Extreme close-up!

Thanks for this fun shot, Aunt Joanne!
We love you.

These Little Feet

Sadie's been kind of obsessed with shoes lately. It's one of the words she knows both verbally and in sign language and she just likes to say it. She will bring me one of hers, one of mine, or even one of Andrew's, and proudly announce, "shooz!"
Tonight was the first time she took an interest in my flip-flops, which I thought was pretty amusing, seeing that I pretty much live in them.
I got to thinking about her feet. They are big (long) which seems to be an indication of her height, and they are prone to sweatiness, which she definitely got from me. My feet were a size 10 by some point during high school and grew almost a full size after my two year stint working at Nordstrom a few years ago. I don't like having such big feet, but I do like being taller than the average woman, so I don't complain. I wonder if Sadie will feel that way?
I wonder if she'll live in flip-flops the way I do? I wonder if she'll like having lots of fun, fashionable shoes or just a few essentials? Mostly, I wonder where she'll walk in her shoes. Where will these little feet wander in the world? There's no way to know. For now, I'll just dream of all the countless steps that lay before her.
Lucky little feet.

tears

Sadie is changing in lots of ways. She's walking. She's talking more than ever. She's also starting to shift into being more aware of her surroundings, and her repertoire of moods and feelings is growing. For example, she cries or at least looks very concerned when she hears a baby cry. She laughs when we laugh. She gets frustrated when she can't do certain tasks. She has even started to whine a little. (ugh)
She also seems to have dropped her afternoon nap. She'll sleep almost 3 hours in the morning/early afternoon, so she's not tired for a second one until 5 or 6, which is way too late. I just can't have her awake until 10 PM with us, especially when Andrew doesn't get home from work until 8 PM sometimes. I need my down time with him. The sad part is that it's beyond clear that she wants to A)spend time with him when he gets home and B) spend time with both of us at once.
This was illustrated last night when I put her down at 7:30, she cried hard until Andrew got home and got her up at 7:45. She was delighted until we put her back down at 8:30. She cried hard again, so I went in and rocked her and sang to her for 5 minutes. She totally relaxed in my arms but when I put her back down, she started crying again. Since we've been uber-spoiled with this angelic, perfect sleeper, it's really hard to just "let her cry it out". (this is where all of my friends with normal bedtime/nighttime crying babies will want to slap me. Sorry, guys - I'm just telling it like it is)
So, we know she wants to play with us. We also know she's teething (molars). But most importantly, we know that she's tired. We got her up one more time for a bit and put her back down for good at 9:15. She cried for almost a full half hour before finally giving up.

Not until the apartment was quiet did it occur to me that she might also just be very in-tune with me. I just learned of a good friend's mother being killed and I also had a root canal yesterday.
Maybe the tears were intuitive and empathetic.

(I can almost hear the sarcastic remarks already...but hey, it's possible.)

You've come a long way, baby!

Today was really great.
It was fun to celebrate our little miss Sadie all day long. We sang happy birthday to her when she woke up this morning, which she seemed to really like.
She had a nice breakfast (oatmeal & bananas) and she stumbled all around the apartment, babbling and moving things here and there.
I gave her a bath and she took a long nap. So long, in fact, that we missed our photo appointment at Sears, which I only scheduled on a whim yesterday, so that was no big deal. Aunt Joanne will be here the next 2 weekends, so we'll get lots of great photos to mark her turning one.
I bought her 3 balloons at Safeway (she calls them "moow!") and we spent some time at Grandma and Grandpa's. She hung out with Stitch and I did my best to help with some party-prep for tomorrow. Sadie took her first tumble (read: face-plant) off of the couch, but didn't even need mom (me) to get over it. Grandma did just fine; imagine that!
Later we had a party in San Jose to attend. It was an Olympic Send-Off party for our friend and amazing triathlete, Becky Lavelle. She made the Olympic team as an alternate after a really rough year and we are all so proud of her. It was nice to celebrate her achievement with dozens of her local fans.
Andrew searched for somewhere for us to have dinner, and since a local Ethiopian place came highly recommended on Yelp, we headed on over. Dinner was delicious and Sadie gobbled up all sorts of authentic, organic, delicious cuisine like collard greens, roasted and mashed chickpeas, potatoes, green beans, and onions all in savory sauces. At least one of them was pretty spicy, so I got a little nervous at one point that she might not keep eating, but she just asked for water and went on eating.

