Caroline turns one!

How fast a year flies by. I really can't believe it was a year ago that I was giving birth to this sweet little one. And now, of course, it is so hard to imagine our lives without her. She has been such a treasure.

So what is Caroline like at one? Well, she's certainly very active and outgoing. She loves to run around and cause trouble. Well, not exactly run, but she is walking pretty fast these days and knows just how to get into what she isn't supposed to, no matter how babyproofed we think we are. Just this morning she found a wineglass on the coffee table, which fortunately was empty and I was able to grab before she broke it. She also found a full glass of water on the nightstand which she promptly poured all over the floor. So yeah, there is a lot of running after and cleaning up after her.

Walking is definitely her primary mode of transportation these days- she almost never crawls anymore. She still falls all the time, but she's a pro at that too, and rarely cries or hurts herself. And now she can get herself up so easily, just going into a downward dog pose and pushing herself up to standing.

She's a social butterfly- whenever we go to playgroups or have friends over, she happily walks up and joins in the fun with no hesitation whatsoever. She's a very happy little girl who smiles and laughs a lot, though of course she also cries and gets mad too. She's been starting with some tantrums when she doesn't get what she wants, but I'm also getting better at distracting her or finding other ways to please her.

She's gotten a bit clingy with me lately, too. Often times, she only wants me and will have a fit if I leave her with someone else, even for just a minute. She even fussed with Mike for a week or two, but now seems to be getting better (perhaps because she had 4 days in a row with him, since he was home sick from work a bit). I guess this is one of the downsides of spending all of her time with me, but I'm hoping she grows out of it quickly!

She's babbling up a storm, but no new words lately. We're hoping to see some of those soon. She's eating well and seems to be transitioning to cows milk without issue, though we do need to cut back on the amount of milk we're giving her and focus on getting her to eat more solids. Also, we're still struggling to get her on a sippy cup and may have to go cold turkey off bottles sometime soon.

She's teething again- her molars are coming in- on on the top right and one on the bottom left have broken through so far, but I suspect the others aren't far behind.

Our favorite new activity of hers is hugging- she just comes up and snugs right into you. It is too sweet. She still loves to kiss- but we really would like her to learn to pucker, because I've had about enough of her open mouth slobber kisses!

Here are a few pics of our birthday girl in her cute b-day outfit from Oma:

She had some cake on her birthday- not as entertaining as the time at her birthday party, but still cute. Of course she was wired after that and went to bed late...