Dear Hadley,
Happy birthday! You are officially ONE YEAR OLD. It is so crazy to think that at this time one year ago my water had broken and I was just hanging around at the hospital waiting for contractions to start so I could just meet you already! It was a long day, but, kiddo, you were worth the wait.

Over the weekend we celebrated your first birthday. Knowing your love for all things with antennae, we had a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme. I ordered a special birthday hat and a matching shirt from Etsy and we were ready to go.

A couple of my friends own a bakery and they made you a very special cake. Which you thoroughly enjoyed. It was wonderful to be surrounded by our family and friends knowing that we were celebrating you and everything that you are.

Fall is one of my favorite seasons, not only because both my daughters were born in the fall, but because the weather finally cools off, the colors start to pop, and of course, there are all the amazing activities that fall brings. One of those activities is pumpkin patches. I just love everything about them and I was so happy to share them with you for the first time. And you loved every second of it. You were particularly fond of the pumpkins themselves and loved to beat on them like a drum. Since you weren’t yet standing on your own, I propped you up in a big stack of pumpkins and you were just as happy as can be.

Another fabulous thing that happens in the fall is Halloween. There is just something whimsical about the holiday. We attended many Halloween parties, costumed playgroups, and of course, the grand finale of going trick-or-treating. You were a fabulous sport and really enjoyed the costumes. For all our indoor celebrations, we dressed you as a beautiful peacock but in Oregon it is far too cold to wander around our neighborhood in anything other than head to toe fleece, so you sported a warm, fuzzy cow costume.

Your confidence has finally started to show as you try (and succeed!) at more and more things. You are now pretty good at standing (especially when you are distracted and don’t realize you are doing it) and you are SO close to taking those first steps. I can see the gears turning in your head as you really contemplate it, but you are nothing if not cautious so you have decided to hold off a little longer.

But you did finally decide it was time to conquer the stairs. You have been going up them since the day after you figured out how to crawl, but coming down was another matter. For the longest time you would crawl to the edge of the stairs and wait at the top until someone would come and turn you around to help you slide down on your tummy. If we weren’t prompt enough for your liking you would simply smack the ground at the top of the stairs until someone came to your beck and call. It was pretty awesome having a baby who knew to stop at the top of the stairs, so I admit I got a little lax at putting up the safety gate, knowing you would just stop and wait for me at the top. But one day you decided to go for it and as I was heading up the stairs you were coming down. ON YOUR OWN. You had turned yourself around and slid down the stairs like a pro. And it was awesome. Sure, you still prefer for someone to turn you around, but we know you can do it and that is all that matters.

While you are usually all smiles and giggles and delightful, you are still a one year old. You can be quite a beast when you want to be and you have an impressive stubborn streak. Lately you have decided you no longer like to be buckled into your car seat (you don’t mind being buckled in, you just don’t like the process of me harnessing you in). So to prevent me from strapping you in, you fold your entire body in half, prostrating yourself in silent protest. I’m bigger and stronger than you, so I always win, but I could really do without this battle every time we get into the car.

You are also one tough cookie. In fact, your Daddy has nicknamed you “Bumper” in honor of all the tumbles, bumps, and thumps you take on a regular basis. For the most part, you just get back up and shake it off so quickly we don’t realize how hard you hit until the bumps and bruises show up later.

One of your all time favorite things in the world is reading. You simply LOVE books. You giggle with delight as we pull you onto our lap with a book in our hands. And if we happen to be sitting somewhere without a book (gasp!), you have figured out how to slide a book across the floor under one hand as you crawl towards us so we can read it to you.

Hand in hand with reading comes talking. You are starting to chatter and exclaim a steady stream of syllables and some of those are even actual words! You can say “Dada,” “Mama” (and much to my own personal horror, “Mom”), “baby,” and “yep.” You also say “bop” and “gap,” but I am pretty sure those don’t actually mean “bop” or “gap.” It’s fun listening to you practice varying your volume and tone as you speak. You are particularly fond of this deep voice you have and it can be a little disturbing when you utter “Mom” in such a baritone. I mean, you are not yet a teenager. You are still just MY baby and I would like you not to forget it.

I know I have said this a hundred times, but you are just such a happy little girl. I love watching you discover, explore, and just marvel at the world around you. I think in my thirty-some-odd years I have started to take things for granted and I am so happy to have you constantly reminding me how fascinating things can be. We live in a beautiful place, surrounded by amazing things, and we need to celebrate how lucky we are. I am so happy to have spent this last year getting to know you, to celebrate the beautiful person you are, both inside and out. You are truly a blessing and have made our family complete in more ways than I could have ever imagined. I am so happy to have you, to know you, and to spend the rest of my life treasuring you.

