Sylvia is 15 months old!

That's right... Sylvia is 1.25, and she's now over 22 pounds. Her second year seems to be going by even faster than her first!

She's still falling asleep on her own for naps and bedtime. When we put her down, she usually just rolls over, snuggles with one of her "babies" (one of which can be seen in the chair picture), chatters to herself a bit, and goes to sleep. She usually goes to sleep with no fussing, and she usually sleeps through the night (11 hours) and sleeps for 2 full naps (about 1.5 hours each).

She now has her 8 center teeth (4 on top, 4 on bottom). I kind of miss the gap-tooth smile that she had for a while, but of course she still slays me with every smile.

She's still a really good eater... Well, I guess that depends on what one means by "good" eater:

She's not saying too many discernible words (we've picked out "yea", "no", "hi", and "duck"), but she repeats lots of words and sometimes tries to fill in words in books and songs. And she's getting better and better at letting us know what she wants. She points to her high chair when she's hungry, she brings us her bedtime books when she's tired, she points to the door when she wants to go outside. This one means "Mommy, pick me up and put me on this thing!"

She understands more and more, too. She responds to a lot of different questions and instructions. She's even getting better at learning from admonishments. When she does something she's not supposed to, we usually wag our fingers and say "no no no" or "tsk tsk" and explain what she's not supposed to do. When she's in a situation where she's tempted to do something that she's not supposed to, she will often look at the object of temptation and say "no no no" or wag her finger at it, as though she needs the extra help to overcome the impulse. It's pretty darned precious.

She's a real sweetheart. She runs up to us and gives us hugs and kisses, and she's such a little snuggler. The other day, I was laying on the floor playing with her, and she came over and rested her head on mine:

Of course she gives us a hard time sometimes, but she's just generally a very sweet and happy kid:

Sylvia is 14 months old!

Sylvia is another month older! We can't believe how much she is growing up and changing. It's hard to believe that she was barely taking steps a few months ago! She just zooms around now like it was nothing!! And she understands so much. In response to questions, she points at things and says things that sounds eeriely like "dis" and "dat". She knows some of her toys by name and kinda tries to say the names herself.

She now has 7 teeth -- and an 8th looks like it is coming soon! She uses them to eat all sorts of things, and she's getting A LITTLE better about discriminating the difference between things that are okay to put in her mouth and things that are not (but just a little). She's often really good when we ask her to do things like "Come to Mommy" or "Give that to Mommy". She's not so good with "Don't do that" or "Stop" or "That's gross / not food."

AAAANNNND, she is now going down to sleep by herself and sleeping for full naps and sleeping through the night. It's early days yet, so we could still totally mess it up, but it's going really well so far.

We're just having a ball with her!

Sylvia is also now the child of 2 PhDs. We were shocked to discover that our requests are taken no more similarly when we explain our professional qualifications.

Here are some recent pictures:

Sylvia is 13 months old!

I did briefly consider that it might be silly to continue with these every month now that she's made it past the year mark, but I post so rarely that without these I might just stop altogether!

Throughout Sylvia's first year, she continued to wake up hungry at least 2-3 times each night. Apparently Sylvia is not the kind of kid to just naturally start sleeping through the night, so we've decided to take matters into our own hands. Following a process recommended in The Sleepeasy Solution, we started the weaning process a few days ago -- each night allowing her to have less and less milk. She took it pretty well until the last night when she seemed to be offended by being offered only 1.5 ounces. Last night was the first night without any overnight feedings... She was pretty upset with us for about 3 hours, but she eventually fell back asleep. Hopefully it'll get easier from here.

We're all doing well. Max and I are still inching toward our graduate degrees. Sylvia definitely boosts the difficulty factor on getting to the finish line, but it'll be all the more gratifying once we get there! We let the TV help us distract her a little more often than we'd like, but we do spend a lot of time playing with her, and most days we a least manage to get her out to the nearby playground or the pool. By this time next month, we should be the Drs. Kraxaw! Then maybe I'll finally post another video of Sylvia walking!

12-month progress report

Sylvia had her one-year pediatrician check-up today. She was again deemed "perfect"! She must be growing well; her weight is now over 50th%. Her height is still a little under 50th%, but her head circumference has now reached the 90th%. The doctor commented that Sylvia was babbling a lot and generally doing very well.

The only issues were that the doctor thinks we should start transitioning Sylvia off her bottle, away from her pacifier, and toward sleeping through the night. We'll see how that goes!

She was pretty pleasant through the appointment until those awful shots. Here's how Sylvia feels about getting shots:

Fortunately, she found some comfort in nutella:

walking proud

For now, Sylvia still generally prefers to benefit from all 4 limbs in getting around, but it's not for a lack of competency:

Sylvia is 1 year old!!

Happy Birthday

Sylvia!!!

Sylvia Rose is one year old today! She's happy and healthy and sweet as can be!

She weighs about 20 pounds, 10 ounces. She seems to have reached a point where her weight gain has started to slow down, but you wouldn't think it from carrying her around! Our arms are tired!! She now has 4 teeth, and she uses them pretty well. She eats all sorts of things these days. She has a funny ritual, though, of tasting something for a moment, spitting it out while she considers how she feels about it, and then putting it back if it passes her taste test. She has taken a few unaided steps here and there, but she is still primarily a crawler / cruiser. She's started reaching for us when we ask if she wants "up" and crawling over to us to sit on our laps or put her head against us. You can imagine how happy that makes us!

She's been really good through all the moving and travelling, not to mention the fact that Max and I are both spending a lot of time working on our dissertations. Once we have a moment to relax, I'll get a video or two up.

What a year!!

Here are a few pictures of the birthday girl:

Sylvia is 11 months old!

This is at least my 3rd attempt to do this! Blogger, my phone, and bad wifi / cell reception have all been conspiring against me, but I feel good about this time...

Sylvia woke up in a very good mood on her 11-month birthday! She stayed in a good mood as we sang to her while we finished packing up, and as we put her in the car, and even as we started driving and kept going... and going... and going... After a nice long nap, though, she was FED UP, and we still had about 2 hours ahead of us before getting to Yosemite. I'm not sure what she makes of the big rocks or the falling water, but she enjoys the many relatives (and random people on the shuttle bus) cooing over her. But I think I'll post about Yosemite later...

We weighed her in at 20 pounds, ?? ounces today. It's harder to tell now that she wiggles so much! Sylvia now has 3 teeth -- two on the bottom, and one off to the side on the top. It's pretty amazing how efficient she is with them, though. She's been eating all sorts of things. She wants just about anything Mom & Dad are eating -- unless it's green! I keep having to remind her that avocado is better than in looks.

For not being able to walk, she sure is mobile! She zooms around on all fours, and is really good at pulling herself up and cruising around on available furniture &/or people. She also likes to sit and spin around in circles! (When we're back in civilization, I'll try to get some videos of her zooming around. But it may have to wait until some more progress has been made on the dissertation...)

I guess this is a common feeling, but I think Max and I both oscillate between feeling amazed that it's almost been a whole year, and having a hard time believing that there was ever a time before she was part of our lives. One thing is for sure: a lot happens in 11 months!