One-year-old Adele

I'm six weeks late in posting about Adele's birthday. But I'm kind of glad for that, because since this girl turned one, her personality has come screaming through more and more every day. I like to think it all started with her discovery of birthday cake.

  

She is sassy and stubborn, hilarious and contagiously happy, affectionate and tough. I am so lucky that I get to watch her grow by the hour. I'll take all the hard work if it means I get to see this smile every day. Seriously, is this not the happiest little face you've ever seen?

  

Birthday party pictures will have to wait for another post. Here are some of my favorite things about one-year-old Adele, recorded over the last couple months.

Adele is very good at communicating her feelings already. She quickly gets angry when things aren't going her way, and yells nonsense until somebody fixes the situation. In the last two weeks, she has perfected the stinkiest stink face ever. It's not nice to laugh at a child's anger, but in this case, it's really impossible not to. I can't manage to get a good picture of the face, but here's a mild version of it.

She races to the stairs at every opportunity. She can climb them all easily, and tries to climb everything else she can get to. She also races to the bathroom to drop toys in the toilet. Her pride in these little feats is ridiculous. It makes it really hard to tell her no.

Trying to scale the fence at Josh's baseball practice.

She can stand alone for a few seconds, and loves to take steps while she holds my hand. I haven't found a pair of shoes that she'll actually keep on her feet though, so walking outside the house is tricky.

Every time we leave to walk Josh to school, I carry Adele in the bjorn. She kicks her legs and arms excitedly like a swimmer as soon as we step outside. When it's time to lock the door behind us, she slows us down by sticking her fat fingers in the key hole. She loves key holes, buttons, light switches, and is so proud when she figures them out.

She also loves tissue boxes.

She wants to eat all the time. She's liking baby food less every day, and prefers to try real people food with her seven teeth. She's not a fan of sitting in her high chair and being spoon fed. She wants to feed herself, especially when there are yogurt samples at Costco that she can fling everywhere.

She says bye bye, dada, baba, muh (more), ada (all done), mama, daaahhh (Josh?), iy (hi), uh oh, and dogga (doggie). I'm gonna say the first word she actually meant as a word was dada. She adores that man. In the video above, Matt tried to catch her saying "bu-bye mama" after I left, but he was a little late.

She likes to sit on the floor with me in the morning and have bites of my cereal for breakfast. She makes the best faces when she tries something new.

She doesn't like people to know she's a girl right away. I know this because she pulls off her headbands quickly, and throws them out of sight so they get lost. I don't have the energy to buy or make more. And even when she's wearing pink or a girly headband, I still get people commenting on my cute baby boy. Poor little bald baby...who sometimes wears her brothers' hand-me-downs, so maybe sometimes the comments are my fault.

She thinks she knows how to hold a pen already. She can take off the lids to markers and suck them down in the blink of an eye.

Her purple tongue after quietly sucking a stamp pad dry.

She loves to play peekaboo, dance to any kind of music (mostly in her shoulders and torso), and read books to herself. She is also known to snuggle with Jude on the couch, when he's not trying to knock her over or pull her socks off.

She has a shy face that will melt you. This is used any time she meets someone new, then she buries her face in my shoulder and looks up every few seconds to check them out again.

She is becoming extremely attached to me. She often won't let me work out at the gym, because a certain babysitter calls me after twenty minutes of crying and gives up. This is really weird for Adele, because she's generally a happy baby. I've had to schedule my workouts around the one babysitter she tolerates. It seems like she's happy with other people (like extended family and close friends) as long as I'm not in the room.

Rejecting Aunt Julia's love because I'm too close.

Almost every night, she sleeps 11 hours, and has for many months. She's my best sleeper by far. She often wakes up to whine, but puts herself back to sleep within a few minutes. She wakes up and plays or "reads" in her crib before letting me know she's awake in the morning. Having had a non-sleeping first baby, I realize how lucky I am with this one.

Adele is a smart, beautiful, happy girl who makes literally everyone smile. I hope that's true for the rest of her life. I also hope her skin stays this soft and squishy forever. It's the least she can do for me.