My bestie R and I have a new tradition we’re trying to establish.  It’s called The Thursday Cute Exchange.  We text each other constantly, natch, via free iMessage, but on Thursdays we have a standing appointment to exchange adorable pictures.  (We do this anyway, but it’s a date for Thursdays.)  And we’ve kept it up via email now that R has moved overseas for the year and iMessaging is on hiatus until she returns (or I download another app for my iPhone – whichever comes first).  I send pictures of Peanut and her adorable adventures so that R can keep up with her goddaughter’s constantly increasing cuteness.  R reciprocates with pictures of her pets and of her boyfriend playing with the neighborhood kids.  And a good time is had by all.

There’s no point to this post other than to tell you about this new thing that is bringing me all kinds of joy lately.  And to encourage you to set up your own cute exchange.  There’s really nothing like a picture of your friend’s cat drinking from a running faucet to brighten up your Thursday morning.

You guyssssssss, my little Peanut isn’t such a little peanut anymore!  Someone took my snuggly wee baby and replaced her with this gigantic kid who wants to scoot around and lick all of my furniture.  Anyway, as one does, we celebrated this milestone with a party!

Given that we have a looming move across several states to prepare for, I wasn’t really in a position to spend lots and lots of time creating a Pinterest party complete with color scheme and Chinese lanterns and mason jars or whatever is going on over there.  I’m swamped with a bunch of things and I had to accept, right from the start, that Martha Stewart was not going to be photographing this party for a big spread in any of her magazines.  That said, I wanted to do my best to make it a special event for Peanut.  I know that she won’t remember her party down the road, but she’ll have the pictures and stories about the day and she’ll know that we celebrated her, and that’s what counts.  (Plus, let’s be realistic: the first birthday party is as much for the parents as it is for the kid, maybe even more so.  It’s a chance to celebrate the fact that WE MADE IT through the first year.)

I didn’t have time to go too crazy with decorations, so I opted for “meaningful” over “voluminous.”  I printed out pictures from Peanut’s birthday and the year that followed and made thirteen scrapbook pages: one for her very first day on Earth, and one for each of the twelve months that followed.  Hubby hung them in the family room and the kitchen so that people could see how far our little preemie has come over the past year.  Now that the party’s over, we’re leaving them up for a few more days, and then we’re going to collect them in a scrapbook that I bought for the purpose.  So while we may not have had a house full of balloons or streamers, we had plenty of baby pictures, and I think that’s even better.

Anyway.  Peanut is a summer baby (against my wishes – I’d have preferred her to have the fall birthday we were sold), so I envisioned a nice, relaxed backyard barbeque kind of shindig.  Of course, that still means I could go crazy cooking and baking all kinds of extra fawncy treats.  But I didn’t – not this year.  We picked up burgers and hot dogs, fruit and veggie plates, and potato salad from Costco and called it good.

Peanut was an angel and endured getting passed around by people she doesn’t know well for several hours.  She was well-paid for her tolerance, though: I’m talking about presents.  Peanut still doesn’t really understand the concept – mostly, she just sat on the floor and ate wrapping paper (or tried to, anyway – I was overwhelmed with jealousy and kept pulling it out of her mouth; the Honest Toddler would sympathize).  Fortunately, she had some present-opening helpers, since two of her guests were little boys (ages four and six) who were plenty willing to assist in paper-ripping.

One thing that was important to me was to bake the cakes (the big cake for the big folk, and Peanut’s smash cake).  I mixed up a simple white cake batter and set a little bit aside for the smash cake, then baked them both off.  I did use prepared icing (from the Wilton aisle at Michaels), but I pulled out my trusty Wilton tools, mixed the colors, and decorated the cake myself.  I wish the flowers had come out looking more like daisies and less like pinwheels, but my flower tip had gone AWOL and people got the general idea.  At least I haven’t lost my touch when it comes to writing in icing.

