Elayna's first birthday!

We had a birthday party for Elayna. For some reason, I don't have any pictures of her eating the cupcake, but I'm working on getting that. We had so much family there, it was great! That is what I remember most about my birthdays - having my grandparents and extended family there with my family.

This is Elayna standing all by herself:

She will walk if we hold one of her hands. She still hasn't attempted to walk by herself. Katie can sometimes lead her around by holding both her hands.

Elayna's stats for 1 year old: 19 pounds and 29 inches tall. She is healthy and on track. The doctor didn't have any concerns.

Elayna is completely weaned from breastfeeding as of Aug 19th. Hurray! As I was telling Ryan, now I can leave for as long as I'd like, because I don't have to be back at a certain time to feed her. It is very freeing. She loves her bottle, and gets so happy when she sees it warming up. The other night I was heating up some food for Katie, but Elayna was so tired. She heard the microwave, and came over so excited! She was pretty upset when she realized the contents of the microwave were not for her. Elayna only wakes up once in a 12 hour period at night to eat. That is also very nice.

Some of Elayna's favorite things are: babies, balls, playing with Katie, saying Hi to Katie, talking to Katie, laughing with Katie, following Katie around, and watching Katie. They have been playing together outside while I weed. Let me rephrase that. Elayna follows Katie around until Katie finally gives in and lets Elayna have whatever Katie took away from her. Then it all starts over again. I think I might have actually weeded for about 15 minutes without interruption the other day!

Elayna says, "thank you" when she wants you to take something from her. She loves to point, and loves that she can convey the idea that she wants what she is pointing at.

This is supposed to be a picture of her teeth, but you can only see the top 2. Her 4th tooth on the top came in on the 20th. The grand total is now 6. Katie didn't have any teeth when she turned one.


Katie was upset last week, and as I told her to get out of the car, I heard those awful words, "I hate you!". I was, of course, a little shocked, but mostly mad. I came back over to her, and asked her, "What did you say?". She refused to say it again, seeing as I was so upset. Then I told her she needed to apologize to me. After about 30-45 mins of tantrums, screaming, yelling, spankings, scoldings, explaining that it hurt my feelings, hugs, kisses, and holding her on my and Ryan's lap, she finally did apologize. I actually had been dreading this moment in my life. I knew that one day, my child would say those words to me, and I spent many nights crying and worrying about it. Now that it is over, I think that it will hurt more when she is older, but we will probably be fighting, so maybe it won't be as bad as I've imagined?

Anyways, I remember, ONCE, I said those words in reference to my mother. I was in my room, in the basement. I remember waiting until I KNEW she had gone upstairs, gone outside, and driven away. Still, after I yelled those words, I was immediately filled with remorse and shame. Even now, thinking about it, it makes me want to cry. How could I have ever felt that way about my wonderful mother?

Katie certainly has a mind of her own:

This is the middle of August, and what does she decide to wear? Her snowboots, gloves, hat and a newborn crocheted jacket. So strange.

On Friday morning Katie came into our bedroom at about 7:15 am (I think. I was kind of asleep). She reached down and turned on our sound machine, and told Ryan, "Shh. Go back to sleep". She quietly shut our door, then went into my computer room, closed that door, opened an internet browser, found the bookmark for Sesame Street, turned up the volume, and played games/watched videos until we came and told her to stop. Then she asked if I wanted her to "lock" the computer and she proceeded to do so. Amazing. This is what happens if I don't lock my computer screen so she can't do anything on the computer.