I really hope this video doesn’t reflect on the way she feels that I stroller her around.

For mothers day we surprised my mother in law and flew down to Florida to visit Jordi’s family and my grandmother! Here’s a video of her playing around with the ball, it’s rather long, so I only expect grandparents to actually watch the entire thing.

I’ve fallen behind, Josie is trying to crawl and climb in her sleep rather than lay still and sleep, which hasn’t provided a great sleep for any of us! Here’s some cute photos generally from her 12th month.

Here’s a pretty photo of Josie from Alyssa’s bridal shower, we need a big camera like this!

Today we went to the doc for Josie’s one year visit. She’s sprouting up like crazy in these last few months, as we noticed but didn’t have quantitative evidence for. She is:

• 30.25″ long, that’s a growth of 2.25″ in the last three months, vs. only one inch in the previous three months. That keeps her at 85% for height.
• 19 lbs even, she gained almost 3 lbs (16 lb 1 oz at 9 months) in three months! The previous three months she only gained 15 ounces! This puts her firmed back into the 30’s percentile for weight instead of hanging out at the bottom. I think we can say thank you to Mexico for the avocados and to the dairy industry for cheese that packed on this weight!

I can’t believe it’s been a year since Josie was born! I’ve spent the last two days thinking about where I was a year ago since I had the joy of a long labor. About this time things might have finally calmed down and Jordi took Josie for a bath and I worked on moving over to recovery.

Now Josie isn’t a little baby anymore, she’s genuine toddler. I hung out with some babies yesterday and I realized how grown she really is, which has been helped by her in no small part learning how to walk at 8 months old. I enjoyed holding my friend’s babies! (I tried to teach them how to walk too so Josie would have more mobile playmates)

This last month Josie has shown tremendous understanding of us and both spanish and english words. She is using her sign language very well and can pick up new signs quickly when the mood seems to strike. I’m most of all impressed and appreciative of the fact that she tells me when her diaper needs to be changed. Although today, she learned that telling her dad that she needs her diaper changed while he’s working at home is an effective way of getting his attention.

Her new fascination and love is of stairs. We walk up and down the street climbing up everyone’s front stairs. No one seems to have minded yet. Thankfully we don’t have any actually in our house, she’s very good at getting up, but will kill herself going down them. I’m working on getting her to turn around but she isn’t a cauteous kid.

Here’s to another great year with our great little girl!

• Size/weight: size 12 month are on their way out and size 18 months are fitting; check in for height and weight next week, but I swear she’s gained a lot
• Favorite food: breastmilk, avocado, goldfish, zucchini, cheese
• Favorite toy: ball, “cat”, other kids
• Favorite books: ‘lift the flap’ animals, contrarios, baby talk
• Favorite activity: Going outside, swinging and sliding, climbing stairs, eating
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:00; 9am, 2pm ~1hr naps; gets up ~6am
• New skill: sign language explosion, climbing stairs, stacking blocks
• Teeth: 8. 4 on the top and 4 on bottom
• Vocalizations: lots of mama and dada but no real meaning to the words

The past two weekends we went to two different sheep shearing events! The first was at Codman Farm and this past weekend was at the Gore Place. The Gore Place event was rather overwhelming, it was a hot day, and it was packed. Josie overheated a bit and was just over-stimulated in general so we kept it short. Next year I don’t think we’ll go if it’s hot again. One of Josie’s favorite things was a big tractor — her fascination with wheels continues!

Looking back at old photos, we’ve noticed Josie has really gotten a lot of hair lately! Not long enough yet for people to stop calling her a boy though.