Journey to Pridemore Pastures : Kendall is 1! The Stats...

Kendall had her one year checkup on her birthday, April 7. It's not too fun to get 3 shots on your birthday!! But other than that, her appointment went well!
Our "chunky monkey" continues her downward slide away from chunkiness. She is 20 lbs 2 oz (35th%), 30 inches (75th%) and big ol' noggin came in at 97th%!! No wonder she isn't walking yet, she has quite the heavy load on top!! In the past, at 12 months and 20 lbs you can turn carseats from rear facing to forward facing. This wasn't the case with Ella, since she was rear facing until she finally reached 20 lbs at 18 months. The AAP recently changed their recommendation and now want babies to remain rear facing until age 2. It isn't law yet, but it is the official recommendation. Right now Kendall remains rear facing. For some reason people like to give me a hard time about this...I'm not sure why. There is no question at all that it is safest...in the most common type of car accident a rear facing child would have support of their neck and head, while a forward facing child would be more likely to have a broken neck. Yes, their legs may at some point get long and touch the seat, but I would rather my child have a broken leg than a broken neck! And Kendall is very happy in the car seat...she doesn't know any different and she rarely cries in the car. If she is happy and she is safer, then why change! So anyway, this concludes my car seat safety rant! Dr. Bindner said she looked great. She says about 4 words...Mama (though she rarely uses it lately), Dada, Ella (her most used word!) and Hi. She said that was right on track. The thing I was most concerned about was her eating, but Dr. Bindner said what I'm doing is great. At that time she had NO interest in solid food and would usually only eat YoBaby yogurt or banana-based baby food. She had just started eating cheerios, puffs, yogurt melts, and little baby snacky things like that. Dr. Bindner advised me to just continue to offer her a variety of things and eventually she would start to eat more things. Since the appointment she has been doing better. She will eat torn up pieces of whole grain wheat bread, take bites of bananas, eat a variety of crackers and vanilla wafers, and she actually really loves broccoli!! And the other day Ella and I were eating a frozen pizza and Kendall was nearly climbing out of her high chair to get to it. I gave her a few small pieces and she LOVED it! It isn't the ideal food for my 12 month old, but I was just happy to see her branching out! And she is completely on whole milk now. YAY!! I started mixing whole milk with frozen breastmilk a few days before her birthday and by the day after her birthday she was completely on whole milk. I'm very, very, very happy to be finished breastfeeding! And the best part about that is Kendall is no longer waking up at 5 a.m. every morning to eat. That was rough. I am happy to report that we are all sleeping through the night - in fact Kendall sleeps 11-12 hours straight each night. Yay! I forgot how awesome it was to get 8 straight hours of sleep! She is only taking one nap, but that is fine with me, I'd prefer her take one long nap in the afternoon as opposed to two short naps during the day.
As I mentioned before, Kendall isn't walking yet but I think she probably will be within the next 2 weeks. She took her first two steps and mom and dad's house last weekend. My dad and Ronnie witnessed this - my dad alone witnessed her crawling for the first time, so he's pretty excited! A couple of days ago she took 4 steps two different times. I think she could probably walk across the room right now if she wanted to, but she isn't motivated enough just yet. She'll stand up and you can see the conflict in her face...she wants to go so badly but is scared, so she stands there and thinks about it for a few minutes, then just sits down. If she does muster up the courage to take a couple of steps she will sit back down before she gets off balance to avoid a fall.
Kendall has become a lot of fun lately. She has a few "tricks". She will give high-fives and "pat" things when asked. If you ask her where her tongue is she will open her mouth and say "ahhhhh!" She won't stick her tongue out, but it is still really cute!! The other day we were in the living room and I saw her straining and grunting. I was like, "Kendall are you pooping?" She crawled across the floor to where I have a box of wipes in the TV stand, pulled the box down, looked at me, and patted on the wipes. Maybe she will be an early potty trainer!!
In my last post I forgot to mention our festivities on Kendall's actual birthday. That morning started out kind of rough, as I took Ella for an allergy shot (never a happy event) and followed that up with Kendall's checkup, which went well aside from ending it with three vaccinations. When we got home we gave her her presents. Ronnie and I gave her a chair like Ella's monogrammed with her name. Actually it was Ella's old chair with a new slipcover. :) If you remember, Ella got an upgrade for her 3rd birthday. Ella wanted to giver her a baby doll, so we found a baby doll and a book for her to give her. Some how, with the gazillion books we have, we never have owned a copy of The Very Hungry Catepillar, so we took care of that. That night we had friends over and grilled out and had cupcakes to celebrate K's birthday. We were so glad that Joey, Ashley, Gavin, Graham, Nic, Toni, Grace, Jason & Susan were able to celebrate with us!

Yay! Presents!