Maryjane - 12 month update!

My baby girl had her first birthday yesterday!

I think this will be my last monthly update, but I'll be sure to still update you on all the cute things I'm sure she'll continue to do, say and learn!

I love  my baby girl soooooo much, I think every month I love her more and more!!  and I truly love being her mom, I'm so lucky! 

My Maryjane is so smart, determined, happy, loving, friendly, tough and adorable! (she also can be very dramatic, loud, impatient, annoying, and wild) But even through the bad times I love her to death and wouldn't trade her for anyone or anything!


Walking:
The first half of this month, we spent at my parents house where there's lots more room to practice walking! And that's what she did, she kept practicing and practicing, and now she is an amazing walker!!! She knows how to side step between stuff, to reach her destination. She even walks pretty good on grass now, after a lot of practice.

MJ loves to walk! As she does, when she really wants to do something, she just keeps doing it and doing it even when she falls she just wants to do it more and more!
I am so amazed at this girls determination, she used to fall A LOT but she would just get back up and keep trying. She loves picking up toys, especially big ones, and walk around with them...which of course makes walking so much harder, so she falls a lot more!  She also is a lot more clumsy when she's tired! :)

on June 7 I saw MJ walking so fast on her own, it looked like she was trying to run (and I think she was!) She fell after like 7 steps, but hey, that's pretty good for an 11 month old, and the first time my baby girl ever ran!

Caleb and I went to Target (because they have way cute and cheap baby stuff!) and bought her her first 2 pairs of shoes! (besides the cute newborn sandals that she wore to our wedding, but only fit her for a week) Bright pink (with blue, purple and green) sneakers, and silver sandals with a big flower on them. They are both way cute, and her feet were way bigger then I thought they were! They are a size 4, and hopefully they'll fit all summer!  She also has some cute but boyish sneakers from Jack that fit too!



MJ's first trip to the zoo:
Well this isn't her first trip to the zoo. I took her in my belly to the Seattle zoo and the Idaho Falls zoo! But this was her first trip out of the womb! It was fun because now that she's a walker, we bought her shoes a day before we went to the zoo so that she could walk around a little bit!
MJ was already pretty sleepy when we arrived, so we decided to do the monkey exhibit first, because I thought those would be fun and easy for her to see! and sure enough she saw them! and waved to the little monkeys! And there was a bigger Gibbon monkey who was really friendly, sitting right by the glass and MJ liked looking at her, and Caleb liked running to one side of the cage and motion for the monkey to come (and she did) then do it again...He liked his monkey friend.  The two gibbon monkeys were my favorite, they were sisters (a worker told us) and the only way they can tell them apart was, one sucked on her right hand finger, and one sucked on her left hand finger. The other monkey, the one that wasn't friendly has a stuffed monkey it was carrying around, and we saw the stuffed monkey almost fall, and the monkey saved it :) and later we saw the monkey looking for bugs on the stuffed monkey (you know how monkey's do) They were so cute and some of the sweetest monkeys I've ever seen!
The lions were magnificent, the male lion woke up when we got there and watched my little family the whole time no matter where we moved! it was pretty sweet, MJ liked yelling at the lions (by then she was even more tired!) After the lions we took a quick picture of MJ sitting on a lion statue (she started screaming as soon as I got her on, so I took her off, but we got a cute picture :) 
The rest of the trip, MJ sat in her stroller and enjoyed herself! (let me tell you, she LOVES walks and is happy in her stroller!)  When we left the zoo she passed out in her car seat and even stayed asleep when Caleb and I ate at a Chinese restaurant! She hasn't done that in a long time, usually she wakes up as soon as we get her out of the car or out into the sun!


