Violet at one year

A few thoughts about Violet’s first year: 

I did monthly updates with Andy (first time mom) and now here I am a whole year into sweet Violet’s life without much of an update about her! I’ll do my best to remember and summarize this past year with our perfect, sweet girl. 

Honestly, from the beginning, she’s been a very sweet, good baby. By far our easiest baby. She’s got this way of bringing sweetness everywhere she goes. Maybe we especially notice it after having two boys? :) 

As far as milestones go, she’s been a little on the lazy end. ;) Maybe she’s just smart and realizes it’s not worth putting the effort into doing things that you can get other people to do for you! She started sitting pretty consistently at 7 months or so. She barely started crawling a week or two before she turned 1! And she’s not even close to walking. She hates to be on her feet, period. We’re working on it. She just barely started feeding herself her own bottles…not because she couldn’t? But I think because she preferred us serving her. :) She reserves her smiles for when they’re fully earned. I think Andy and Max get the most smiles and giggles. We’re starting to see a more silly side of her coming out now. If we start laughing, she’ll return the laugh. It’s very sweet. 

She’s got this crazy dark hair that sticks up everywhere right now. I made the mistake of shaving it (to make it “thicker”), and it was NOT a good move. It’s finally growing out a bit and looks so sweet if I take the time to come it over to the side. 

She likes to clap. She LOVES music. She’ll start dancing if we turn on something with a good beat. Her dancing mostly consists of bobbing her head up and down and moving her arms up and down too. It’s very cute. Her favorite dance number is, “I like to move it” from Madagascar. She just learned how to give kisses and it’s the sweetest thing. If you tell her to give you a kiss, she’ll lean forward until her mouth barely touches yours. 

I made it for a while exclusively pumping for her! I could write post after post about this journey, but to summarize: I pumped exclusively until she was 6 months old. At that point, I still pumped but didn’t pump as frequently, so I started supplementing with formula and doing frozen milk—I had quite the stash. I gave her one bottle a day of formula then fed her frozen/fresh milk the rest of the time. This lasted until about 10 months, when I switched her over to formula completely. I’d stopped pumping in the middle of July. It was a hard journey, but I think it was the right path for us. And I’m glad it’s over now! 

Violet just barely got her first tooth last week, so she’s a little slow in that regard! It’s made eating solids tricky for her, but she’s getting the hang of it now. She loves crackers, mac n cheese baby food, yogurt, and is our first baby that actually likes cow’s milk. She drinks 4 bottles a day of that and loves it. 

Right now, Violet spends her time crawling around exploring and getting into things, playing chase with Max, napping (still twice per day), eating, and being the cutest thing ever. She is adored by all and we can’t imagine life without her. 

On the day of her first birthday.