All my love,
Mama

Dear Hadley,
Today you are eleven months old. It is such a weird feeling to know you have been with us for almost an entire year, yet it feels like you were just born yesterday. All I know is that you have been the most amazing addition to our family. There is not a single day that goes by that you do not bring a smile to the face of every single person in our household. Not to mention all those poor, defenseless people we run into when we are out and about.

Just like tonight when we were out shopping at REI. I was holding you and talking with your dad about winter coats for you and Ana. While we were discussing water-proof vs water-resistant, you were looking over my shoulder waving at a family across the aisle. The family had a couple little girls who were giggling and waving back at you. It took me a moment to realize that their giggling was because of you. But you were just doing what you do best: bringing happiness to all those around you.

To celebrate you turning 11 months, we followed a tradition we began with your sister: we took you to get your ears pierced. It worked out great when we took Ana at this age. She was aware enough that she didn’t pull on them and as a bonus she stopped pulling on MY earrings. (It would be great if you could do this too.) You did great with the actual piercing. After the lady pierced the first ear you started to fuss, and you got a little louder after the second ear, but as soon as she was finished I popped a grape sucker in your mouth and you instantly quieted. In fact, within a matter of minutes you were giggling and kicking your feet in pure glee. So I am pretty sure we didn’t traumatize you too much.

It takes quite a bit to phase you, but it has been known to happen. September was pretty warm around here and we set up our kiddie pool a few times. One particularly hot day I thought it would be fun to see what you thought of the pool. You love water, splashing around and having a great time, but you are pretty particular about the temperature of the water. Since we had just filled the pool, it was pretty cool (I usually add a few pots of hot water to take the chill off the icy hose water) and when your Daddy plunked you in the pool you were NOT happy about it. So we quickly removed you from the pool and and let you play else where. But you kept crawling back to the pool. You preferred to lean on the edge of the pool and lazily splash in the water with your hands. And I totally get it. You want to have fun, but it’s got to be on YOUR terms.

Speaking of your terms, eating is the same way. If you are going to eat, it is going to be food you can feed yourself. You will tolerate us to feed you the occasional bites of soup or ice cream (things you wouldn’t be able to eat on your own) but only because they are pure bites of delectable deliciousness. Foods that are healthy and nutritious, such as fruits and veggies? Those can only be eaten at your own hand. And now that you have THREE (two on the bottom and one on the top) teeth, there isn’t much you can’t chew through anymore.

You are a pretty tough little cookie. And man do you like to climb! If there is something in the way, you don’t even bother trying to go around it, you go OVER it. You are a little bit fearless and I am really going to have to keep an eye on you. But luckily you are a pretty quick learner. You are already starting to figure out that you need to go backwards down the stairs and get so excited about the prospect of sliding down on your tummy that you start to giggle as you (with a little help) turn yourself around and slide down the stairs.

You really like to “GO” and you are starting to utilize the other toys in the house that will help you get around faster. Since you aren’t walking yet, and crawling can be so mundane, you are trying to figure out our little Radio Flyer. You can go forward occasionally, but as your legs are still pretty short, you mostly go in reverse. But you don’t seem to mind, because you are GOING!

One of your most favorite things to do is ride on the plasma car with Ana. She lets you sit on her lap and she drives as fast as she can around and around our living room. When you see her climb on to the plasma car, you crawl as fast as your little body will go towards her, a deep belly laugh shaking your body the entire time.

But recently you discovered that you could use the plasma car without your sister…as a walker! I think originally you were trying to climb on to it, but as it glides pretty easily, it just stared to roll away, forcing you to “walk” quickly behind it. But now that you know how to use it in this unique way, you have taken to following it around the house. The only problem with using the plasma car as a walker is that it goes really fast and instead of teaching you to walk, I am afraid it is going to teach you how to RUN!!

Another thing you like to use in a less-than-traditional manner is the log holder for our wood stove. You LOVE to climb, stand, or simply sit on it. So much in fact, that I finally gave up keeping the wood there and cleaned it all up so you have a nice sturdy, albeit hard, place to hang out. And if there is ever a time when I can’t find you, all I need to do is look next to the wood stove and there you are….in the best seat in the house.

Hadley, you bring so much joy to my life. I love that you find unique ways to do things, setting yourself apart from those around you. I love the way your eyes light up when I walk into the room. I love how much you like to cuddle. I love the way you wiggle and twist your hands and feet when you are excited. I love that you have entire conversation, complete with changes in fluctuation and tone, using only the word, “bop!” I love when I catch your eye from across the room and you look at me and wave. I love how much you enjoy reading books. But mostly I love watching you grow, getting to know you, and each day discovering another thing to love about you.

