It's so hard for me to believe that Hannah is one year old already, but it's true. We had the party on Saturday to prove it! Speaking of the party, it was a great success. It was so nice to see everyone that could be there. The weather was perfect and I made plenty of cake. YEAH! I was even pretty proud of Hannah's little
Nemo cupcake I made. I thought I did a pretty good job trying to freehand a fish when I have no artistic skills at all! I think everyone had fun hanging out and playing basketball, football, and of course having a huge squirt gun fight (that escalated into just throwing cups of water instead!). Hannah enjoyed watching everyone and crawling around in the grass. Even though I said no presents, Hannah got tons anyway. She REALLY enjoyed unwrapping all the gifts
although she wasn't too sure about Kyle taking each present away when it was time to open a new one. She wanted to play with each new gift RIGHT NOW. At one point when Hannah was opening gifts, Kyle instructed her to say thank you to the person who gave her the gift and instead of signing thank you Hannah signed more! Now that's a habit we are going to have to nip in the bud early! One really cute thing that Hannah did during the party came when she was opening her gift from Sarah, Jason, and Evelyn. One of the presents was a framed picture of Hannah and Evelyn. Immediately Hannah grabbed the picture and said, Eva! She kept saying Eva over and over again and DID NOT want to let go of that picture. Kyle hung it up in her bedroom and every single time we go into her room now she looks for the picture and says, "
Haaanaaaah, Eva." It about puts tears in my eyes every time! Hannah loves all her other gifts too. She got several stuffed animals and has been having a grand ole time telling me over and over again what each stuffed animal or doll is and then giving them
hugs and kisses. She's really into reading her new books too. One of her favorites is a totally paper book from Evelyn's Grandma about Paul Bunyan. I think Hannah likes it so much because it has big girl pages. She's really into books that are like what mommy and daddy read at the moment. She thinks she is moving past board books, but I've got news for her, she's not getting paper books for quite awhile still even though she is quite gentle with the paper books all things considering. Hannah got two presents that are rocking toys and she's really been enjoying riding those. She gets on and holds onto the handles and just shakes her body back and forth with a silly grin on her face the whole time. One of her toys that she got is a magnetic farm with pieces of farm animals that you can stick into the barn. She LOVES playing with those magnets so much that she's already lost the back half of the cow! The animals are all in two pieces in case you are wondering and you have to match up the right head and tail to get it to sing and make the animal sound. I'm back again the next day and now we are missing the front half of the pig too! Poor animals!
Besides Hannah's party, there are lots of new stuff that Hannah is doing. It seems like she just woke up on her birthday and said, "I'm not a baby anymore. I had better start acting different." Hannah's biggest accomplishment is standing up on her own without having to use anything to get herself upright. She's been having a blast pushing herself up in the middle of the floor and
then letting her upper body flop back onto the floor. I think it gives her a bit of an adrenaline rush and since she's a little thrill seeker she does it over and over! The first time she did it Kyle and I were standing around talking to some friends of ours and no one was really paying much attention to Hannah (that was our first mistake!) and then all of a sudden I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was just standing with her knees bent, kinda like she was riding a surfboard, in the middle of the room! I gasped and said, Oh My Gosh! and then everyone else looked around and made surprised noises (our second mistake!) and then Hannah got so excited that she fell over!
Hannah's pronunciation of many of her words are getting much better and she's also starting to
stick in some articles every now and then. I've heard her say uh baby and the dog a few times. She's getting really good at asking for things politely and using please. She's not quite as good at thank you. We don't get any spontaneous thank yous like we do pleases, but she will do it about 70% of the time if we remind her. Recently she started calling Evelyn's mommy by name. Her name is Sarah and Hannah calls her
RaRa. It's so cute to hear her, but so far Hannah refuses to do it in Sarah's presence! She'll only do it in a response to a picture of Sarah. A few days ago Hannah learned a new food word. She will now say
Peesh when she wants a peach. It's so cute! Of course I'm biased since I think most things Hannah does are cute!
