1 year old continued

Now for the boring stats part of the 1 year post--feel free to go back and look at the pictures in the last post if you're not interested!

So Gabby went to the doctor for her 1 year check-up, shots and a blood draw.  She is 23 lbs, and 30 in long (75th percentile for both)!  What a huge change from when she was 3 months old and not even on the chart for her weight!  I'm so proud of how far she has come.  She also got 3 shots and had a repeat blood draw.  Apparently, her lead levels were high on the 9 month draw--something I didn't know about until I got a letter from the state telling me her blood needed to be rechecked this month.  This is definitely a case where being a scientist bites me in the butt, because I know what elevated Pb levels can do, and I immediately freaked out about it.  After talking to her pediatrician yesterday and the daycare provider the day before, I'm pretty convinced it was an error in testing.  The daycare director has been watching kids in Sac for over 10 years, and the pediatrician has been here for 8, and neither one of them have ever heard of a child in Sacramento with elevated Pb levels.  Our house was built in 1983, and the daycare just went through a certification process to be declared "environmentally fit", so the places where she spends 99% of her time really should not have any Pb in them.  So now it's just a waiting game to see if this second draw comes back normal.  Hopefully I'll know by Friday.

Gabby is still not walking, despite most everyone (including Brian and me) swearing she would by now!  She is an expert at standing, and often lets go while playing to pass something from one hand to the other.  She can also "walk" using her now 3 walker toys, or by holding on to our hands.  So she has the balance and the mechanics down, it's just a matter of her putting it all together and taking off!  I think what I said in her 11 month post still holds true here--she gets along just fine by crawling, so she feels there's no need for her to walk!  Brian's convinced if they move her and the other 1 year old who is not walking yet into the 1 year old room at daycare they will both be walking within a week, but the rule is they can't be moved until they are walking steadily in shoes.  It makes a lot of sense from the teachers' point of view, but I can see Brian's point that Gabby and Dahlia never see walking so they don't know that they should be doing it.  I'm sure it'll work itself out and Gabby will be running around like crazy soon.  Then I'll be eating my words in this post!

Gabby has come a really long way with her eating in the past month.  We already had her on only formula and solids at breakfast (bananas and Cheerios at home, and whatever starch and fruit they serve at daycare that day), but now she is completely off of baby food altogether at home!  Daycare still sometimes gives her some at lunch (they make lunches for the 1-5 year olds, so sometimes there are things like sloppy joes that they don't give to the littlest ones; on those days, she gets pureed meat), but we currently have several containers in our pantry that will probably never be used.  Gabby loves the frozen mixed veggies (especially carrots and peas--surprising considering how much she hated the peas baby food), and the ready-made chicken strips.  She also loves frozen waffles, pancakes, bread and almost every other starch she's had.  The thing she loves most, though, is fruit.  Blueberries are her favorites, with grapes and strawberries a close second.  She also wolfs down catalope, honeydew, pineapple, apples, bananas--pretty much anything but mango (I think it's a bit too hard).  At dinner, we give her some chicken and the mixed veggies, and then top her off with fruit for dessert.  I'd love to have her eating our meals with us, but Brian really doesn't get home early enough for her to eat with us.  She's usually mostly done by the time we sit down to dinner.  She just needs to eat so much earlier than we do, and we cannot deviate from her schedule (plus it takes her forever to eat)!  For snack time, Pirate Booty is her absolute favorite, but she also likes goldfish, animal crackers, Ritz and chips.  Her favorite going out restaurant is Panera (their kids meals have no veggies or fruit, but she loves the lunch meat, cheese, bread and yogurt), and we just recently discovered that Chevy's has a really good kids' menu as well (Red Robin and Chili's do not--at least not if you want your kids to have more than fried food!).  It's so much easier now that we don't have to carry her food with us all the time!

We have also started mixing whole milk in with her formula.  She's still all formula at daycare, but at home, her bottles are now 50/50.  I need to get her on some vitamins soon so that we can make sure she's still getting the nutrients she needs.   I'm hoping to get her off of formula soon, and to wean her from the bottle at the same time.

As far as her words, she now consistently says bye, mama, dada, ball, bah (for sheep), baba (bottle), she makes a pretty good trumpeting sound (elephant noise), she is desperately trying to figure out how to make the ssss sound (she uses her nose now, and hasn't figured out the mouth yet), and just yesterday she started saying uh oh.  She uses the "word" a-na (accompanied with a really nice finger point) when she wants something identified or she wants it to play with.  She follows my pointing finger very well.  She loves to look at trees, but doesn't really have a word for them yet.  I'm really shocked that she doesn't have names for the cats yet.  She doesn't even try with Zoe, but sometimes she'll say dub when she's looking at Snowball.  I think she finds combinations of sounds a little intimidating still.  Although in thinking about it, if she does make a noise at a cat, it's always ma at Zoe and da at Snowball.  I love sharing billing with my cat.  I will say that she understands a ton more than she can say--especially food-related commands!

One really annoying thing she does now is bite--particularly annoying because she only bites me.  She's usually trying to bite my clothes, but she broke skin 2 weeks ago on my stomach.  I've instituted a "very stern NO! and walk away policy" (basically a time out, but I leave and she stays), but she still insists on biting me!  I have no idea why she only does it to me, and I'm not at all happy about it.  I guess I'll just keep up with the time outs.  I've already warned daycare so they can watch her when she's around the other kids (but again, it seems like she only does it at home and only to me).

As far as teaching goes, my classes are going well.  I'm in the classroom Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and have Thursday as my planning/grading day.  I've also just started a UOP class, so I'm going to be taking Gabby to daycare on Tuesdays so that I can get all the extra work done too.  The wine is coming along as well.  We racked for the first time this past weekend, and it tasted pretty much like my first batch of zin did at this point, so I'm optimistic it will be OK.  It's harder to make wine with a little one around!

I'll try to update again this week with the results of the Pb test!