For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of a smash cake (it must be a regional thing; my mom had never heard of it): the idea is basically to bake the baby a little cake of her own, then let her go to town while snapping millions of pictures to use as blackmail later.  I’m not going to post them here, because that would completely derail my plan to surprise her with them on prom night.  (Imagine me laughing diabolically.)  But trust me – they’re funny.  Peanut had never had sugar before, and once she figured out that cake and frosting taste good, she was all over that.  She was a little hot pink frosting monster by the end of the party.

We actually threw Peanut’s party the weekend before her birthday (which was on a Wednesday).  This was partly so that we could get it out of the way and get packing, and partly because we already had a party to attend the following Saturday.  But I also wanted to make her actual birthday special, so I took the day off work.  We had a rough start to the morning, since Peanut was scheduled for her twelve-month pediatrician visit, complete with two shots.  But she bounced back quickly and we took her out to our favorite pizza joint for lunch (well, we ate lunch), and she got to try out drinking with a straw for the first time.  (Verdict: fun!).  Then we came home, Peanut caught a nap, and when she woke up, she had a long afternoon of opening and then playing with her birthday presents from Mommy and Daddy:

I think, all in all, Peanut had a pretty good first birthday.  Now the challenge will be to improve upon it next year.  But that’s a whole year away – a whole year of new milestones and lots of fun away.  Thanks for joining Peanut on her journey this year (and for virtually attending her party, if you made it this far)!  And one more time, happy, happy birthday to my little love.

I’m 31 years old, and I’ve had my share of adventures.  Marriage.  Travel.  Most recently, motherhood.  Sometimes it seems like life is a long parade of adventure after adventure, and that’s pretty cool.  And now I have a new adventure to report.

On Saturday, hubby and Peanut and I will be packing all of our earthly possessions up, pulling up stakes, and moving to Buffalo, New York.

Gulp.  Yep.  We’re going.  I’ve gotten a lot of questions about this from family and friends, so for the record:

Hold the phone.  WHAT?!?!?

We’re moving to Buffalo.

Why?

This is something that has been in the works for awhile.  Hubby and I have always had a potential move in the backs of our minds, but the timing was never right.  However, hubby got a fantastic job offer, the kind of job offer that he’d be crazy to turn down, and after discussing it thoroughly, we decided as a family that he should take the opportunity.  He’s incredibly excited, and I’m so happy for him and so proud of him for going after something that he wants and making his own dream come true.

What will YOU do?

I’m job-hunting now, and I feel pretty confident that I’ll land on my feet.  In the meantime, I get to spend a little extra time with Peanut until I find the perfect opportunity, which is AWESOME.

What about your house?

We sold it.  I’ll admit that I’m struggling with saying goodbye.  We have so many wonderful memories there, made in only three years, and to cut short our time in the house that I considered my “forever home” is sad.  But it was a relief that it didn’t languish on the market, and I’m glad to know that another family will make memories there.  I hope they love it as much as we have.

So where will you live now?

We’re renting a really cool, historic house in a funky area of the city.  It’s a gorgeous house in a great location and we are excited to live there and be a small part of its long story.  We’re going to use that year to check out neighborhoods and explore options for either building our dream home or buying another historic house (and maybe renovating it – stay tuned).  Or we may buy another builder house and hopefully, this time, actually complete the process of personalizing it.  We’ll see – it’s pretty exciting to have so many possibilities.

How do you feel about all of this, really?

Honestly, it’s always hard to pull up roots, and I’ve put some very deep roots into my community in DC.  When I moved here, I didn’t know a soul.  The city itself was my first friend.  I wore out my Reefs hiking from Foggy Bottom to Tenleytown and back, and after only a few weeks I felt more at home here than I ever have, anywhere else.  In 2005 I got married and moved out to Virginia, and I’ve lived in Arlington, East Falls Church, and most recently Alexandria, and loved every minute I’ve spent in my adopted state, where my heart truly feels at home.  In my ten years here I’ve done so much: made many friends, gotten married, graduated from law school, held two jobs, bought two homes, and had a baby.  So yes, I’ll be sad to leave.  But, in another way, it feels like the right time to go.  We still have friends here, but more and more of our friends are striking out for other cities, and our circle is closing a bit in this city.  I’m ready for a new adventure and I know it means so much to hubby that we’re embarking on this journey as a family.  And it will be fun to be in the same city with our beloved Sabres (although they’d better step up their game next season), with so many new places to explore.  I’ve always thought that Buffalo would be a great place to raise a family, and I’m thrilled that Peanut will grow up so close to her grandparents.  She’ll be much closer to both hubby’s folks and my parents, and that’s something that is much more important than I realized it would be, before she was in the picture.  Change is never easy, but Buffalo is the right place for our family to be right now.  And at the end of the day, my home is wherever these two goofballs are:

