Juliana is ONE!

My baby bear turned one over the weekend! So crazy to believe that it’s already been a year since she was born. The time has just flown right by us! If we could just make it stop, that would be great.

As a birthday gift to mommy and daddy, we caught her saying, “mamamama” and “dadadada” over the weekend. I’m not sure if it counts, but I’ll take it! For now, her only real word is “hi!” She loves to say hi and wave whenever she sees a new face. Seriously, it’s the cutest thing. Except for those mean people in stores that are obviously too cool to say hi back to a baby.

Juli still isn’t walking, but I’m ok with that. Sure, it’ll be nice when she’s mobile (not really), but I enjoy holding her while she’s still little and I can. She does do really well with pulling herself up on furniture and the window sill, and walking along those. Last week she even learned to climb up on the ottoman, which can be scary since she likes to sit back on the edge.

There are a total of four little teeth in her mouth at the moment, so her smiles are just about the cutest thing ever! Ju is often fascinated by grinding those little chompers together and enjoys the fact that it drives me crazy.

As far as food goes, she pretty much eats exactly what we’re eating. Not having to make separate baby food or spoon feed her makes like so much easier. Although baths after every meal can be tolling. Typically for breakfast, Ju will get what we’re having. Sometimes it’s dry cereal or waffles. Yesterday it was french toast, sans syrup. Last week we had South West egg rolls for dinner, so Ju received the filling in a bowl.

I am SO proud to say that we made it to a full year of breastfeeding, with no end in sight! With the older two I struggled to even make it to 10 months. This time around it just seems like the convenient choice to keep going. There are plenty of critics on this topic, but that’s an issue for another day.

Because her doctor is on vacation this week, we still have to wait a few more weeks before the one year well baby check. At that point I’ll be able to tell how big she’s gotten. Lot’s of people tell me that she’s so tiny (although I don’t think so), which is fine, because if it was up to me, I’d keep her tiny for ever.

One thing that I’d prefer not to deal with forever though, is her constantly waking up in the middle of the night. Except for one night when she was sick with a fever, Ju hasn’t slept for more than like 4 hours at a time. I’m still nursing her through the night in my bed when she decides to wake up at 11 something.