We blame this for some of her added fussiness in the evening.

- She babbles and imitates sounds of words from time to time.  The words that she consistently says with meaning are Mama, Dada, and Hi.

- She will put her arms out or up to be held or get attention from someone.

- She crawls all around the house doing her own thing and exploring.  She likes to take toys out of bins but then also helps to put them away during clean up, it's cute.

- She likes to crawl on and over people.

- Her favorite food is probably cheese.  She eats most things that we give her though.

- She will point at things and sometimes also babble something while she points.

- She imitates things.  Sometimes she will cross her hands to pray with us at dinner when she sees us do it.  She pats me or Lilly when she seems me patting Lilly to burp her.  She bounces along to songs during circle time.

- She gets along great with her sisters.  It's fun to see how much they all love each other...