I’ll have more details about the move, pictures of the new place, and some posts about our last few weeks in DC coming soon.  Please bear with me if I’m slower to respond to comments than usual for the next few weeks.  There won’t be a break in blogging, though, because I’ve written and banked some bookish posts for you, and I’ll be in and out with updates.  In the meantime, back to the bookish posts!

My mom is a bit of a clinger.

On August 21, 2012, I was 31 weeks, 3 days pregnant.  Most of my pregnancy was a breeze – aside from a few days in the first trimester when I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open, I felt I’d gotten off pretty easy.  No morning sickness to speak of, no strange cravings (fresh fruit and fat-free dairy, anyone?), and even my totally annoying aversion to hot beverages was easing up.  Hubby and I took a babymoon weekend in New York City and came back refreshed, looking forward to a baby shower that was planned for August 31st, and ready to enjoy the last two months before welcoming our little one into the world.

You know what they say about the best laid plans?  When we got back from New York we reported for a 30-week sonogram.  I’d had more sonograms than most, thanks to a marginal cord placement that the tech noticed during the 20-week anatomy scan.  At the time, she had told me not to worry about it, and that they’d just keep an eye on it.  I went back at 27 weeks for a follow-up and was told that it still wasn’t time to worry.  Then at 30 weeks, I was told… okay, now it’s time to worry.  The baby had fallen into the fifth percentile for size (down from around the fiftieth percentile at 20 weeks).  We were diagnosed with “Intra-Uterine Growth Restriction” and sent home with a prescription for strict bed rest.  (I was instructed to follow “Queen Elizabeth Rules.”  According to my OB, Queen Elizabeth doesn’t cook dinner for the family or clean the house.  She lies on her left side and lets everyone wait on her.  I resisted the urge to point out that Queen Elizabeth is the busiest member of the British Royal Family, that she attends almost 600 royal engagements every year, and that she unwinds with long walks through her various parks.  I don’t think my OB puts many Anglophiles on bed rest.)

August 21st was the fourth day of my bed rest.  That morning, hubby and I headed out the door (yes, my bed rest inexplicably included a planned two sonograms and two OB visits per week – some bed rest, huh?) expecting to be told the baby would stay put for at least another week and sent home.  We’d packed a “hospital bag” just in case, but all it contained was a pair of my socks (hubby packed it).  I’d brought along a small purse with just my wallet, phone, book (One Hundred Years of Solitude, in case you were wondering), and teddy bear (thought I might need him).  On the way out the door, I dropped a letter to Katie in the mail, asking her to pray for the baby to stay put a few more weeks.  Again, the best laid plans…  The sonogram barely got off the ground before I found myself stuffed into a wheelchair, on my way upstairs to Labor and Delivery.

It was the scariest, best day of my life.  I didn’t want to have a baby that day.  I wanted to have a baby in October, like I was supposed to.  But when she arrived, such a little love, I couldn’t help but be overjoyed.  And the weeks that followed were a roller coaster.  Some days, I was afraid to put my contact lenses in, in case I ended up crying all day over a sick baby.  Other days, we snuggled and sang and I almost forgot we were in the NICU.  On October 11, 2012, Peanut came home to her own room.  Since then, we’ve celebrated her first Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  We’ve taken two road trips to visit family members in Albany and Buffalo, NY.  We’ve hiked in Rock Creek Park and Dyke Marsh.  We’ve had countless family pizza dates in Old Town.  We’ve snuggled and played and read books and sang songs.  And today, I get to look at this miraculous ONE YEAR OLD face.