Sleep:
MJ is a really good sleeper most of the time!
She puts herself to bed, and seems to enjoy it!
She takes naps well, when we are at home (or she has a crib) and puts herself to sleep for naps really well!
When she wakes up before she's ready, she will put herself back to sleep really well! (I've seen her do it a lot on the baby monitor/video)
She usually wakes up happy!
When we were at my parents house I started sleeping in a separate room, and surprisingly to me, she slept SO much better when I wasn't in the same room! I think when I stirred in my sleep, I would wake her up or something, because when I'm not in her room she usually sleeps in a lot longer then she did before! It's awesome!
When we got home I cleaned out my mother in law's old room.....it took a few days of hard work, but I finally make enough space to move our bed in there!
 I was kind of putting this whole thing off as long as I could because I loved sharing a room and waking up to my sweet baby being only a yard away from me! It was nice and I'll miss it.  But I'll also enjoy sleeping in and/or being able to get up early by myself without waking her up!

Eating:
MJ's eating has improved a lot! She eats a lot more finger/real foods, and doesn't choke/gag as much!  She loves eating, and isn't very picky (but it takes her awhile to try a new food by herself for the first time, sometimes I force the first bite into her mouth, then she likes it.) Two of the foods she didn't like the first few times trying, she started liking this month: avocado, spaghetti (in the baby cans, but I'm sure she's close to being able to eat real spaghetti too....) & yogurt bites.

Her favorite foods are:
-black beans! This was an all time favorite this month. She likes when I squish them a little and feed them to her on a little fork, and also likes feeding them to herself! A couple of days toward the beginning of this month, she would hardly eat any food, except bottles and black beans!
-scrambled eggs
-Fresh blueberries (that I always break in half and squish a little before I feed her)
-Baby Cheetos "lil' crunchies"
-Canned Green Beans
-Bananas
-pieces of bread



Drinking:
MJ is officially down to 2 bottles a day, one in the morning, before our daily early morning nap, and one right before bed! (soon we will cut that one out because she's starting to fight it/hardly drink it, and we'll just give her a drink of milk out of her cup before bed)

Soon she'll just drink her milk from her cup and not a bottle at all!

I decided to steer clear of whole milk, cow's milk...... and decided to give her almond milk instead! She loves it, and so do I :) I'm going to start giving her coconut milk soon too!

She loves her "sippy cup" bottles with straws, and that's what we've upped her to. She drinks mostly water throughout the day, sometimes with prune juice (if she's constipated), and sometimes some milk or furmula if she just won't calm down or go down for a nap... She never drinks other juices because she doesn't like them! Weirdo....would rather have plain, cold water like her mom!

MJ still won't drink out of regular sippy cups, but sometimes I think she does a little, I let her have one once in awhile to see if she'll drink out of it, and she loves chewing on the top.


Fathers day:
For Caleb's first official fathers day, we made him a cute little craft of her footprints, and it's cut out into a heart and says "my heart belongs to dada"..... She loves her dad, and dada is her favorite word.
I also made foot prints for Grandpa, and both Grandmas, with cute little sayings...and they love them :)


Talking:
MJ babbles a lot, but doesn't say many real words.  She still says mama, but not as much. And dada, a lot. But most of the time I don't think she knows that they mean Caleb and I.
One word she does say ALOT though, is "hi" or "hey".... She hasn't been doing it as much towards the end of the month :( But did it a lot today....I try to encourage it. But she says "hiiii" all high pitched and cute! Everyone who hears it thinks it's the cutest thing ever. She says hi to me when I first see her in the morning or after a nap, hi to lots of people when she first sees them, hi to the dogs or cats when she sees them, and sometimes hi to the trees when we're on walks. :) I'll try to get a video of it because it is the cutest thing ever!
MJ also screeches a lot and can be REALLY loud and annoying, especially when she's upset, hungry, tired, or wants something! ha......Grandma Suzanne thought it was funny to screech/scream back at her whenever she did it, which made her do it more.....then we went out to eat in a quiet restaurant and MJ was screeching loudly and Grandma was like, SSSHH......And I was like, SEE this is why you don't enforce it to begin with ;)
MJ also loves to Cooooo in a really cute way :) "ooooooo" and also says "mmmmm" a lot when she's eating and loves the food.
I've been trying to get MJ to say "baby" because I LOVE when babies see other babies and say "baby"...One day a few days ago...she said "day-bee" in a cute high pitched voice, a lot....when I showed her pictures of herself and when playing with her baby doll...it was SO CUTE and I wish she kept it up, but that was the only day she really said it.....I think I've heard her say it a couple more times, but then she won't again when I repeat it, dang it!!




