ONE YEAR OLD

Oh my Maddie girl, how in the world are you a year old!? I feel like I JUST gave birth to you and it was five years ago all at the same time! This year has been the most stressful, draining, sleep deprived year of my life but the most joyful, rewarding, and my absolute FAVORITE year ever. I would sign up to replay it over and over again. Miss Maddie you are a firecracker.. you are the life of the party.. you are so full of life. You are so stubborn and so independent and give us a run for our money daily! You are so smart and always trying to figure out how things work. Your personality is explosive and you have been catching the eyes of strangers from day one. You are a nut and love to make people laugh!! Oh your sweet little demeanor.. I never knew I could love someone so much. Our hearts could almost burst with how proud we are of you Maddie Jane. I cannot thank God enough for letting us be your parents. Happy Birthday sweet girl!!!

SLEEP

Thank you, thank you, thank you for turning back into my sleeping champ!!!! I am so proud of you and how well you did when I finally mustered up the courage to sleep train. (While Daddy was on a business trip.. what was I thinking!?) You go to bed around 7:30pm and sleep until 6:30am! It is glorious and we are so much more pleasant these days!! You also take a morning nap from 9-11am and an afternoon nap from 2-4pm. You will occasionally fall asleep in the car or the stroller, but you are a big proponent of sleeping in YOUR bed. You have never slept in our room or our bed and we plan on keeping it that way throughout your life (got it!?). You refuse to be rocked to sleep and fall right to sleep most days with ease.. We will see how that goes when we have to do away with the night time bottle..

EAT

Girl you love to eat. There isn't a thing you won't eat!! We are now doing three solid meals a day with little snacks in between. For breakfast you have yogurt, pancakes, fruit, eggs. For lunch we pack you a fruit, veggie, protein/starch. And for dinner you have whatever we are eating! Again.. you are so independent and want to feed yourself. So most nights you go directly from the highchair to the bath. We also made the switch from formula to whole milk this month and you handled it with ease. We cut back on the bottles to just morning, nap time, bed time and you don't seem to mind at all. You STILL do not have any teeth, so we are so so impressed with your eating habits despite having some chomping help! Your fav foods are pasta, bread, bananas, cheerios, tomatoes, mandarin oranges, and taco ground turkey!

DEVELOPMENT

We are blown away at how much you have developed over the past four weeks. You started taking a few steps last month and it was practically over night that walking is the only thing you do!! You are fast.. too fast really. You don't watch out where you are going and constantly have a bruise on your head! You finally mastered clapping and are constantly praising yourself! You say "hey" "Da da" "Ma ma" "bye" "mine". You are really vocal in general.. not many minutes in the day go by when you aren't making some kind of noise. You independently play so well and could read books to yourself for an hour. You recognize more people now (especially when we face time Gigi and you immediately make noises with your lips like she taught you!) You love when people laugh at you, so you've become pretty good and making sure you are the center of attention! We have noticed so many small things this month too.. like you will help push your arms through when we put your shirt on, or that you can bend over and pick something up and not need a wall/couch to help. And we get so excited even over the teeniest milestones!

LOVE/HATE
Ms. Jenny said a few weeks ago.. "Maddie Jane just knows what she wants!" That you do little girl. You have a pretty strong opinion about what you love and hate. You LOVE the remote control or our cell phones. You HATE grass.. or anything foreign touching your hands/feet. You have never been one to really watch TV for an extended period, but you recently decided you LOVE Elena of Avalor. You LOVE your bunnies/bears/babies.. especially this plush snowman that Ridley gave you for your birthday! You carry them around and squeeze them tight when we say, "LOOVEEE the baby." You HATE I mean really HATE the car seat all the sudden. We have big crocodile tears on the way to daycare and on the way home every single day. You LOVE the Christmas tree and have done so well not touching! You LOVE bath time, but HATE having to get dressed afterwards. Now that you can walk you HATE being held and want to be on the go all.the.time. You LOVE Mommy and Daddy.. but I think Daddy a little more :)