Pull my finger!

In some ways, I feel like all the scary events of her birthday happened just yesterday, or even that they’re still happening.  But in other ways, I feel as though she’s been here forever.  She’s done so much growing over the past year – from just two-and-a-half pounds to over eighteen (!) pounds today.  She’s gone from a cuddly little lump to a crawling machine.  The baby who barely knew a world outside her isolette now tracks planes flying across the sky.

Daddy, can I have twenty dollars?

One thing about this month that’s different: I’ve just started seeing glimpses of the child in Peanut’s future.  She’s more confident in her play and in her explorations.  The ways in which she interacts with the world around her seem more sophisticated.  And then, this month, I read Sixpence House, by Paul Collins, and there was one paragraph that made me nod in recognition and then tear up because it was so spot-on.  Collins writes about hearing his 18-month-old son laugh in a new way, a deeper, huskier laugh, the laugh of a child lurking underneath the baby squeals.  That made me cry just a little bit because I heard that this month, too.  When I tickle Peanut or when we walk up or down the stairs together (she still thinks that the stairs are absolutely hilarious) I get torrents of baby giggles.  But this month, every so often, under the giggles I’ve heard unmistakeable child laughs.  They’re like music, and I love them, but they’re a bit bittersweet too, because she’s growing up.

Look at all these fences for me to lick.

Sorry to be so sappy in this post.  But I love this kid so, so much.  I love watching her big bright eyes take in the world, I love the way she picks her knees up off the ground and wiggles her tush as she crawls toward the floor grate, and I love how she thinks that if she just keeps trying, one of these days, she’ll actually be allowed to stick her fingers in said grate.  (Keep dreaming, little Peanut.)  I love the way she cuddles up to me, sucking her thumb and grabbing her shirt, when she’s tired.  I love the way she growls and attacks her stuffed animals.  I love her bright smiles and the way she says “Mom.  Mom.  Mom.  Mom.  Mom.” when I come to pick her up from her crib after a nap.  (She doesn’t know what “Mom” means yet, but I still get giddy when she says it.)  I love her quirky, goofy, sweet, silly, adorable little personality.  I love her hugs and her giggles and her back-slaps and her giant trucker burps and her sweet coos.  I just really, really love this kid.

Peanut at 12 Months:

Adjusted Age: 10 months

Weight: 18 lbs, 6 oz – 28th percentile!  Holy guacamole!

Clothing Size: 12 months, although she can still fit into some t-shirts (not onesies, but actual t-shirts) in 9 month size.  Weight-wise, she would still be in 9 months, but she’s long, especially in the torso.

Sleep:  Peanut seems to be getting ready to drop a nap.  Most mornings up until this month, she’d wake up for a bottle at 6:00 a.m. and then fall asleep around 6:30 for an early-morning nap, and sleep until about 8:00.  Lately, she’s been waking up earlier and earlier after that first morning “nap,” and some mornings she doesn’t go back to sleep at all.  I think it’s about the right time for her to drop down from three naps to two, but I wish she would have eliminated the late-morning nap first.  (It’s easier to do things with her in the morning, and we can push through the late-morning nap if necessary, but only if she got a good early-morning nap and if we’ve got a low-key afternoon.  Otherwise, bad.)  Kids thrive on routine generally, and Peanut especially, since she got used to regimented days in the NICU.  But we’re fiddling with her schedule to work on encouraging her to sleep in a bit more in the morning and dial back the late-morning nap from 90 minutes to one hour, and push the afternoon nap up to two hours.  The goal is to eventually get down to one longer afternoon nap per day, toddler-style.  We’re working on this gradually but our intention is that by the time Peanut actually is a toddler, she’ll be napping like one.

