In the last month of her first year, Sonia’s emotions and expressions became much more recognizable, which made for a lot of delighting together in her achievements, and commiserating on her frustrations.
Sonia practiced walking with her walker and with Daddy and Mommy a bit, but she definitely still has some drunken-sailor legs. She can let go and stand for a few more seconds at a time than she could before, but she rarely does, and hasn’t taken any steps on her own yet. I wonder how much of it is a confidence issue, or just that she’s become such a speedy crawler that its easier. The pediatrician wasn’t concerned.
Sonia did have some other fun firsts, such as finally learning to clap her hands, and starting to instigate hide-and-seek games. She also had her first “swim lessons.” She went with Daddy to a place that has a salt water pool they keep at 92 degrees. She got dunked, and Daddy started to teach her to kick. Sonia really likes the water now, including her bath.
Some of Sonia’s favorite playthings are also some of her best words – ball, bubbles, box, block, and Luna. 🙂 She really loves going to get Luna’s toys and then trying to get her to take it from her. Luckily Luna is usually a pretty good sport about it. Sonia has also started to hand us things to play with, especially if she wants us to do something again that we just did, such as making her stuffed monkey dance, galloping her unicorn around her and making horse noises, or spinning something on the floor.
As for books, Sonia loves to pull all of her books off the shelf, and tries to turn the pages, although her fine motor skills aren’t there yet to turn them one by one. She is now able to keep attention on one of her favorite books for a few minutes at a time. Her favorites still include the Global Babies and Look Look books, but also the I Love You Because You’re You, I Love You Baby From Head to Toe, Rocket’s Might Words, and Little Bunny. It is interesting that her attention wavers at almost the exact same place in each book every time.
It’s not all fun and games for Mommy and Daddy though, since Sonia is definitely going through another fussy phase, which includes both testing her boundaries and getting very upset and crying when we set her down when she wants to be held, or take things away that she wants to play with. We are constantly having to keep her away from the fireplace in her play room, and out of Luna’s crate or water bowl in the living room. Sometimes she looks back at us as she’s moving toward these objects as if she knows she’s not supposed to, but wants to see how close she can get before we react.
Earlier in the month, Sonia had a very different sleep regression than she’d had in the past. About 2 nights per week, she would wake up 2-4 hrs after bedtime in a screaming fit and standing up in her crib. The moment she was picked up she would be quiet, lay her head on our shoulder and seem to almost be back to sleep again. However, the instant we moved to put her down, she would start screaming. She didn’t seem to want to nurse or drink water either. Eventually we would put her down and let her CIO for a few minutes and she would go back to sleep. We weren’t sure if it was nightmares, growing pains, or maybe she was cold (although we kept it above 68 in her room all night), but we got a light sleep sack for her that seemed to help. Her daytime sleep has been great, still on 2 x 1.5 hr naps per day on average, although she sleeps longer for the nanny than with us it seems.
Sonia’s new adventures in eating this month included going out to brunch almost every weekend, starting some spoon practice, and learning to use her teeth a bit more on new textures, such as tortilla chips. I am down to nursing only 3x per day and supplementing with 4-6 oz of formula, but she seems to be getting enough.
Mid-way through the month, Sonia got her second fever of her short life. It was high, but not over 102 degrees axillary, and she didn’t have any other symptoms with it. On day 4, before we’d even had a chance to take her to the pediatrician, it broke, and on day 5 she got a faint rash on her torso making me pretty positive it was Roseola. It’s interesting she would get it because only kids 6 mo – 3 years are affected, and she’s not around other kids. I guess I have to assume she got it at the park.
At her 12 mo Dr visit, Sonia weighed in at 20lb 2 oz (50%) and was 29″ tall (50%). She did not get her MMR and ChickenPox vaccines because apparently the new guideline is to wait until 2wks after the 1st birthday, and because she was within 0.1 degree of a fever and the last time she got a vaccination with a trending high temp (at 6 mo), she got very sick. I wonder whether her high temp had anything to do with the fact that she gets very upset at the Dr. office, poor thing. Hopefully not getting shots there for once will help.