Cate is 1! Her birthday was on a Tuesday this year so we'll be celebrating this weekend with a birthday party for her. I'm hoping the weather is nice so all the kids can play outside with the water toys and slip & slide.
Cate is such a joy because she is such a happy baby! She's crawling all over the house and enjoys opening the cupboards and sometimes climbing inside. She stands along the furniture and cruises back and forth across the couch and chairs. She can stand alone and will walk a little if you hold her hands but she really prefers to crawl. She loves to keep up with Matthew & Claire. They all play pretty well together unless they're getting tired, then things go south a bit. Cate's vocabulary seems to be expanding by the day. She loves to try to repeat words and sounds. So far she can say "Mama, Dada, baby, bottle, doggie, ball, go,go,go, bun bun (for her bunny blankie)", and a few others that I'm forgetting right now. She can climb all the way up the stairs and likes being able to go upstairs on her own when we all go up for bathtime at night, I think she feels like one of the big kids ;)
She's been doing great sleeping through the night and rarely gets up after she goes to bed around 8:30. She will usually sleep through until 7 or 7:30 the next morning. She likes her room and her crib, so most nights if she has her bunny blankie she will cozy up and go right to sleep. Her bunny blankie is by far her favorite toy and she will ask for it all the time by name. (Note: we CANNOT forget this item when we go to Chicago next month on vacation!)
Cate has been eating a lot of regular food lately and so far I haven't found anything she won't try. She still eats some pureed food but for the most part she wants to eat what Matthew &Claire are eating. Our current project is Operation: Eliminate Bottles! She is now on to whole milk so I'm trying to phase out the last of the bottles. She does pretty well with the sippy cups since she has been hijacking M & C's cups for months. She's still not crazy about holding her sippy cup by herself so we need to practice a bit on that, too. I'm hoping that we'll have completely phased out the bottles by August 1st and then it's on to Operation: Phase Out Pacifier, followed shortly by Operation: Potty Train Twins. Yikes! Everyone's world is about to be turned upside down!
As for teeth, Cate has a mouthful already! She has 8 in the front (4 on top, 4 on the bottom) and recently sprouted 4 (ouch!) molars at the same time. Poor baby! I think we're through the worst of that now since all 4 of the new teeth seem to be most of the way out. When I look back, Matthew had 12 teeth at this point and Claire had 8 so she seems to be about on pace with them.
Some of the other things Cate likes to do are fill buckets or containers with objects and try to color with the sidewalk chalk outside. She likes to have books read to her and will point to the pictures and words. She's learning some body parts, she knows nose, eyes, hair and ears. She can play pat-a-cake and peek-a-boo on her own. She likes to give high fives and will grab your wrist and lift your hand up so she can tell you she wants a high five! She also loves to dance, anytime there's music on or if I start singing a nursery rhyme she rocks back and forth and wiggles to the music.
We have her 1 year well-baby visit scheduled for July 29th so we'll have to see what her height and weight are. I'm going to update this post with some photos ASAP!
Happy Birthday, Cate!
(These photos were taken by Portrait Innovations and used with their permission. They did a FANTASTIC job and we will definitely return for pictures in the future!)
