Clara 12 months

And just like that, one year has come and gone.

Loves:
Looking at herself in the mirror while simoltaneously smiling and hitting at the baby in her reflection.
Taking a bath.
Reading books.
Swinging at the park.
Playing the Xylophone free app on the iPad (we use this as a motivator for crawling).
Eating yogurt and yogurt melts.
Going on walks in the stroller.
Smiling, and just being cute.

Does Not Love:
When we try and brush her teeth. Seriously. You would think the world is going to end.
When we wipe her face after a meal. Or when, heaven forbid, we try to get a booger out of her nose.
Super loud noises (think toilet flushing, hand dryers in the RR, etc) or when other babies cry (although her aversion to both seems to be lessening).
Food with texture. So basically anything that is not in pureed form.
When anyone tries to manipulate her hands to show her how to do anything. This makes teaching her to use a sippy cup, or any other like task, very pleasant.

Eating: Pediatrician wants Clara on a toddler formula now since she is not eating enough table food to meet all of her nutritional needs (thus, we have to hold off switching her to whole milk until she is getting more nutrients from real food, since toddler formula covers more essential nutrients than whole milk). We also started feeding therapy (her OT does this). Clara has a strong aversion to anything with texture and thus whenever we give her something, she will spit it out. She loves the taste b/c she always goes back for another bite of most anything we offer, but after a few seconds of moving it around in her mouth, she spits it out. Pediatrician told us to reduce the amount we give her per bottle, in hopes that she would be a tad more hungry and thus more motivated to eat at mealtimes. She gets 3.5 bottles per day and a breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Mealtimes can be a big source of stress (but I hear this is true for a while, no? Ha!), but she is making progress. We will get there!

Sleeping: I assume Clara is on the verge of transitioning to one nap, although I still think this is a few months away. There is no way she could make it to 12 or 1pm for just one nap a day, but she is also starting to fight both naps a little. Just playing it by ear. Some days she takes two solid naps, and other days she takes one solid nap and one 30-45 min nap. On the two solid nap days, she sleeps usually 10-11:15am and again 2:30 or 3pm - 4:15 or 4:30pm. She goes to bed by 7:30pm and wakes about 6:30-7am.

Schedule at 12 months:
7am - wake, bottle
8am - breakfast
10-11:15am - Nap # 1
11:30am - bottle
12:30pm - lunch
3pm - bottle
3-4:30pm - Nap # 2
5:30 - dinner
7pm - bottle
7:30pm - bedtime

This is probably the most consistent she has (ever) been in terms of a schedule. For the last two weeks she has been pretty close to the exact schedule above. And you know that makes my heart happy. I love me some predictability. (Does predictability and parenting even go in the same sentence????)

A few friends suggested switching her bottle and meals so that the meal comes first, to see if she might eat more baby food/table food. Tried that Thursday for the first time and, from what I can tell, she did eat a little more than when I offer the bottle first.

Development: In the day in and day out, I would be lying if I said it was easy to focus on only the positive. It's not always easy. Just being real. I especially tend to focus on the negative when we are around other babies her age (or younger) that are far more developed in their skills and milestones. That said, she really is continuing to make progress, even if much slower than some ideal timetable I have set in my mind. 

Here are a few things to note on the development front:

While she isn't crawling yet, she is able to slowly move herself across the floor if motivated enough (think iPad). 

She can consistently bring more table food to her mouth, and she is getting better and better at the pincher grasp. The last three days she has successfully grasped and brought several yogurt melts to her mouth. 

She now consistently reaches up for us to hold her, get her out of the carseat, high chair, grocery cart, etc. 

A friend bought her a little musical drum set (with other instruments inside) and after showing her 2-3x how to work the trumpet, we held it out for her and she pulled it to her mouth and tried to press the exact buttons we did to make it work!! This was really cool to see. Now if we could only teach her how to blow so that it will actually make some noise. 

She is able to turn pages on several of her books. 

We are getting her eyes reexamined this Tuesday, by a Neurosensory Eye Dr. We had her eyes checked back at the New Year, but we, as well as her OT, suspect there is more going on than just her being near sighted. Her OT thinks Clara has kaleidoscope vision, or something similar. This Thursday, we meet with the TX Children's genetics department to discuss her chromosome abnormality (genetic deletion on her 4th chromosome). We also have a follow up with her neurologist at the end of the month, to assess progress, needs, further testing and/or action steps, etc. The pediatrician also wants us to now begin speech therapy since Clara is still very quiet, compared to other kiddos her age. So. . . more details to come on all of the above. 

A few other things:

7 teeth (same as last month)

Size 12 month clothes, although some are snug depending on brand

Size 1.5-2 shoe. 2's are still too big, yet 1's too small. I think this girl is just going to have tiny feet!

Size 3 diapers, size 4 overnights

19 pounds 3 oz (20th%)

29 inches (49th%)

HC is 16.73 inches (2nd %)

BMI is 16.04

Adventures: Just been our usual weekly routine as of late (ECI, OT, etc). Nothing too exciting. But, we are having family and some friends over Saturday for a little b-day party celebration!! Cannot wait! A big thanks to Pinterest for giving me ideas, while also inducing a nice amount of anxiety as I, being the non creative/non crafty person that I am, stare at the pictures and ask myself "How in the world do people make this look so easy???"

Happy Friday!