Talisa – 12 Month Update

Aaaah, my baby is a year old!!  I know it is said ALL the time, but that year went by FAST!  I’ll do a normal update in this post and then share how we celebrated her birthday in the next post.

Good morning!

COMMUNICATION – Talisa is very interested in communication this month.  She is babbling more, and also trying to say and sign more words and figure out what things are.

Some of her words are Mama, Papa, Dthadtha (this is how she says Akka/big sister, which is what she calls Svara), Nanna (my mother), Popps (my father), doggy, baby, ball, finished, hello, naynay (nurse), nanee (thanee, means water in Tamil), tata (jatuh, means fall down in Malay), neh (nose), bah (ball)

Some of the baby signs she does are for finished, more, sleepy, phone, bye, airplane, dog, cat, shower, bath, swing, prayer, eat

Gee, I guess she has more vocal words than she does baby signs!  I think she’s going to be quite an early talker.

Here she is signing “finished” when she’s ready to be wiped and gotten down.

PLAY – Talisa is really enjoying playing and exploring now!  She still loves books, though in addition to having us read them she loves to EAT them.  Literally.  She rips the binding off and chews up pieces.  She usually doesn’t swallow it, though.  Instead she comes up to us and sticks out her tongue so we can take it out of her mouth.  ew!  She is recognizing animals.  I showed her a stuffed sheep yesterday.  So far she’s only seen pictures of sheep in books.  She took one look at the stuffed animal and said  “bhhaaaaa”  Smart girl!  She likes to find cats when we are out on the playground.  She loves being outside.  So far she is still happy sitting in the stroller and going for a walk for awhile.  But she also loves having a chance to run around the playground herself.

Walking around in the playground for the first time, she was so excited!

She looks so cute sitting by herself and “reading” books

SKILLS – Talisa has been working on and improving her skills from last month.  Walking (now also running!), dancing, climbing, going up and down stairs, talking, baby signing, pointing, etc.

First time walking when we are out and about. Here we went to the mall. She was so astounded that she was actually allowed to get down that she stood still here grinning for at least a couple minutes before she would take a step. She was also not used to walking in shoes.

FOOD – Nursing is still going STRONG!  Talisa nurses in the morning, before both naps, usually after each nap, before bed, and 2-5 times during the night.  She also eats 3 meals with us and usually an afternoon snack as well.  She is eating pretty much the same foods as last month including cooked egg yolk, organic soft tofu, lettuce stems, cooked carrots, cooked green veggies, whole wheat pasta and bread, pretty much any fruit, oatmeal, and more.  As usual some meals are just a couple bites and for others she eats quite a lot.  I just go with the flow and let her eat as much as she wants or doesn’t want.  If she doesn’t want a particular thing I’ll try giving her something else.  Sometimes, for example, she’ll be in the mood for frozen blueberries but not want a thing to do with oatmeal or it could be the other way around.

We discovered a new allergy this month.  So far she has only seemed to react to dairy.  One thing she hasn’t had much of is chocolate.  Occasionally we have given her a little bite of healthy chocolate things, but not often.  And occasionally she has seemed to get bouts of bug bites.  Well, it turns out that those weren’t bug bites, those were hives!  We figure out that she only gets them after she eats something with chocolate, and then they go away in a few days.  So no more chocolate for Talisa for awhile, poor thing 😦  She seems fine when I eat it, though (although who knows, maybe if I never eat chocolate she’ll sleep better??  I’ve tried before, but only make it for a few days and when she sleeps badly I am desperate for some chocolate the next day so I give in).  Anyway, we’ll bring it up to the doctor and see when we can try giving it to her again.  Hopefully she’ll outgrow it!

Frozen blueberries are still a favorite (most days). Here she is playing peekaboo!

And here is what happens when you play peekaboo with your hands full of blueberry juice!

Talisa now has this hilarious habit. When she is finished eating and we unbuckle her seatbelt she stands up, bends over, finds food that she dropped in her seat, and eats anything that looks promising.

SLEEP – Oh the elusive sleep!  She is still taking 2 naps a day, though I think she is just starting to transition to one nap, but it’ll probably be a few months for that transition to occur.  She is STILL waking up every 1-3 hours at night.  There was ONE night, last night, in the past month that she slept for 4-5 hours straight.  We have moved bedtime earlier.  We try to go upstairs between 7 and 7:30 to start bedtime on most nights.  The goal is for me to be nursing her around 8pm.  Sometimes it takes her until 8:30 or so to fall asleep and other nights it’ll take her until like 9:30 to fall asleep.  She wakes up in the morning anytime between 7 and 9.  7 is a bit early and she usually gets tired pretty fast if she wakes up at 7 (I TRY to get her to go right back to sleep when she wakes at 7 and it sometimes works).  8 to 8:30 is her most common wakeup time.  One of these days I’ll get some sleep…

GROWTH and DEVELOPMENT – We haven’t been to the 1 year checkup yet, so no weigh-in as of yet.  We’ll go within the next couple of weeks.  Her hair is still growing (very slowly, though!).  Her two bottom teeth can easily be seen in photos now, which is cute.  I can see the white edge of her top teeth JUST under the gums.  I’m sure they are bothering her sometimes, but they are taking their own sweet time to emerge!

Here are a few more photos:

Talisa has a cloth and her pacifier, both which she always goes to bed with. If you lay down the cloth anywhere she’ll grab her pacifier and lay her head on the cloth. Too sweet!

Ready for a nap!

peekaboo!

‘excuse me, I’m trying to have a phone conversation here..”

sweet smile

she knows the ipad is under the pillow!

One of her new tricks – go upside down and reach out her hand, I don’t know what she’s reaching for, but it’s hilarious

upside down sisters! Talisa thinks this is hilarious!