Happy First Birthday to Jade!

Today is Jade’s first birthday, as Sunshine and Lily have been informing everyone we meet all week.  They are more excited about the big day than she is (it’s just another day for her).  It’s hard to believe that this time last year, we were getting ready for her birth and adjusting to a newborn again!

I thought it would be fun for Jade’s first birthday to take a moment to shine the spotlight on her. Here’s some of her achievements over this past year.  (She won’t fit on Daddy’s arm like this anymore!)

Jade remains our happy baby.  She wakes up with a smile in the morning, ready to play (although thankfully she’s stopped doing that at 6 am).  If she hears her sisters talking in their room, she’s looking at the door, pointing, trying to head over there to see what they are up to.  She is full of smiles and laughs and they love making her smile and laugh.

Jade sat up at six months, crawled at eight months, and began knee-walking around ten months.  Sometimes we pick her up to help her walk, but her preferred mode of transportation is on her knees.  She can carry toys that way, I guess.  And point at things.  And see where she’s going.  She also climbs the stairs, so if her sisters go running upstairs to play, then she’s right behind them.  Or if they are both at school and Mommy is trying to get some homework done, Jade will head upstairs to find some toys for herself.

Right now, her personality reminds me of Sunshine.  She doesn’t like it when I go to class, but she’s usually okay when I’m gone.  She’s been waving “hi” and “bye” for quite a while, and even waves when we don’t say the words—like the other day when we walked into Sunshine’s spring break camp and Jade began waving at everyone.

As I mentioned, she’ll go off to play on her own often or explore the house.  When I go to Moms n Tots, she stays with the grandmas and the other toddlers while I visit with the other moms; several have expressed amazement that she’s okay being left there, but we go there from dropping her sisters off at school and I think she likes having the kids around after feeling left behind.

Like Lily, she has a fuzzy pink blankie.  Blankets make me laugh.  We have a lot of baby blankets.  I’ve tried sorting them out and giving away a few, but Lily still keeps hers close and many of the “baby” blankets were special gifts.  When Jade was a newborn, we had numerous blankets floating around the house.  Somehow, she’s ended up with a blanket that Lily actually got for Christmas but didn’t really want.  Jade loves it.  Did I mention that it’s soft and fuzzy?  Bedtime routine for her is to put her jammies on, pop her soother in her mouth, wrap her in her blanket, and then snuggles and bounces with Mommy.

Jade loves cats and dogs, helmets, sippy cups and water bottles, balloons, Mommy’s pens, her soother and fuzzy pink blankie, pinwheels, her sisters’ princess dolls and ponies, the MagnaDoodle, and bath time.

Last week, I attempted to put away her Exersaucer.  She hasn’t sat in it in quite a while (probably since she started knee-walking) and we’re tight on space around here.  I thought one year was a good milestone to put it away again (it came out at six months).  Jade disagreed with me.  After I’d washed all the toys and was attempting to get the Exersaucer folded, she crawled around me, expressing her dismay and worry about her toy.  So I finally put it up again and popped her inside, and she happily chewed on all the nice, clean toys.  All right, she can have it for a few months… maybe until we move.

For her first birthday, we’re inviting her godparents over to have coffee and cake.  We’ve kept our girls’ first birthdays small—for Sunshine’s, we had our parish priests over for supper and for Lily’s I can’t even remember what we did (bad Mommy!).

How do you celebrate your child’s first birthday?