All my love,
Mama

Dear Hadley,
Today you are ten months old. So does that mean you are a “tween” of babyhood? If so, you definitely have the attitude to go along with it. You are generally a very happy and content little girl, but if we take something away from you or stop you from doing something you want to do, you go from peaceful and calm to full on MELTDOWN. Your Daddy says you get this from me, but I have no idea what he is talking about.

The biggest development this month has been your mobility. You started crawling on the day I wrote your nine month letter, but your skill level has improved so much in the last 30 days. For one thing, you are now fast. What was once a slow and very deliberate movement is now turbo speed. By the time I turn my head to see what is making you squeal with delight, you are already on the other side of the room and getting into something different. Last weekend you accidentally (I shudder to think you did it on purpose) figured out how to open the sliding screen door and before we knew it you were heading out on the back deck. Kid, are you TRYING to give me an anxiety attack?!

Not one week after you started crawling you were already mastering the stairs. So now my life is a constant state of opening and closing baby gates. As soon as I open one (like to let your sister upstairs to go to the bathroom) you are heading for the stairs and making a break for it! I am very diligent about closing the gate at the top of the stairs, but I am encouraging you to climb up the stairs. You just require a spotter. You like to stop, stand up, and look back to see who is following you (or see if anyone noticed you were fleeing!) and you aren’t always the most sturdy when you do so. And until you learn to go down the stairs safely (preferably sliding, feet first, on your tummy) I’ll be hovering right behind you every move you make.

Your constant movement doesn’t even cease when you go to bed. We find you in the strangest positions because you wiggle, roll, and crawl all over in your crib. But I have to admit the strangest was when I walked in to find you sitting up, one foot dangling out of the crib, totally passed out. You had apparently sat up in bed and couldn’t figure out how to lay back down so you just went to sleep right there.

My once wonderful eater, who would open her mouth like a little bird to every spoonful of food is no longer. You now refuse to eat anything pureed. In fact, if we come at you with a spoon you turn your head to the side and clamp your mouth shut. Instead, you insist upon feeding yourself. I have been chopping up every thing we eat into tiny, gummable bites just for you and you could not be happier about it. Sure, it makes a huge mess and you pretty much need a bath (or at the very least a washcloth or several baby wipes) after each meal, but I am kind of happy to be done with baby food. I love sharing with you foods I love and watching your trepidation and then excitement as you try something new.

To my surprise, one of your favorite foods is chicken. Well, any meat, really. I will cover your high chair tray with everything from sliced olives, to blueberries, to spiral veggie pasta, and you will deliberately seek out the little chunks of chicken hidden within the array of finger foods. It’s almost comical to see you scanning the tray to see if you missed any of those tasty morsels before settling for a less tantalizing fruit or veggie to gum.

Speaking of gums, just yesterday I saw something in your mouth and upon closer inspection, I noticed the very first signs of a TOOTH. That’s right, my little girl isn’t going to be toothless forever! I was pretty surprised too because you haven’t been unnecessarily grumpy, excessively drooly, or any of the other tell tale signs of teething. And that is just fine with me! I’d be happy if those sharp, little teeth came in with as little disruption as possible. (I haven’t been able to get a picture of the new tooth yet. Partially because it has barely broken the surface and partially because lately it takes the jaws of life to get you to open your mouth on command. So instead here is an adorable picture of you laughing hysterically at a wiggling, giggling stuffed cow.)

Your hair is another thing that has shown up all of a sudden. What was once fine little wisps of strawberry blond fuzz, is now looking like actual locks of golden hair. It’s still to early to tell, but it looks like it might even be curly! When you get out of the bath, or wake up sweaty after a nap, your hair frames your face in a chaos of curly cowlicks.

I know it’s not new information, but it demands to be said: Ana is your favorite person in the entire world. You spend the majority of your day just trying to find her. This has been made especially tricky since school started again. Every day after we drop her off you stare longingly at her empty car seat. Then once she returns you are so giddy you look at her and just smile and laugh. I promise I will do my best to entertain you in her absence, but those size 12 Twinkle Toes are surprisingly large shoes to fill!

As you get older and are more interested in things around you (besides your sister) we are able to take you to more exciting places. We recently took at trip to Newport to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium and you had a great time. You simply loved the shark tunnel. You were mesmerized by the sharks swimming, literally, all around us.

Oh Hadley, you are so amazing. I am having so much fun watching you discover the world around you. Whether that is tasting your Daddy’s latest BBQ chicken recipe, watching tiger sharks swim over your head, or simply seeing your sister first thing each morning. You are such a delight to be around that I find myself always wanting to be near you. Sometimes at night I walk past your bedroom and an invisible force pulls me in and I cannot bring myself to do anything but stand over you and watch you sleep. You are simultaneously breathtakingly beautiful and adorable, sweet and mischievous, cuddly and independent. You are a force to be reckoned with and I could not be more proud to call myself your Mama.