We're still working on using utensils and bowls at meals, but that really hasn't made any improvements. Hannah's really interested in holding the spoon or picking up the bowl, but not so interested in actually using them to eat. We got her some new big girl
sippy cups without handles and so far she's doing pretty good with them. She doesn't always finish all of her milk out of them, but that could also be because we've started to add more milk and less formula instead of the 50/50 mix she was getting. We found out the other day that Hannah really likes homemade pizza. We made a
Boboli pizza for dinner with sausage, green peppers and onions as toppings and she scarfed it right down. I guess she's the typical American kid with a pizza addiction!
Besides practicing standing, Hannah has also been working on her climbing skills some more. She's REALLY good at climbing onto things now and she can also get back down from most things. She's started to want to try to step down the stairs to the deck instead of crawl down backwards. She wants me to hold her hand and then she slowly and carefully takes tiny steps
to lower herself down. I'm a bit worried that once she gets good at standing on her own that she's going to try to walk down those steps on her own while I'm not looking and take a header off the deck! Another physical skill that Hannah has been practicing is bouncing, rolling, and throwing a ball. She got a bouncy ball for her birthday and she already had a soccer ball and now she plays with them almost every day. She will even go get one and then roll it to you to get you to play with her. Kyle taught her how to dribble a ball at her party and now she's really into bouncing the ball. She will pick it up, throw it towards the ground and gleefully shout "
Buhall!"
Between my dad and Kristie there were over 800 pictures taken! These are just a small sampling of all the great ones we ended up with.
anyway.
Hannah had her one year check up and shots today and her appointment went well. Of course she screamed like crazy about her vaccinations, but that was pretty much a given. The doctor said we have one healthy little girl who definitely has a lot of "tude" as he calls it. I thought that was a nice way of saying she's stubborn. Last time he called her feisty, this time she's got "tude!" As far as all of her growth percentiles, her head circumference is still off the chart. She's past the 99th percentile in that. I'm afraid she is doomed to be that big head kid forever it seems! Her height is in the 98th percentile and her weight is in the 80th. She was 31 1/2 inches long and 23.4 lbs. When they plot her height-to-weight percentile and don't take into account her age Hannah's in the 50th percentile as far as how much she weighs for how tall she is. So, that makes me feel good that she is right where she ought to be for her size. 
She's getting much steadier about standing up on her own, but she still has not attempted any solo steps. However, she is using cruising now as a mode of transportation almost as much as crawling so maybe she's
starting to decide that walking would be faster and allow her to do more.
anymore. Any other stuff I can think of is too advanced for her, but the normal baby stuff that she used to love doesn't seem to interest her anymore. I long for some sort of schedule again like we used to have-bottle, free play, help mommy work, books, nap, bottle, outdoor exploration and walk, more books, free play, music, bottle, nap, Kyle's home. 
Those were the good old days. 
