The REAL stuff!

Here is our big girl drinking REAL milk out of a sippy cup (straw cup, to be precise). She eats all REAL food now, and drinks whole milk (no more formula, yay!)! She started drinking whole milk the weekend before she turned ONE and absolutely loved it. I can't blame her, the formula smells pretty gross, so I imagine it must taste pretty bad, too. Our A loves to eat whatever she sees us eating and is always checking out our plates to make sure she has all the same foods we do! Sometimes we eat food that is a little too spicy or rich for her (shocking, right?) so then we have to feed her something different. This usually does not go unnoticed by her. :-)

Raisins seem to be a new favorite food. She tries to shove as many as she can fit into her "chipmunk cheeks" and then laughs when she can't fit any more in there! The teachers at her school (more on that in a minute) said they couldn't believe what a good eater she is and how independent she is when feeding herself. Can't imagine where that stubborn sense of independence came from, can you?

She still stands and pulls up, but has not started walking independently yet. She loves to explore new places but still finds crawling her most effective means of doing so! I am not in any rush for A to start walking but I know it will happen soon!

A started school (daycare) last week which was quite an adventure. Our babysitter's husband had to have surgery in January and is having unexpected complications from it. Although we loved our babysitter and her family, we couldn't stay home with A when they had to go back and forth to the hospital, so we decided it would be best to put her in daycare. Poor A was used to napping in a bedroom without any other children in the room and usually took between 3 and 4 hours of naps each day. Of course in daycare you cannot nap in a room by yourself and she couldn't fathom why anyone would want to nap when there were so many playmates in the room!

On Monday she was so exhausted that I had to give her a nap at 4 when I got her home and she was only awake long enough to eat dinner and go right back down. Later that night she woke up screaming at the top of her lungs! We think she had a nightmare and we're hoping it wasn't about mommy and daddy leaving her with strangers daycare!!!! :) I took this picture from my phone after we calmed her down from the nightmare. Thanks Aunt Allyson for the dog, he really comforted her in her "time of need"! :)

Most days last week she only slept an hour at school and was just beside herself with exhaustion when we got her home. The week ended on a good note, on Friday she took two short naps (1 hour each) and although she still needed a quick power-nap after we got home, she was a little more "herself" in the evening. Of course, I understand that we will be starting all over again on Monday, so hopefully I'll get the chance to blog about it this week.