One Year Old and... DRAMA!

One year old!  It's time to Pary!

TerraDactyl had her first birthday yesterday!  She's now one year old!  It's crazy.  In some ways, it feels like time has gone by really fast, but it others, I feel like I've been a mom for forever (and not always in a good way).  ;)

Look who got Da Da's toothpaste!!

Developments first.  TerraDactyl has discovered that she can reach things that are on the counter/table when she's standing on the ground.  She doesn't blindly reach around up there, but if something is hanging over the edge, she'll grab it and pull it off.  She's now working on pulling it off in such a way that it doesn't hit her in the face as it falls down.

What should I do with this thing??

TerraDactyl is a pro at opening the kitchen cabinets.  She can get them all open, but she focuses on the pots and pans (fine) and the glassware (less fine).  She was just messing around with the plastic lids to the glass bowls, but then she pulled the whole stack of nesting bowls out and promptly dropped them all, which caused one (only one) bowl to shatter.  TerraDactyl and I basically reacted the same way.  We froze and stared at each other for a couple seconds.  DH reacted like a pro - he was out of the office and in the kitchen before TerraDactyl or I had decided what to do.  DH locked Riley on the other side of the baby gate and held TerraDactyl while I cleaned up all the glass and vacuumed the whole kitchen and dining room to make sure I got all the tiny shards.  We'll probably be putting a baby lock on that cabinet in the near future.

Olives are... weird

While I was making lasagna I had TerraDactyl in her high chair with me in the kitchen.  I decided to try giving her some chopped olives.  I figured she'd just throw them all on the floor, but I had also just dropped my spatula and splattered tomato sauce everywhere, so it's not like I'd have to do any more clean up.  She ATE the olives!  I gave her more and she ate them too!!  It's a good thing TerraDactyl was in our sight the entire time we were at the hospital or I'd think some nurse gave me the wrong baby.  What kind of baby likes olives?  I had to work harder to get her to eat pears than olives.  What a weirdo.  So now TerraDactyl gets to eat olives at least once a day.  She's eating enough foods now I'm going to have to start making her a menu to make sure I'm rotating through them all!

I found this beautiful flower for you!

TerraDactyl is now more than willing to crawl into the grass.  Or onto the concrete pad.  Or the asphalt driveway.  She's an all-terrain kind of gal now-a-days.  She likes crawling out to the dandelions in the yard and pulling the heads off.  I'm working on teaching her to get the roots out, but it might be a while before she learns that lesson.

I LOVE these pajamas!

DH and I have been reading NurtureShock and discussing it.  It's a really interesting book.  (We finally finished it mom!)  It's basically a collection of the latest (well, it was published in 2009) research into kids (infants through teens) and parenting.  Some of the studies I'd heard before - things like "praise kids for the process and effort they put into achieving things, not just because they're smart or gifted".  If kids are praised for intelligence, they end up less persistent.  When they start to struggle, they assume that they've reached the end of their abilities and can go no further.  Kids that are praised for effort tend to see the mind as a muscle.  The more you use it the more you learn.  When they encounter difficulties, rather than giving up, they try harder and push through.  DH and I have been trying to train ourselves to praise TerraDactyl for things other than intelligence, but it's really hard to do, as you can see in this clip:

The whole book is very interesting though.  I made DH read it as well, since I was basically just summarizing everything to him anyways (and, as I'm sure you've discovered from this blog, I'm pretty terrible at short summaries).  I figured we'd have a better conversation if DH just read it and we could actually discuss it rather than me trying to repeat the whole thing to him.  I found the chapters on sleep and teaching kids to talk particularly interesting.  Sleep is WAY more important to kids than adults.  Lack of sleep affects intelligence scores, learning retention, and obesity!  Babies learn to talk earlier when mom's touch them after they say something rather than just having mom narrate the whole day non-stop. 

It's hard to keep her still for a picture

OK.  I promised drama.  And there was some drama with the broken glass.  But I've got some MUCH better drama.  If you've made this far, you're about to be rewarded with the most drama we've seen yet in TerraDactyl's young life.  TerraDactyl had a pretty good birthday.  Until...  we went to her one year check up appointment.  That was actually mostly fine too.  TerraDactyl likes her doctor just about as well as her grandparents (sorry guys!  I have no explanation as to why she likes the doctor so much).  TerraDactyl was actually pretty outgoing and inquisitive while I asked the doctor my giant list of questions.  ANYWAYS, as we were finishing up the appointment, I got hot and light-headed and then fainted.  And then TerraDactyl fell off the table (lunging to save me, I'm sure).  I woke up on the floor VERY confused as to why there were half a dozen nurses around me while the doctor held a crying baby.  My blood pressure was super low (80/50) and my heart rate was down at 54 bpm for the next hour.  I know this because they wouldn't let me drive home (probably a good idea).  But we only have the one car, so DH had to ride the train over to come pick us up.  So the nurses came in every 20 minutes or so to check me out.  They even took me out to the car in a wheelchair (pretty sure this was purely for liability reasons).  But they did also give me a juicebox.  :) 

This video was from a few days before TerraDactyl's birthday.  I just sort of felt like this while lying on the floor of the doctor's office.  We're both fine.  I've got a bruise on my butt and my head, but no splitting headache.  TerraDactyl seems fine.  She landed with her arm out to break her fall, so it's not like she dove off head first.  In fact, she doesn't even have a bruise on her head!  TerraDactyl is using all her limbs and acting normal, so I think she's a total pro at falling.  PHEW!  (My mom had to actually teach me to put my arms out when I fell after mom watched me dive head first off the deck without trying to break my fall in any way.  So I'm glad TerraDactyl seems to be smarter than my toddler self). 

This bizarre lip suctioning thing is also pre-fall.  So yeah, it was a weird birthday, but at least TerraDactyl is too young to remember it!  And hey, at least she got out of her vaccines!  lol  We have to go back tomorrow to get those.  The doc wanted to hold off to make sure there weren't any ill effects from the fall.  SO.  Do you feel like I over-promised on the drama?  I'm not sure I could have handled any more.

Birthday Fun!