Miriam Elayne, you are one year old!!!

What a gift this year has been! You have brought our family immeasurable joy and laughter. Here’s a few of your highlights as you round the corner of ‘year one’ and on to ‘year two’…

You took your first Mommy/Miri trip to visit Grandma Pam in NE this month. You really warmed up to her and had a lot of fun!

We’ll be going to CO on a Mommy/Miri trip next month to visit Aunt Tricia and soon-to-be-born GIRL cousin. #yayforgirls 😉

You took a few steps on your own for the first time on June 20th. You and Mommy were at a baby shower and you were toddling along, holding on to my finger when you decided to let go and keep taking a couple steps. It was SO cute! You did it several times that day. You’ve been more apprehensive since that first walking day but you have tried hard every day and just in the last couple days you are really getting brave. As the following video shows, you really want to walk and get frustrated pretty easily when you fall; but the truth is, you’ll be *running* soon!

You have added a LOT of new words to your spoken vocabulary this month: ‘duck’, ‘quack’, ‘shoes’, ‘baaa’, ‘tweet’, ‘me-ow’, ‘whooo’ (for owl), ‘dress’, and a sweet little lipsmack for the sound a giraffe makes (even though they really don’t make sound) …

You are still working on pushing through your top two middle teeth. The right top tooth actually came most of the way through on June 29th! Your second top tooth is still just a swollen gum but you’ll have it soon! We also celebrated Daddy this month; Father’s Day was June 21st and you loved helping Daddy enjoy his day and his new guitar.

Speaking of smiles, your one-year pictures turned out just gorgeous! Here a few of our favorites: Once again, Ms. Laura (riddlephoto.com) did an amazing job.

In the past few weeks you perfected the use of a straw – so much so that you have new sippy cups with straws and you can put it in the correct spot on your tray. It’s a bit of a stretch so you miss sometimes but you try very hard! That did take some learning on your part; for some time before this month, you would just push your cup onto the floor when you were done with it. Daddy and Mommy used a little modeling and positive discipline/correction to get you to change that behavior – it really only took you one day and one big, sad crying session to understand how to exercise impulse control over your hands and mind. We’re so proud of how quick you respond to Mommy and Daddy, Miriam!

You have been weaning off of soy formula the last 5 weeks to whole milk and have done a great job with it! You drink just whole milk now and do so 3 times a day. Next up? Weaning off the bottle. That’ll be a bit harder as it seems you really only want to drink water from your straw cups.

Your birthday party with friends and extended family is tomorrow, July 10th, so Mommy will be posting a blog next week that has pictures from your “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” party as well as stats from your one-year check-up. Here’s a few pics from your “on-the-day” party with Mommy and Daddy:

Happy 1st Birthday, Miriam Elayne! Mommy and Daddy could not be more thrilled to call you ‘ours’! You are our beloved sunshine; our sweet, brave, smart, and beautiful Miriam!

We love you!