She especially loved the injera, which is the spongy pancake-like bread that you use in lieu of utensils. It tastes kind of like sourdough bread and it's apparently very high in iron. Bonus.
Here's a video of Sadie "ordering" her 1st birthday dinner.

We arrived home just minutes before the exact moment of her birth - 9:42 PM. I've been expecting to get all weepy but it hasn't happened yet.

This year has been so blessed and we have had the most fun with her.

Happy Birthday, Bean! We love you more than you know.

a year ago today...

365 days ago I woke up very early with labor pains, and I was thrilled. I was 12 days past my "due date" and was scheduled for an induction in less than 48 hours. I had tried all sorts of home remedies to go into labor naturally, and I even had my first acupuncture experience to try to induce labor (it was so relaxing that I fell asleep!) My mother-in-law had been here for 2 whole weeks from Massachusetts in anticipation and let's just say we were ready. Really ready.
Little did I know that it would over 40 hours later that I would finally get to push my baby out. Our plan to labor at home as long as possible was challenged by one of my body's reactions to intense pain once labor really got going strong: vomiting. Who knew? Assuming that dehydration and fatigue were going to be a problem, we went to the hospital where things felt pretty much completely out of our control. At 4 AM the next morning (roughly 6 hours after being admitted) we were told "get induced or go home" because the IV fluids, etc. had slowed my labor way down. To make a long story a little shorter, we stayed and went through a bunch of interventions, a less-than-ideal epidural ordeal, several extremely tense moments, and ultimately the happiest, most awesome experience of our lives: a baby girl emerged from me and into our lives and hearts forever.
I look forward to doing it all again. :)

first words

Color me proud.
Sadie is taking leaps and bounds forward into the world of communication. We've been doing sign language with her for months now and she first started signing at about 7 months. She would sign "milk" while nursing. It was another full month before she used it in context to tell me she wanted milk, but it was exciting nonetheless. She now signs water, eat, bird, dog, light, hi/bye-bye, and she's close to using signs for when she needs her diaper changed. Lots of signing parents use the sign for "toilet" instead of the signs for "diaper" and "change" so I need to pick one and use it consistently. She seems to understand many more words when I sign to her, and she often looks at me to tell her what something is, so I need to study my books and learn some more.
Her verbal communication is also exploding. She's got "mama" and "dada". Ball is "bah". Duck is "duh". Last night, moon was "moow". She says "baby" perfectly, and loves babies! She also claps whenever we say "yay!"

She is an incredible mimic, so I think we can expect new words every few days pretty soon, which just blows us away.
I can't believe that before we know it, we'll be able to have a conversation with her. It seriously gives me chills.

if she's not wearing PINK...

Today Sadie and I were on a quest for a picture frame. I had some professional shots taken of her a couple of months ago at one of those places at the mall, because we had a gift certificate from Christmas (thanks Uncle John & Aunt Shannon). I still don't have any pictures of her in frames, and nothing decorating the walls of her room, if you can believe it - but that's a whole other topic. I have a coupon for a local framing place which expires in a few days, so I'm on the hunt. We went to 3 different places and somehow still didn't find the right thing (trying to put 5 photos in one frame with custom matting, if you care)
Anyway, as we strolled through one place, a lady passing by exclaimed "What a handsome little guy!" Sadie was wearing a bright red sweatsuit embroidered with colorful flowers (thanks Marie) and she looked very girly to me. I thought it was worth mentioning because it actually happens a lot when we're out, unless, of course, she's in something pink.
Don't get me wrong - It actually doesn't bother me in the least that complete strangers don't know whether she's a boy or girl. A smiling lady exclaiming "What a handsome little guy" sounds a hell of a lot better to me than "...and when are you due with your next one?"
On second thought, maybe THAT would be the clincher to get me away from the computer and into the gym.

p.s. Sadie doesn't care if people think she's a boy, either!

Or does she?