Likes:  Fruit!  I’ve been experimenting with different combinations of purees and Peanut has yet to meet a fruit that she doesn’t like.  Her favorite, though, is applesauce.  She’s had regular ol’ applesauce, pear applesauce, cinnamon applesauce, peach applesauce, and most recently blueberry applesauce, and she loves ’em all.  I guess I’m not surprised by this.  After all, I ate an awful lot of fruit while I was baking her.

Dislikes:  Erhm, vegetables.  I’m a mean mommy and I have instituted a super unfair rule that Peanut is not allowed to live on fruit and “cookies” (teething biscuits).  We alternate fruit purees with vegetable purees, and veggies are decidedly less popular than fruits.  Right now, we’re working our way through a batch of sweet green peas with oregano.  I’ve tasted them (I taste everything I feed to Peanut) and… not to brag or anything… they’re freaking delicious.  But she acts like I’m trying to poison her.

Favorite Toys:  Uh, this month Peanut’s favorite toy is… anything that isn’t a toy.  Mom’s tea mug (especially if there’s tea in it) or water glass (with ice water, natch)… the floor and wall grates… her laundry basket… and especially her diaper wipe containers.  We keep disposable Burt’s Bees refills all over the house for wiping off toys and little hands, and Peanut LOVES those little yellow packages.  She loves them so much, in fact, that it was a Burt’s Bees diaper wipe package that finally motivated her to crawl.  (We’d been taking bets on which toy would finally spur her little bottom into gear, but neither of us had placed any money on the diaper wipes, darnit.)  Whenever possible, she will pop it open, pull out a wipe, and stuff it into her mouth.  We’re constantly pulling wipes out of her little jaws.  (Good thing they’re all-natural.)  Hubby tasted one and said it is NOT good, so we can’t explain this.

Milestones:  So many this month!  Early in the month, Peanut finally mastered sitting up from a prone or supine position.  We were pumped because it’s a necessary prerequisite to crawling.  Now she’s gotten so good at it that she pops up as soon as we lay her down in her crib.  Yay.  That was her big accomplishment for about two weeks, and then about two weeks ago the CRAWLING started at last.  At first, it was just a few feet – just enough to close the gap between her and her diaper wipes.  But it didn’t take long for her little brain to realize that… eureka!… she can go ANYWHERE, and now she does.  She’s gotten pretty fast, for a baby, and she can motor along at about the speed of a slow adult walk.  Except for when you’re not looking at her, that is.  Then she magically speeds up and when you glance over again, you’ll find her about to prod the floor grate with her little finger.  Now that she’s got crawling down, she’s working on pulling up, and she’s done that a few times, mostly on Mom or Dad, or in her crib (hubby walked in and found her standing, and we immediately sent up several prayers of thanks that we had already dropped the mattress to the lowest setting – not a moment too soon).  She doesn’t quite have the strength to pull up on the coffee table yet, but she’s working on it.

I feel like taking a voyage of imagination in this basket.

Quirks:  Peanut has a new catch-phrase: “Book ’em.”  She repeats it over and over:  “Book ’em, book ’em, book ’em, book ’em, book ’em.”  She will even do it on command.  If you say, “Hey Peanut, book ’em!” she’s off and running, arresting everyone in the joint.  Obviously, she doesn’t know what she’s saying – she’s never seen so much as five minutes of a cop show.  (We’re not big TV watchers, and she’s banned from screen time until she’s two anyway, by order of the occupational therapists in the NICU.)  But it’s hysterically funny to listen to her arresting people.  Hubby gets in on it, too: “But Peanut, what are we charging them with?  What crime did they commit?!?!”  Last weekend, we went out for sushi and she arrested everyone in the restaurant.  Uncle Dan is especially excited about this development.  He’s trying to teach her to take the next step and shout, “Book ’em, Danno!”  Because that’s an essential skill for a one-year-old, right?

Everyone knows you should read the card first, Mommy.

