The World According to Lily

For those who have not seen Lily in some time, I figured that a few updates were in order. In Lily's one year of life, she has accomplished some remarkable things.

• First and foremost, she is officially a walker. She sometimes reverts to crawling and it is not uncommon for her to fall a few times, but she is able to walk across the room fairly easily and chooses walking as her mode of transportation more often than not.
• She has several words in her vocabulary including duck, ball, mama, dada, and her all-time favorite NO!
• She signs "more" and "Terra" (dog) but only when she's in the mood.
• She will sit and look at books with us and loves to turn the pages, but again, only when she's in the mood.
• She enjoys bath time but does not enjoy changing her clothes (usually requires continual distraction to reduce the squirminess).
• She still has not really noticed the tv yet, and we are very thankful for that.
• On a typical night, Lily goes to sleep around 8:00 pm and wakes up around 7:00 am. Lily rarely wakes up during the night, but she does sleep in our bed. If she stirs at all, she reaches out and touches one of us and immediately goes back into a peaceful sleep. It is so endearing but makes the challenge of switching back to her crib a very daunting one (maybe that is why we have been delaying it).
• Lily is a great traveler and usually falls asleep immediately in her carseat when we go out.
• Lily is an excellent eater and rarely refuses any type of food. She has transitioned to mostly table foods, but we still give her jar or pureed food every once in a while. I think that it has been harder for me to transition her to table foods because it seems like so much less food compared to the pureed foods, but I know that she is gaining weight well. (Have you noticed the impressive belly in the photos?) At her one year check-up, she weighed in at 21 1/2 pounds - right around the 50th percentile.
• We are totally weaned off of breastfeeding - yay!! It was a very natural and gradual weaning, involving no hardships on either side. I began around 9 months offering one bottle a day and increased the number of bottles by one each month until 12 months. Our last breastfeeding moment together was within a few days after her birthday, and we have not looked back since! I am proud for having breastfed Lily for a year (even if not solely for the last few months), but I can't say that I am going to miss it terribly. In those last few months, I did get a glimpse of how expensive formula feeding would be and "wow!" is all I can say to that. I think in the end months, breastfeeding was often used as a comforting tool, and I think that it is very important that we now begin empowering Lily with other ways to comfort and self-soothe.
• We are gradually making the transition from formula to whole milk. Within the next couple of weeks, I think that we will be done with formula entirely (definitely by Christmas). I don't anticipate any problems with this, as she has been doing quite well with the formula/whole milk mixes so far. However, the temperature of the milk seems to be the bigger issue. She definitely enjoys a warm beverage and has no qualms about telling us that she is wholly unsatisfied with cold milk. Lily just recently started accepting juice, so maybe cold milk is not far behind.

Overall, we are just enjoying this little wonder. She is so good-natured and has been so kind to us as new parents. And, just like everyone said, parenting continues to get more fun each and every day. I still very much appreciate those cuddly baby days, but I also look forward to her increasing communication skills and watching the everyday discoveries unfold. She truly is our delight.