Happy 1st Birthday, Elsa...

We celebrated Elsa's 1st birthday last month. She turned a year old on January 22nd. What an amazing year it has been. She is my little superbaby. Full of energy and absorbing everything around her. She amazes me at the rate of which she learns things. And mostly from Sophie. And not always good.

She is practically running and is climbing all over the place. She climbs up in Sophie's chair and then she climbs up onto the kitchen table. She can climb up this slide (the actual slide...steps she has been doing for months now). There is nothing that will get in the way of that child getting what she wants. She HAS to imitate everything Sophie does. She is constantly following her around the house watching what Sophie does and then immediately repeats it. She has learned how to use sign language from watching Sophie. She says at least 20 words**. She throws full out temper tantrums (throwing body onto the floor, arching back, collapses into a wet noodle if you try to pick her up). She has practiced the art of defense to perfection (she knows when Sophie comes running to either duck into a squatting position with her head down or to lay flat on the ground and play dead). She loves to run around the house pretending to talk on the phone. Her new favorite phrase is "dab ba dab ba dab" which is something Sophie use to always say. She loves to load up as many dolls into her baby stroller and push them around the house. She also loves to feed them a bottle and put them night-night in which she lays them down and pats them on the back. She loves to go to the grocery store with me and charms the pants off of everyone. She is so tiny (at her one year checkup...she was 18 pounds 4 ounces and 29 inches long) that she looks so adorable walking up and down the aisles holding some sort of food item in each arm. She has incredible balance. She has great fine motor skills (stacking rings, nesting cups). She screams her head off whenever you change her diaper or try to put clothes on her. I mean "top of her lungs" screaming and twisting her body. But she doesn't say a peep when you are taking them off or if she is highly distracted by watching Barney. And when she is wearing clothes, she tugs at them and says "off". I am in trouble once she figures out how to take her clothes off. She loves turning the pages in her book. She understands almost everything I say to her and follows 2 step commands. If I tell her to go get a book so I can read it to her...she will walk to her book box in the other room, pick out a book and bring it to me. She does the hand motions to several songs (itsy bitsy spider, pat-a-cake). She identifies objects in the book. I can go on forever. Most of this is for me. For my records. Before I forget.

**She says dada, mama, done, down, uh (up), bar (Barney), baba (bottle), wawa (water), dog, nack (snack), moh (more), hi, bye, no, Elmo, doh (door), nigh-nigh (night-night), off, book, duck, nose, ball, num-num (something yummy to eat). She signs elephant, fish, pig, daddy, done, more, eat, blows kisses, waves hi and bye.