Krysta Martinez: One Year

What an amazing year it has been since Keira was born. I worried so much about what it would be like to be a mother and take care of a baby and I could have never anticipated how much joy I would experience.

Her first birthday party was perfect, well besides the part where she tripped and gave herself a black eye. We had a great turnout, great food, delicious cake, and an abundance of gifts.

We took her 12 month picture at the pumpkin patch down the street. Whenever Keira is in an interesting place, she almost completely ignores Art and me. She runs around giggling and there is absolutely nothing you can do to get her attention. She just zones out. For this reason, we didn't get any pictures of her actually looking at the camera and smiling. She had more intriguing things to do... like taste pumpkins.

She had her 12 month checkup with Dr. Jones and he said he couldn't be happier with her. She got to stand on the regular scale and stand against the wall to get measured instead of laying down for her measurements. She just walked down the hall and stood right up on the scale like a big girl. It just about brought a tear to my eye. Dr. Jones says she has a big head, but it's a good thing because it means she will be smart.

At the ripe age of one...

Keira is an absolute character. Her favorite thing to do is giggle and the way she does it is so funny. Hah.... ha ha... Hah! She runs around laughing like that all the time. She likes to chase the vacuum around and laugh. She laughs like that every time she sees and touches animals and just about any time she wants to be cuckoo.
She is very hyperactive. Very sweet and well behaved, but just always on the move. She is not content sitting still for any length of time so it is very hard to take her places like church and the grocery store. She would much rather be on her own two feet than in your lap, a stroller, or cart but isn't quite old enough to let loose in public places.

We recently acquired a piano from my mom since she didn't have room for it any more and Keira loves to play on it. There is no way to cover the keys and I was afraid of her wanting to bang on it all day while Art is trying to sleep so I decided to use reverse psychology to keep her from being too interested in it- instead of telling her no and trying to keep her away from it, I give her praise and extra attention every time she plays a note. So instead of constantly running for the piano because she knows she isn't supposed to touch it, she only periodically walks over to it, reaches for the keys while looking at me, and plays her few notes, smiles contentedly, then finds something else to play with. It worked well.

She now has 8 teeth and her one year molars are just about to poke through, so she mostly makes her meals from eating off of my plate. She is extremely interested in anything we eat or drink. She only has baby food once, maybe twice a day and eats regular food most of the time. Dr. Jones wanted me to start her on regular whole milk instead of formula and she gave it a try today. First I tried giving it to her cold in her sippy cup and she took one sip and tossed it on the floor. She won't drink anything but water or juice in a sippy cup and only formula in her bottle- not juice. She is very particular that way. So at bed time I gave her warm milk in her bottle and she couldn't tell the difference. I think I will have to get her a different kind of cup to drink milk out of if I plan on getting her off of the bottle soon.

Her favorite sounds to make besides her famous giggle are big smooches and her trademark tongue click. Her smooches are so funny because she hasn't learned how to do them with her lips, she does them by putting her bottom lip behind her top front teeth.

For those of you who guessed her eyes would be brown, it looks like you were right. Her eyes are still not solid brown, but it would take some type of miracle to turn them any other color at this point. They aren't as dark as Daddy's, but she definitely has soft brown eyes, accentuated by gorgeous long eyelashes.

She still likes to put her blankie on her nose and breathe in and out through her nose. She thinks it's funny if we take a corner of the blanket from her and put it on our nose then she pulls it back and puts it back on her nose. She recently started holding it out so that we can put our nose on it too. If she is carrying around her big soft blanket, she drags it between her legs, holding the corner on her nose in front. What's so funny about the nose thing is that I did the same thing when I was a baby. My family thinks I trained her to do it, but it's in her DNA.