I can’t believe I have a one-year-old.  A gorgeous, inquisitive, funny, smart, silly, cuddly little one-year-old.  I feel like the luckiest mom in the entire world!  And I feel doubly lucky because I had this space to share the cutest, goofiest moments each month.  These monthly updates have been something like a journal for me and it’s wonderful to know that I’ll have them to look back on forever.  That said… this is the last one.  All good things must come to an end, and Peanut is getting a little older now, so I want to respect her privacy.  She’ll still be making regular blog appearances as I write about our adventures as a family.  I’m also thinking of including some posts on crafts projects or activities we do together, and of course Peanut’s Picks will continue.  And maybe someday there will be a little baby brother or sister, and we’ll start from the beginning again.  In the meantime, thanks for reading.  And if you’d like to check out Peanut’s other updates, you can find them on my Family tab, above, or right here:

Peanut: One Month
Peanut: Two Months
Peanut: Three Months
Peanut: Four Months
Peanut: Five Months
Peanut: Six Months
Peanut: Seven Months
Peanut: Eight Months
Peanut: Nine Months
Peanut: Ten Months
Peanut: Eleven Months

No, not her future husband George, Prince of Cambridge.  This George:

Is this my new house, Daddy?

We took Peanut for a visit to Mount Vernon!  Nana, Grandad and Great-Grandma came, too – it was a family outing and so much fun.  Everything was in bloom…

(That’s the greenhouse and the “upper” flower garden.  There’s also a “lower” vegetable garden and a nursery with fruit trees.)  Peanut liked the flowers, but she was obsessed with the animals.  Mount Vernon is home to several heritage livestock breeds, including sheep, some cows, and fowl.

What are these furry things? Can I eat them?

PLEASE NO MORE KIDS.

Get over here, sheep! I want to love you!

It was such a great day!  This was the first time we’d taken Peanut to Mount Vernon, which seems crazy since we live so close.  It was definitely a new experience to walk around with a kid in tow.  For the first time, we had a stroller parked in the “stroller lot” outside the Mansion (you can’t bring them in, so they all line up in a row outside the servants’ quarters, which is hilarious).  Peanut enjoyed the walk through the Mansion – she even touched the historic banister, which was touched by the likes of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette.  We also spent more time with the animals than we usually do, because she just couldn’t tear herself away.  And I even gave her a bottle picnic-style, sitting on a bench near the lower garden.

Beautiful day.  After our walk through Mount Vernon, we headed to Old Town for dinner at Gadsby’s Tavern, an historic old inn where George Washington used to dine.  The servers still dress in Colonial attire, and the food is of a “traditional” bent – for example, I had “George Washington’s Favorite” – duck with orange sauce, scalloped potatoes and corn pudding.  YUM.  Peanut got a bowl of plain steamed veggies and threw most of them on the floor.

I call this meeting of the Baby Congress to order!

Delegates! You’re not LISTENING TO ME!

This was Peanut’s first “fine dining” experience and I was a little bit worried about how it would go.  She’s a good kid and doesn’t cry or make a fuss generally, but she can be loud.  Most of her noises are “happy baby” noises and people usually don’t mind her at all.  But Gadsby’s Tavern is kind of a nice place, the food is a little bit pricey, and I figured that some people might want to enjoy their meals without a baby orating right next to them.  We normally take Peanut out to our favorite local pizza place, Pizzeria Paradiso, where there’s almost always other kids present and even if we’re the only family there, it’s a pizza joint, so no one gets bent out of shape if our table is loud.  But my grandmother was visiting, she loves Gadsby’s Tavern, and we wanted to make it a special trip for her, so we decided to try.

It went pretty well!  The restaurant was great with our group.  I’m sure they groaned inwardly when they saw us come in, but they didn’t blink an eye.  They put us in a corner, as far away from other diners as they could get us, which was a very smart move because Peanut was in rare form.  Between pounding and head-butting the table, trying to rip the waitress’s dress off, and making a pile of bread droppings under her high chair, she definitely commanded the attention of the room.  But we went early, entertained her with toys and food, and tried to be as unobtrusive as possible.  People definitely noticed Peanut, but I don’t think she ruined anybody’s evening, so I was happy.

Daddy! You didn’t share with me!

All in all, it was a very historic DC kind of day.  Peanut and George Washington are now on very friendly terms!