12 month check up

Elinor had her one year check up last week. Even though she has slowed down a lot on eating, she is still an average weight. I was getting a little worried. I think maybe because her first molars are coming in but still when you sit down to eat meal after meal and she refuses it makes you worry. She still is nursing which has picked up since her signing. Maybe she is filling up on milk and that's why she doesn't want real food. Either way she is growing!
The Dr asked about her speech. I told him the couple of words she says "mama, dada, bubba (pacifier), pup pup (puppy), get, ishh (fish), key (kitty)". We told him she also signs a lot of words. By 12 months, babies should be saying between 1-5 words. He told us (which I didn't know) that signs count too. That was another thing I had in the back of my mind was if she was saying enough. I read so many blogs and mommy message boards. It's easy to question what you know is ok. All babies are on their own learning path and I need to keep remembering that.
I'm going to add her stats on the 12 month post that Dave wrote to keep everything together. Go back and check if you are curious.

Elinor's birthday party

Saturday we had Elinor's birthday party. It was the 8th, her actual birthday, so at 11:12 we sang happy birthday to her while she napped. Then Dave kissed her and woke her up on accident. By the time guests started to arrive she was already getting sleepy again. She was a trooper though and lasted for 5 hours until she could nap again. 

The night before I was feeling so sick and didn't think I could get anything done. Luckily my sister was in town and planned everything. She went grocery shopping with Dave and even cooked/baked everything! I had so many plans for the party that I wanted to do but instead of feeling guilty about getting rest, I let Courtney help and it turned out perfect!

 Courtney made 2 kinds of cupcakes gingerbread and vanilla

 Courtney conducting craft time. We had chalkboard paper, chalk and stickers. The girls loved it

 Courtney made a gingerbread village

 Courtney added Elinor's 12 month pictures to the tree. They are still up. Elinor likes pointing to them and taking down the ones she can reach

 Yay cupcakes

playing peek a boo with the cupcake

She still wasn't sure about trying it

 after a little taste she decided it was good

 She did drop some off the side again to feed Henri

 opening Ruby's present before she goes

 Dorie was the only one to wear a party hat. Henri wanted to hold it

 Dorie helped with presents again like at our baby shower. She is such a big helper

 Gift from Tre and Amanda. How cute is it??

 Poor Dorie everyone wanted her hat

 Lynn

 Amanda and Tre. I wish I remembered to get Elinor's picture with everyone. 

Thank you Courtney for helping (doing everything)!

We all had such a great time. Elinor got such amazing and thoughtful gifts and cards. Thank you friends! We did miss little Avery though! Sarah, I hope you guys can come play soon. 

12 months (told by Daddy)

I can't believe my little girl turns 1 today.  She's growing up so fast its kind of depressing but at the same time also more and more fun every day to see her learn and do new things.   I don't see her all day like Caitlin does, so every morning or night now it seems like I'm telling Caitlin "Hey she just made a new word" or "Look what shes doing!" usually only to be told it's not as new as I thought.  But she is figuring out new words now almost every day.   And she's putting signs together to form sentence fragments.   She must have been pretty hungry earlier this week because she signed "more" "milk" "please".   She's actually abusing the "milk" sign a lot now that she figured out she can get wants she wants quicker with it.   Being able to express to Caitlin that she wants to eat right away is making for veeery short feeding times with not much time in between them.    She also seems to be eating less real food recently but I'm convinced its because her molars are coming in and her mouth hurts, despite her not seeming to be in any pain.   It hurts both of us just to look in her mouth and see the poor baby's gums all messed up.     

She's running all over the place now too.   It seems like she went from a few steps to running around nonstop all day in just a week.  One of her new favorite thing is going up stairs.    The other morning I was watching her while Caitlin ran into work to pick up Henri, and Ellie must have been bored/mad after a while because she was standing at the front door crying and trying to get out.  I decided to walk the halls with her until Caitlin got back so we ran up and down the hallway and took the elevator to the ground floor and I showed her the stairwell.  She immediately started climbing and didn't stop until she got to our floor.  We live on the 5th floor!   I can barely walk all the way up myself so I don't know how she did it. She wanted to keep going up the steps to the roof but I had to stop her.  

Even though she's changing every day and developing faster and faster she's still my little peewee.  I can't wait to see what she's like by birthday #2, which is probably when I will write on Caitlin's blog again.

11 months 10 months 9 months 8 months 7 months 6 months 5 months 4 months 3 months 2 months 1 month

EDIT by mama to add-

Elinor is now 29in and 20lb 3oz!