One Year Old

Last Sunday was a very bittersweet day for me. On the one hand it was my daughter's first birthday. On the other hand, my sweet baby girl Sophie turned one year old. A year? An entire year has passed? How is that EVEN possible. She is just my baby. My cute chunky monkey baby. that just giggles and adores you and sleeps half the day. But no, the day had to come. She turned one. sigh. I would start to cry every time I would stop and think about her birth. The moment I first saw her. I can see it right now. So beautiful. The moment I first held her and just laughed and cried with joy as I held my little baby girl and thanked my Father in Heaven for a beautiful healthy little baby once again.

She was a mere 6 lbs 10 oz. had gorgeous thick dark hair and eyes that were open and alert, taking everything in from the moment she was brought into this world. And now here it is, a year later. She still has incredibly thick dark hair (which I absolutely LOVE) She is curious about everything. She jabbers all day long. She will copy just about everything you say to her. She loves to growl at you. She loves to be chased and runs as fast as she can until she is laughing so hard she plops down on the ground and rolls over laughing. She loves to wrestle. She was definitely meant to come to a family with two big brothers.

Her brothers absolutely adore her. James from the very first moment he met her. Harrison, well it took a little warming up but he did, and they get along quite nicely. We used to call Harrison the little policeman because anything Sophie did wrong he would immediately tell her no, and then come tattle to us. He still does this to an extent, but mostly has discovered that Sophie is just as mischievous as he is, so they get along fine.

Sophie loves to try and dress herself. She empties drawers and baskets and carries the clothes around the house trying to put them on her head. For some reason her favorite item of clothing is the boys underwear. I always catch her carrying that around and I really don't know what her obsession is with it. Stinker. She also likes to carry things around in her mouth, like bottles, sippy cups, little toys, kind of like a dog would. That always makes us laugh. She wanders the house yelling "MA! MA! MA! MA! MA!" I'm not gonna lie, I LOVE that she likes her mama so much. She can also say, "Hello, Uh Oh, what's this? James, Dadda, and Ball"

Sophie likes to do things...perfectly. Really, she wouldn't consistently crawl until she could do it just right. No army crawling for her, just straight up crawling. Same thing with walking. She took her first steps a couple months before she would actually walk. We would catch her walking here and there but as soon as she saw you she would plop right down. Then one day she had perfected it and so began walking everywhere and hasn't crawled since.

Sophie loves loves loves her bed, brown blanket, bumpers, and bunny. If she doesn't have those things she will cry until she gets them. And then she will go right to sleep. She won't sleep without that blanket. She got them messy one night and so I put all her bedding in the wash, put new sheets on, and gave her a different blanket. That absolutely would not do. She cried until the bedding was washed, put back in her bed, and then she slept soundly. Butthead.

Sophie has fire. She looks really sweet and innocent, but she has fire. I am glad of it though. I like that she won't let people push her around. I like that she will let herself be known and heard. She does all that now. You take a toy away from her, she will quite literally yell at you. not cry, yell. okay it is more of a squawk, but you'll hear about it. I do let her know what is and isn't appropriate in the getting angry dept, and I know her terrible two's will most likely be hell. But I know that one day she will be a great woman. Smart. Confident. and Gorgeous.

Sophie is smart. REALLY smart. I can't believe how smart she is. I feel like she is constantly learning things, and wanting to learn things. She is always taking everything in. She learns thing so quickly from her brothers and she figures out how to do thing so quickly it constantly amazes me. When Ben blessed her, he said that she would excel academically. I have no doubt about that. She will.

The other thing about Sophie, she loves to laugh. She loves to be silly with her brothers. She loves other babies and kids. She is very social. She always gets so excited when she sees another baby/toddler. I love it.

What more can I say? I love my baby Sophie. I love holding her cute naked chunky little body while in the shower. I love how much she likes going for a run in the stroller with me. She loves it. She is just a pure joy in our house. We are all in love with her and love having her in our family. We love to play with her and have her laugh her head off and chase us around. We love her chunky little legs and her stick straight hair. We love how she jumps back into her blankets laughing when you go to get her out of bed in the morning.

So Sophie, we love you. and Happy Birthday!