Here's the tantrum. A great display of that "Tude" Doc H. was talking about!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4313963354678114737&hl=en
It's so hard for me to believe that Hannah is one year old already, but it's true. We had the party on Saturday to prove it! Speaking of the party, it was a great success. It was so nice to see everyone that could be there. The weather was perfect and I made plenty of cake. YEAH! I was even pretty proud of Hannah's little Nemo cupcake I made. I thought I did a pretty good job trying to freehand a fish when I have no artistic skills at all! I think everyone had fun hanging out and playing basketball, football, and of course having a huge squirt gun fight (that escalated into just throwing cups of water instead!). Hannah enjoyed watching everyone and crawling around in the grass. Even though I said no presents, Hannah got tons anyway. She REALLY enjoyed unwrapping all the gifts
although she wasn't too sure about Kyle taking each present away when it was time to open a new one. She wanted to play with each new gift RIGHT NOW. At one point when Hannah was opening gifts, Kyle instructed her to say thank you to the person who gave her the gift and instead of signing thank you Hannah signed more! Now that's a habit we are going to have to nip in the bud early! One really cute thing that Hannah did during the party came when she was opening her gift from Sarah, Jason, and Evelyn. One of the presents was a framed picture of Hannah and Evelyn. Immediately Hannah grabbed the picture and said, Eva! She kept saying Eva over and over again and DID NOT want to let go of that picture. Kyle hung it up in her bedroom and every single time we go into her room now she looks for the picture and says, " Haaanaaaah, Eva." It about puts tears in my eyes every time! Hannah loves all her other gifts too. She got several stuffed animals and has been having a grand ole time telling me over and over again what each stuffed animal or doll is and then giving them 
hugs and kisses. She's really into reading her new books too. One of her favorites is a totally paper book from Evelyn's Grandma about Paul Bunyan. I think Hannah likes it so much because it has big girl pages. She's really into books that are like what mommy and daddy read at the moment. She thinks she is moving past board books, but I've got news for her, she's not getting paper books for quite awhile still even though she is quite gentle with the paper books all things considering. Hannah got two presents that are rocking toys and she's really been enjoying riding those. She gets on and holds onto the handles and just shakes her body back and forth with a silly grin on her face the whole time. One of her toys that she got is a magnetic farm with pieces of farm animals that you can stick into the barn. She LOVES playing with those magnets so much that she's already lost the back half of the cow! The animals are all in two pieces in case you are wondering and you have to match up the right head and tail to get it to sing and make the animal sound. I'm back again the next day and now we are missing the front half of the pig too! Poor animals!
then letting her upper body flop back onto the floor. I think it gives her a bit of an adrenaline rush and since she's a little thrill seeker she does it over and over! The first time she did it Kyle and I were standing around talking to some friends of ours and no one was really paying much attention to Hannah (that was our first mistake!) and then all of a sudden I caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was just standing with her knees bent, kinda like she was riding a surfboard, in the middle of the room! I gasped and said, Oh My Gosh! and then everyone else looked around and made surprised noises (our second mistake!) and then Hannah got so excited that she fell over!
stick in some articles every now and then. I've heard her say uh baby and the dog a few times. She's getting really good at asking for things politely and using please. She's not quite as good at thank you. We don't get any spontaneous thank yous like we do pleases, but she will do it about 70% of the time if we remind her. Recently she started calling Evelyn's mommy by name. Her name is Sarah and Hannah calls her RaRa. It's so cute to hear her, but so far Hannah refuses to do it in Sarah's presence! She'll only do it in a response to a picture of Sarah. A few days ago Hannah learned a new food word. She will now say Peesh when she wants a peach. It's so cute! Of course I'm biased since I think most things Hannah does are cute!
We're still working on using utensils and bowls at meals, but that really hasn't made any improvements. Hannah's really interested in holding the spoon or picking up the bowl, but not so interested in actually using them to eat. We got her some new big girl sippy cups without handles and so far she's doing pretty good with them. She doesn't always finish all of her milk out of them, but that could also be because we've started to add more milk and less formula instead of the 50/50 mix she was getting. We found out the other day that Hannah really likes homemade pizza. We made a Boboli pizza for dinner with sausage, green peppers and onions as toppings and she scarfed it right down. I guess she's the typical American kid with a pizza addiction!
to lower herself down. I'm a bit worried that once she gets good at standing on her own that she's going to try to walk down those steps on her own while I'm not looking and take a header off the deck! Another physical skill that Hannah has been practicing is bouncing, rolling, and throwing a ball. She got a bouncy ball for her birthday and she already had a soccer ball and now she plays with them almost every day. She will even go get one and then roll it to you to get you to play with her. Kyle taught her how to dribble a ball at her party and now she's really into bouncing the ball. She will pick it up, throw it towards the ground and gleefully shout "Buhall!"
that. For her birthday she got 2 books that had paper pages and I decided that I was just going to let her have them and if the pages got torn, they got torn. They are her books and she ought to be able to have them. So far she's been really good with them although she did accidentally rip on of the pages because the book had a handle and so the pages had a hole cut out of them for the handle and she got her hand stuck in there and couldn't get it out and she pulled really hard and ripped the handle off that page. Not too crucial since none of the words and not really any of the picture was on that part. 
