One Year Old

(Yes, I know this post is quite tardy -- in fact, Adelaida is now over 13 months old! -- but wanted to reflect on our first year with Adelaida, our first year as parents.)

This is one of the first pictures of Adelaida ever taken. She was in the NICU, between 6 and 12 hours after being born. She had already removed her intubation tube and was breathing oxygen through a nasal cannula. She had electrical sensors on her chest and finger, and needles in her hand and umbilical cord so the doctors could draw blood and keep her hydrated through an IV. Her face was puffy from the medicine they gave me during the labor, and she was lying in an impersonal bassinet with electrical equipment all around her rather than in her momma's or daddy's arms. But despite all that, she is still smiling! This was definitely a sign of her very easy-going personality.

By the time she was four days old, Adelaida had been released from the hospital and was adjusting to her new home. This was her first Christmas Eve, a quiet day spent at home with us and the dogs, all of us adjusting to our new roles. This was also when I discovered I loved to dress Adelaida up! Doesn't she look adorable in her little black and pink dress?

One month after Adelaida was born, we had settled into a bit of a routine in which we did all the things we were going to do anyway, accompanied by Adelaida. I hadn't yet realized that I could leave her while I left the room (even for something as quick as taking laundry out of the dryer), so she accompanied me almost everywhere!

Dale and I became much more comfortable and confident as parents by the time Adelaida was two months old. She was also becoming much more confident as a baby and developing a personality all her own. She loved to look at colorful things and often fell asleep in my or Dale's arms. Adelaida also started sucking her thumb when she was two months old, so could soothe herself when she was upset. And, she was so adorable with her thumb in her mouth and her fingers around her nose!

Three months old is a wonderful age for any baby, but for Adelaida three months was a great age for several reasons. First, we realized that she needed more sleep in the evenings that we had been giving her. She was a much happier baby after getting an evening nap! Second, she was sleeping through the night more consistently, so Dale and I were also sleeping through the night more. What a difference a full night's sleep makes! Third, by three months old Adelaida had started smiling at us and getting excited when we made funny faces or did silly things. That extra bit of interaction made her such a fun baby!

When Adelaida was a little over four months old, she started going to school a couple of days a week. This allowed me to do some work toward my degree and introduced Adelaida to a world in which there were other children her age and caregivers who weren't her momma or daddy. From the very beginning, she loved her school and loved her teachers! I felt very comfortable with the school we had chosen, but still missed her during the day.

When she was five months old, Adelaida learned to sit up by herself. This opened up a whole new world to her and she loved to sit and play with toys. She was becoming a very independent baby, able to entertain herself easily. I still loved to dress her in adorable clothes!

In her sixth month, Adelaida began to babble and laugh -- both beautiful sounds for a baby to make! We often spent entire evenings just doing silly things to make Adelaida laugh. One of the things I'll never forget is Adelaida laughing while Dale held her upside down and nibbled on her ears. She thought that was so funny!

Although we had started feeding her a couple of months earlier, by seven months old Adelaida was becoming quite a proficient eater. She was able to both pick up finger foods pretty well and get them into her mouth! Adelaida has always been a very adventurous eater -- she will try anything we put on her tray and generally likes new foods.

When she was eight months old, Dale and I were ready for Adelaida to start crawling. She was also ready to crawl and frequently got frustrated with her inability to move toward a desired object. Although she couldn't crawl, she was beginning to be able to communicate with us. We had been using limited sign language with her almost since she was born, and at eight months old she started signing back to us. Her first sign was "nurse" and for about a week I was nursing her about once an hour -- I tried to nurse her every time she signed "nurse," and she was practicing signing pretty frequently.

Adelaida learned to crawl around her nine month birthday and it was so liberating for both her and Dale and me! Even more so than when she learned to sit up, crawling opened up a whole new world for her. Suddenly, she was able to see something she wanted and get to it, and she could decide which toys she wanted to play with (for the first time, she rejected a toy I set in front of her in favor of a different toy that she had to crawl to get to). This was a very exciting time for all of us. (And I still enjoyed dressing her in beautiful clothes!)

Crawling didn't last very long as Adelaida's preferred form of motion. Within a few weeks after she learned to crawl, Adelaida learned to pull herself to a standing position against furniture and liked to "cruise" along furniture and along the wall to reach her destination. At ten months old, she also enjoyed walking by holding on to our hands (a little hard on our backs, but she had so much fun doing it!).

Adelaida has never shown any stranger anxiety -- she has always been happy to be held by anyone (Dale, me, friends, family, or complete strangers) and isn't bothered by me or Dale leaving her with other people. For a while, I was concerned about this (Didn't she want us to be around? Did she even recognize us at all?), but soon realized just how wonderful a trait this was. After all, Adelaida never cried when we left her at school or with a babysitter, and she loved everyone we introduced her to. At eleven months, though, Adelaida started to get so excited when she saw either Dale or me, that we knew she recognized and loved us!

Twelve months seems like such a long time, yet our first year with Adelaida has flown by so quickly! Just a few days before her first birthday, Adelaida cut her first two teeth and began taking independent steps. She gets excited and frustrated (and displays both emotions strongly, although we see excitement much more frequently than frustration) and loves her momma and daddy. She can babble and communicates several thoughts to us using sign language. She has learned both how to grasp an object and how to drop it, and enjoys doing both! And she loves Maggie and Murphy, and they both love her. So much has changed since our first days at home with Adelaida, just twelve short months ago!