All my love,
Mama

Dear Hadley,
Today you are nine months old. And what a busy month this has been! You are learning so much so fast, I’m having a hard time keeping track of all your accomplishments. But the big news of the month happened only this afternoon: you are officially crawling.

Crawling was such an exciting milestone, simply because you have been working on it for SO LONG. You’ve had the physical ability for awhile now, but you just didn’t know you could do it. Then you were actually doing it, but I don’t think you even realized it. You would crawl forward a few inches, but would get frustrated (or distracted) and stop to sit down, putting you further back than where you started. So today I saw you going for it and I managed to get out my phone and recorded you crawling across the hall to your sister… and the unicorn pillow pet she was using as bait.

Another thing you mastered this month was learning to use a straw. You are obsessed with water bottles and so it was only a matter of time before you finally figured out how to use one. You started by chewing on my Camelbak and once I realized you were figuring out the bite valve, I bought you your own learn-to-drink-from-a-straw sippy cup. It has a cool feature where a parent can gently squeeze the cup and brings the liquid to the top of the straw so you can taste what is inside. And that was all it took. You sucked on the straw, your eyes got really wide with glee, and that was it. You were hooked.

Another thing that makes you exceptionally happy is reading books with Daddy. Every night after bath time, you two curl up on our bed and read a few books. You get so excited, listening to your Dad reading, and touching all the textures on the pages, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm as he turns each page.

One of the things that has NOT been fun this month is teething. I still cannot see, or even feel, a single tooth, but the symptoms are certainly there. You are biting every thing you can fit in your mouth, drooling all over, and you have even spiked a few unexplained high fevers. I feel so bad when you look up at me with those sad, pleading eyes. Don’t worry, sweet girl, it will all be over soon enough.

Involving your mouth, but with much more entertainment and less pain, is you learned to stick out your tongue. It all started when we were at the Wings and Waves water park. I think you discovered the taste of chlorine on your lips and you kept darting your tongue in and out. But once we were back home (and chlorine free) you did it again while you were eating and discovered you could lick your lips. It was the cutest thing, but as it is hard to feed you with your tongue sticking out, it’s probably not the best skill to practice during meal time.

Speaking of meal time, you use to be our very predictable eater, everything we gave you you simply accepted and gobbled up. But things have changed recently. I’m sure some of it has to do with teething and some of it was the hot weather we have had, but most of it has to do with finger foods. Once you discovered you could actually feed yourself, you are less and less inclined to eat the purees we feed you on a spoon. I’m having to start getting creative with your meals to keep you happy…and fed! But as you are still a champion nurser, there isn’t any risk of you going hungry any time soon!

Aside from the teething frustration and the eating complications, you are such a happy little girl. I just love this age because every little thing is new and exciting. All we have to do is show you something you haven’t seen before and any fussing or crying screeches to a halt as you happily examine the new object. You are so content to explore the world around you and discover every little thing that it brings a smile to my face just thinking about it.

One of your favorite discoveries happened just the other day. You had woken up from your nap, and I could hear you happily chatting away in your crib, so I didn’t come pick you up right away. Then I heard a loud bang and, thinking you had somehow fallen out of your crib, I ran up the stairs to your room only to find you smiling up at me. You were having so much fun you kicked your legs and discovered you could donkey kick the wall of the crib. You kept doing it over and over and you thought it was just the funniest thing ever. In the future, I’d appreciate it if the things you get so much joy out of were things less likely to give your mama a heart attack. Thanks.

As you get bigger and stronger, your Daddy (who is in charge of the nightly bath time) has been letting you and Ana take baths together more and more. This delights you both to no end. There is very little that your sister does that does not just make you shriek with delight. And it goes both way too. It gets to the point where you are both in the tub just giggling and laughing so much I often have to come up and see just what is so funny! I am so happy that you and your sister can share these special times together…and that you occasionally let your father and I just sit back and observe.

Since you have obviously been getting quite the control over your physical abilities, we decided that you were finally ready for your very first Gymboree class. Ana, as a Gymboree “graduate,” was so excited to share it all with you and she didn’t want to miss watching you experience it all for the first time. So Daddy, Ana and I all went with you and it was every bit as amazing as we remembered. I loved watching your eyes light up with each new discovery and seeing you giggle as we sang and danced to the silly songs. I am so happy that we are able to do these fabulous things with you and help you enrich your life in ways that you can’t even begin to imagine yet.

Oh, Hadley, we have been having so much fun together, it’s hard to tie it up with a nice pretty bow. It would take a myriad of ribbons of different textures and colors to even begin to describe all the things that make you so special. All I know is that you are one amazing child and I just love that I am able to stay home with you so I don’t have to miss one single moment of watching you become the person you are going to be. Because I know that you are going to be spectacular.

All my love,
Mama