Time Flies and Babies Grow!

I am far too busy in the evenings playing internet games, watching tv, and being lazy cleaning my house and finding ways to better humanity that I finally decided just to blog from work. GASP, I know. Scandalous. But actually, there is some serious down time going on right now that is out of my control so I am seriously bored! I would much rather be busy at work.

So anyway, we now have a 13-month-old terrorizing gracing our home. So 11-month-olds can now begin their terrible twos? But actually, I love every minute of it. She is testing every limit and boundary and thinks the word 'no' is hilarious! But she is awfully cute doing it. And, AND, she now seeks hugs and will sometimes give kisses willingly. It's like the best thing that ever happened to me.

She puts away quantities of food that never cease to amaze me! She'll eat anything we eat and that is so nice. AND, we're off formula! (Cue music from heaven.) I can hear our bank account growing! I wish we could just have her on whole milk but alas, her milk allergy is still present. Luckily she eats cheese, yogurt, and ice cream with no problems so that gives me hope she'll outgrow it eventually. The proteins in those foods are broken down during processing/cooking so they are easier on the tummy.

So we're actually on almond milk now. At the 1-year appointment the doc was going to have us do soy milk (which I was still wary of). But then she mentioned that we could start peanut butter and I told her we already had for awhile (I favor not holding off on the typically more allergenic foods). Then she said we could do almond milk instead. Great! Baby Girl loves it and drinks it even better than formula.

But, on to our next challenge. The dreaded Sippy Cup (of Doom). It took months before she would even touch the thing. She is so stubborn and only does things on her timeframe. Now she will happily drink water from it but Woe Be Unto You if you put milk in the thing. I have a goal to have her completely off bottles by the end of the month (more on that later) so I am trying to figure it out. Apparently this problem is really common; to have sippy cup usage but refusing milk in the sippy cup. My two plans, set to begin this weekend, are (1) go balls to the wall and hide the bottles, and (2) if all else fails add some chocolate or strawberry syrup to see if she will drink that and then slowly wean off the syrup. These are the most common suggestions Google informed me of. If you have other advice, I'm open!

I'm hoping to blog more in the near future but (1) I read that all the time on other blogs and think it all the time myself and (2) I'm hoping to do a lot more of lots of things in the near future!

But OH, I almost forgot! Did I tell you about the 1-year checkup? Shots galore and, I won't lie, she reacted to the MMR. But all it was was a runny nose and red-rimmed eyes for about three days. I'm pretty sure it was the MMR. I can't remember exact height and weight stats other than that one was 65th % and one was 55th %. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING (sorry, I am not yelling at you, just really excited) is that her head was up from 2nd % to 10th %. We were thrilled! We had hoped it would at least stay on course. I was terrified it would fall off the scale completely. So, things are going well in terms of us choosing not to have surgery for her craniosynostosis! Yay!