12 Months!!!

Well, like her siblings before her, getting 12 month pictures was not the easiest thing I’ve ever done…making me quite happy the whole picture thing is over! Although it did start okay:

The one good picture!

 

Then we had to get up.

 

Forget the bed, I moved her to the chair…

 

My lightning reflexes are not good enough – at least not good enough to keep her from pushing Sock Monkey over, pulling off the sticker, and trying to get her to look at the camera. So, this is as good as it gets:

 

So, at a whole year old, she is way ahead of Emry as far as she is crawling, she is pulling up, and she is even letting go and standing before squatting down and crawling off. I think she’s a little behind Ethan, though, for I don’t foresee her walking until mid-July. But she is a climber: up the chairs at Emry’s table and right on top of the table. She really loves to climb up on the chair, get a piece of chalk off the desk, and color on the chalkboard wall. 

 

Her fine motor skills continue to come together: putting lids on markers, placing the rings on her octopus’s arms in the bathtub, trying to work buckles, putting pieces in the easier puzzles. She is a chatterer, maybe even more so than Ethan who talks from the moment he wakes up until he falls asleep at night, but she narrates nearly everything she does and then claps for herself when she has done it well. And her vocabulary is rather impressive: Mama, Papa, Emry, please, fan, fish, duck, bird, and various animal sounds. And here I was hoping for a quiet child…

 

She is also my troublemaker. When I put her to bed at night, she immediately pops back up and calls for Emry, giggling and ready to play instead of going to bed. Of course Emry never refuses and I have even found her fast asleep with Ellyson in the crib when I check them before I head to bed. She knows how to get her own way, cuddling when she doesn’t want to be put down or smiling sweetly to melt your heart. It’s not going to surprise me a bit in a few years when the three of them get into something they shouldn’t to discover that Ellyson is the ring-leader.

 

And so as much as she has changed our world, taken away hours of my sleep and so contributed to my grey hairs, and keeps me busier than ever…we can’t imagine life without our little Elly.