Our First Elli-versary

Today marks one year since we first held Elli in our arms for the first time. Remember pictures of this little munchkin?

She's gotten a little bigger (compare to the coming home picture in the upper right corner of this page):

And we've learned a lot this first year as a family together. A top ten list:

1) The stoplight stretch: While driving and stopped at a stoplight, both Jeremy and I have learned how to grab some snacks and reach behind us to the rear-facing car-seat to meet Elli's outstretched hand and to make a hand-off of said snack. We started doing this with Pretzel sticks, but have perfected Goldfish and Cheerio hand-offs, as well. In fact, we're so good at the hand-offs that the US Men's Track & Field team may want to come study how a trade-off is properly done!

2) Children need to be rear-facing in their car seat certainly until they are 20 pounds, and, according to the new guidelines, until they are 35 pounds. They are to remain in a car seat or booster until they are 65 pounds. At current trajectory, Elli (who has not hit her first 20 pounds yet) will be rear-facing until kindergarten and hopefully out of a booster seat by the start of Middle School.

3) Elli likes to squish blueberries in her jaws. This should not be confused with actually eating them, as sometimes she will just hold onto the blueberry husks in her mouth until she decides to swallow them and/or Mommy gets irritated and fishes them out. Under no circumstances should one attempt to feed Elli more food until the husks have been cleared out of the mouth, as sometimes they sneak "down the hatch" with new food and trigger Elli's delicate gag reflex. (If you are at a party at someone else's house, the likelihood of said gag reflex being triggered is about 100%. Your likelihood of not getting Elli and you covered in half-masticated blueberries and other assorted food is about 0%.)

4) Blueberries stain clothing. The stains are easier to remove if they are on the clothes on the way in versus the way out.

5) Nothing lasts forever. The terror I felt in Taiwan when it dawned on me that I had the responsibility to care for this little angel didn't last. Neither did my belief that I would mess everything up without my husband and/or family there to help me take care of her. Needing to walk her for 30 minutes before she fell asleep for a 20 minute nap was just a stage, and despite my fears of her never learning to feed herself, she has eventually learned to put food in her own mouth. Teething continues, but we're down to 2.5 more teeth to come in and it's not so traumatic an event anymore. Elli moved past the rolling stage to the crawling stage to the creeping stage to the walking stage and is now running around like crazy. I miss the little baby Elli, but I love our little independent / bordering on Terrible Two's little girl who can't wait to tell us all about the world she's exploring and learning about.

6) But some things don't change. From day one, Elli was a Daddy's girl who loved music and dancing (and computer cords). She's still a Daddy's girl, and, while her repertoires are greatly expanded in terms of music she knows and her dance moves, she still likes to put on music and dance along. Last night I snuggled her after she got up in the middle of the night, and she cuddled in and patted me just like she did when she was 7 or 8 months old, just to check that I was still there and to tell me she loves me.

7) Being eclipsed by your child(ren) in terms of technological understanding happens early. Elli has hit some buttons on our phones that Jeremy and I didn't know existed and, through careful study of her deceptively "random" button pushing, have discerned how to transfer calls from one phone to another, how to go through the memory of the phone, and how many "5"s you can dial in a row (you can dial well over 12, actually, which is just sort of strange to me...).

8) Everything gets done slower with a child in the house. For example, it's not that I can't knit hats with Elli home, it's just that I have to do it between when she goes to bed and when I fall over from exhaustion, which has pretty much cut my knitting time in half. And dinner will likely get interrupted by a cooking "helper" or so that we can play some very exciting game like "Let's look through the photo albums and name everyone whose name we can say!". These are just sacrifices we've had to make, so you have to compensate somehow. I won't confess to the sacrifices we've made, but let's just say that if the cleaning lady hasn't visited in the past few hours, don't use the 5 second rule when things drop on the floor at our house.

9) Nothing (and I mean NOTHING) can beat a good game of "chase me around the house and tickle me." While engaging in this activity, however, one should take precautions like (a) cutting Elli's fingernails because if you are holding her while she is trying to gain purchase on your clothing to escape a tickle attack from the other parent, you will get scratched; (b) making sure that your chin is not over Elli's head while you are holding her and she is being chased, as she has a tremendous "giddy-up" move that will knock her head into your chin and cause you to bite your tongue. She will remain unharmed, although you might talk funny for a while; and (c) wear shoes or no socks. Socks only at high speeds on wood floors is not a good plan for anyone.

10) Being a parent is not what we thought it was going to be. In many ways, it's been so much better -- hearing Elli yell through the baby monitor after a night's sleep: "Dada! I all done! Go, go, go!" just warms the heart (especially when Mommy needs a few extra minutes of sleep and can legitimately roll over and say, "She wants you."). Seeing her run headlong for you when you walk in the door is just indescribable. And there really is nothing better in the world than snuggling a sleeping baby who is curled against you because you are her Mommy or Daddy. Sure, there's been the sleepless nights, the fretting about what to do with a baby that is screaming at 3 am for 2 hours (is this an attachment thing? if she's crying no matter whether she's in my arms or out of my arms and I'm about to lose my mind, is it okay to walk away? and if she's still crying once I've regained my composure, then do I rescue her? and have I scared her when I finally broke down and cried and told her she had to go to sleep and she was so surprised that she stopped crying and started patting me and giving me her snuggle bunny?), the feeling of "it's my third day in the house and we're both going to go crazy if we don't get out but it's snowing, etc. But... those things don't last forever. Family does.

And then, for gratuitous cuteness sake, here are some pictures of how we spent our Elli-versary. Elli's new favorite thing to do is to bake with Mommy, so we made brownies:

" Yep, these look good, Mommy."

Does the inside of her mouth look brown? Hmmm... must be the chocolate chips she was stuffing in there!

Stirring the batter takes a lot of concentration!