Today Hannah discovered a new skill that she wants to master and that is the art of dressing herself! Pap, Mindy, and Uncle Kevin came to visit us and Pap and Mindy brought Hannah her birthday presents since they won't be able to come to her party. Well, her present was lots of new clothes and Hannah had a blast taking them out of the bag and then trying to put them on and take them off over and over again. She was really good about getting her legs through, but of course couldn't get them pulled up and trying to pull things over her head were a big frustration to her. At one point she asked Mindy for help and so Mindy helped her pull a skirt on over her onesie and then put her bikini top of her new bathing suit on over her onesie too! She was certainly stylish! Once she got those new clothes on she didn't want to take them off and wore them the rest of the day. The skirt made it hard for
her to crawl around in so she had to adopt her crazy way of crawling where she crawls on her hands and feet instead of her knees.
In this second video if you listen you can hear her tell me that she sees more bubbles, another baby, blocks, and a flower. This is a great video of her doing the flower sign that I said was so cute in a previous post. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6910713314814269653&hl=en
highchair with her Zweibeck toast in her hand and food still in her mouth! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2650520767366045823&hl=en
e started grabbing her Whinnie the Pooh and signing and saying bear (sounds like Buhairrrr). Then she started pointing to bears in her story books (she has several of them) and doing the same thing. I personally don't think Pooh looks very much like a real bear and definitely not like either of the types of bears we saw at the zoo, but somehow she still knows. Tonight when I was reading her a bedtime story that goes through all the animal mommies saying they love their babies we got to the page with the bear (realistic looking) and before I could even start reading the page she said bear! Then when we got to the rabbit she said rabbit and when we got to the duck she said duck! I was absolutely floored! Earlier in the day we were reading her bible (in the bibl
e chair!) and we got to the story of Noah's Ark and it shows cartoon pictures of all the animals exiting the ark. She started pointing to the animals she knew and saying their names. She didn't know some so I told her about the llamas, goats, flamingos, etc and others she didn't have the exact animal, but had the general category right: cat for tiger and lion for example and bird for penguin and peacock. I am just amazed everyday at all she knows and how quickly she learns. I'm sure this is all normal stuff for babies and toddlers since they really do have so much to learn and I've often heard them described as little sponges which is exactly what Hannah seems to be, but I've not been around kids of this age much so it all seems so wondrous and totally insane to me! Regardless, I'm so proud of my little girl and all her accomplishments. Now if we could just get her stubbornness and tantrums under control . . . . I guess there has to be down side to her new found independence and knowledge, but how I wish the tantrums were a little less explosive and scary. Yesterday she threw one on the kitchen floor which is ceramic tile and she absolutely slammed her head face first into the floor because I wouldn't let her climb inside the dishwasher! She throws herself down and hits her head several times a day now and sometimes even deliberately bangs her head against things when she's frustrated or angry. It really scares me that she's going to hurt herself. So far it hasn't seemed to phase her, but it's definitely something I'm going to bring up with the doctor.
e fridge so that she could play with them. I put some duplicate pictures I had of her down there as well for her to play with. She loves to point to the pictures and then point to herself and say Hannah. She's also been conducting little experiments to see what the magnets will stick to. She's figured out so far that they stick to the fridge, bottom part of the stove and dishwasher and kitchen door, but not to the cabinets or the top part of the stove. Today she spent at least 15 minutes opening up the bottom drawer of the stove (where we keep the cookie sheets) and sticking the magnets to the inside of the front face of the drawer. She would stick them on, close the drawer, open the drawer back up, take the magnet off, look at it, stick it back on either the inside or the outside, close the drawer again, and then repeat the whole process over and over again. 