MJ Loves:

MJ loves the dogs now! She liked them before, but now she'll look at them and giggle a lot, and likes being licked in the face most of the time! She also gets excited when she sees or hears new dogs!

MJ loves to walk! (as in me pushing her in the stroller) We walk almost every single day!  And even if she's tired and cranky before the walk, as soon as we start walking she is usually quiet and happy and enjoys every second of it!

On out walks when I see flowers or a cool leaf, I pick one and show MJ and let her smell all the good smelling flowers of spring! She LOVES it, sometimes tries to eat them, but always gets a huge smile on her face!

Sometimes during our walk I'll stop and let her out at the park to walk around in the grass for a little bit, and she loves it! She loves being outside and walking on the grass, and looking at rocks, leaves, dandelions, etc....whatever she can find... even pieces of garbage!


Tree Lover:
At my parents house there are two trees by the back porch, I showed these to MJ and picked one of the big leafs for her to hold. Ever since then when I take her outside she loves looking at those trees and feeling the leafs, and I've seen her wave at the trees a few times when we step outside! :) Makes me so happy because I'm a huge tree lover myself! haha.  She also loves when the wind blows the trees around, she looks way up at them with a fascinated look on her face!
Often on walks, we walk through a storage unit parking lot by my house,  There is a line of trees, and MJ loves looking at them, waving at them, and occasionally touching them (when I let her.)
When she sees trees above her during the walk, she reaches for them, so cute!

Other:
MJ fell face first into the tub on June 4 when I was brushing my teeth and she was hanging out with me in the bathroom, something she's always done just fine......it scared me to death but she was fine.

MJ will let me kiss her on the mouth more :) and she'll even lean in for a  kiss more! She gets all excited and proud of herself when she does :) and so do I :)

MJ is still so social and LOVES people.....she ignores me (even when I'm saying her name and trying to show her something cool) when there are more interesting people around, or when we are in public....

At the end of this month MJ got another TOOTH!  Another little tooth on the right of her other 2 top teeth! :) I love her asymmetrical smile :)

MJ's been doing this this where she puts her arms up and bent behind her head, kind of in the crunch position with her elbows by her head and her arm by her back neck....I don't know why she does it but she does it quite a lot!!! it's pretty cute.

MJ loves being sang and hummed to still...and loves little games like patty cake, and this little piggy!

MJ likes to wave at things! and when I say....say "hi" or say "bye" she waves! :) I love it!

More of MJ loves:
MJ loves turning the pages of her board books, now that she knows how. She also likes getting read to, but isn't a huge fan, and gets distracted fast.

This little girl loves to explore and play. She will entertain herself for a long time just walking around and playing with her toys.

MJ loves Grandma and Grandpa Lundeen's house better then ours I think, and I think it's because she has more freedom and room to roam around. She loves to look in cupboards and get things out of them, reach up on tables and take anything she can reach, and walk around and around the kitchen/living room round-about. She will just walk around and around  the house for a long time! (she used to fall ALOT and hurt herself at grandma and grandpas because of all the obstacles: chairs, tables, etc....she used to hit her head on the table a lot by trying to stand up under it.....but she's doing a lot better now, and doesn't get as many bumps and bruises.



Well that's all I can think of!!! So there ya go :) I can't say enough how much I love this girl! She is my little buddy, she's so freaking fun! She is the best, and so many people love her ! :) We are lucky!