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I’ve been looking and looking for Cate’s top two teeth to finally make an appearance, because she’s been gnawing on everything in sight and drooling like crazy for a while. (One of her favorite teething rings? My collarbone. Ow.) And lo and behold, she did have a tooth break through yesterday… on the bottom. I didn’t even notice it until Patsy pointed it out to me. God, Mother of the Year, that’s me. Way to pick up on those major milestones.

Anyway, one tooth is totally out and the other one is not far behind. So, it looks like she’s soon going to have four teeth on the bottom and none on top. The poor kiddo is going to look like a little baby bulldog.

Oh, and you know my theory that the snotty nose was related to teething? Well, Monday, I was wiping her nose every five minutes (sometimes more often). Then the tooth broke through on Tuesday, and there has been nary a single booger since then. So what do you know, I guess my theory that the two things were related was actually pretty accurate. Score one for the Mommy Instinct.

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Today we had Cate’s 12-month well-baby checkup. Her stats are as follows:
Height: 30 and 1/2 inches; 90th percentile
Weight: 24 pounds, 5 ounces; 95th percentile
Head circumference: still off the charts huge (hey, at least she’s consistent).

It was a good appointment, I got to ask the pediatrician lots of questions, and she had plenty of time to talk to us because there was a mini-snowstorm last night so a lot of her patients didn’t show up today. Nice.

As for my girl’s milestones this month:
* Humor! She knows that if she puts a (clean, dry) diaper on her head, it makes Dave and me laugh. And she’s getting more and more into peekaboo, it makes her giggle a lot. When you consider what a peekaboo slacker I am, it’s pretty remarkable that she’s picked up the game at all.

* She’s standing on her own for longer and longer periods of time. And it’s so funny when she does it, she gets this big grin on her face like she’s so pleased with herself. No walking yet, but I think that’s because she can crawl/cruise/climb to pretty much wherever she wants to go. Which reminds me…

* Girlfriend has got a serious stubborn streak. If you try to get her to do anything and it isn’t her idea, she gets really, really mad. Which is why we’ve all but given up on trying to get her to walk holding onto our hands. She’ll do it for maybe one or two steps, then she turns her legs to spaghetti and screams. Same thing goes for trying new foods. A few times, I have literally held her head still with one hand and shoved a spoon in her mouth with the other so she could get a taste of the food I’m offering and realize that hey! That actually tastes pretty good! Once I can get the first bite in her mouth, she’ll open up for all subsequent bites. But that first one is like some bizarre version of whack-a-mole, only you’re trying to get a spoon in the mouth of a baby who’s thrashing her head back and forth to try to avoid said spoon. I guess she’s gotta keep us on our toes, right?

* And oh, the food issues. Dave has some problems with food textures, and Cate seems to have inherited the same trait. She likes crunchy things, and she’s ok with pureed things, but nothing that’s squishy or gooey. I can break them into bite-size pieces and put them in her mouth, but she won’t touch them. This applies to cheese, bananas, pasta, and any number of other yummy foods. Even cupcakes!

(Check out that scowl, she is so her father’s daughter.)

She got her first chance at a cupcake this past weekend. She poked at the frosting, realized it was gooey, and started to cry. Eventually, I managed to break off a tiny piece of a cupcake and put it in her mouth, and she decided that was ok. But she still wouldn’t touch it when I offered it to her.

* Today (at one year & one day old!), we got our First Official Word. She said, “Kitty!” She said it twice, and both times it was directed at the cats. Sure, it sounded more like “gitty,” but I think it’s close enough. Yay, language!

That’s actually one of the things we talked to the doctor about today, because (except for “gitty”) Cate hasn’t really shown any interest in either talking or signing. I try to be the laid-back type of parent who says oh whatever, she’ll hit those milestones when she’s good and ready. But the part that concerns me is that she doesn’t respond to us that much either. If we call her name, sometimes she’ll look up, and sometimes she won’t. It could be because she’s really intently concentrating on something else (we do have a family history of ADD, after all). But I wonder if there’s more to it than that.

Our pediatrician said that it’s certainly a possibility. Cate’s already had three ear infections, so it seems like she could be on her way to having a lot problems with fluid build-up in her ears. So in a few weeks, we’re going to take her to a pediatric audiologist to have her hearing checked. I think the pediatrician suggested it more to reassure me than anything else. But both my brother and I needed ear tubes when we were little, and it certainly isn’t the end of the world if Cate needs them too.

And besides, even without verbal communication, she usually manages to get her point across just fine.

And she can at least hear music well enough to dance to it, so things can’t possibly be that dire.

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My baby is one year old today.

It’s so stange, looking back at her birth story and realizing that I still know it as if it happened yesterday. All day today, I’ve been looking at the clock and remembering exactly what was happening at this moment last year. Every detail is still completely fresh in my mind.

And yet, here we are, a whole year later. She’s no longer the mythical baby that I daydreamed about when I was pregnant, and she’s not the tiny, wrinkly, pink, alien-seeming creature that she was when she was first born. She’s this little human with her own personality. She’s just Cate.

I know a lot of people (mostly mothers, although I’m sure some dads too) get sad when their kids grow up, because they want to hold on to this particular age or phase for as long as possible. And I get that. If I go through the boxes of baby clothes that Cate has outgrown, it makes me a little wistful, because I remember how adorable she was when she was all teeny-tiny and new. And I hope that someday we’ll have another baby who can wear those clothes, so I don’t have to say good-bye to them forever.

But I have to admit, I am loving this phase so much more than when she was a newborn. Probably a couple of major reasons for that: (a) I’m not a hormonal mess anymore, and (b) I’m getting pretty consistent amounts of sleep these days. But really, she’s just so much fun right now. She has this amazing little laugh, and hearing it makes me feel like my heart could explode from the love.

So hey, she can outgrow all the adorable teeny-tiny outfits that she wants. I just can’t wait to see what happens next.

(Thanks to Amalah, since I got the idea for the video montage from the videos she’s made for Noah’s first and second birthdays. Which if you haven’t seen, you should, because they are awesome and will make you cry.)

I’ll write more tomorrow after Cate’s 12-month well-baby checkup. For now, I just want to say: happy first birthday, Catie-Girl. We sure do love you.

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My dad had requested some more baby videos, so I filmed this for him last night.

Cate loves her little stacking ring toy, and she can get them in the right order most of the time. This video also features a Special Guest Appearance from Beaumont, so if you have a thing for babies and pets (hi, Angie!), this is for you.

It’s funny, you’ll see him walk right in front of her and wait for her to sit up and pound on him. Which she always does. He loves it, and purrs like a maniac the whole time. Such a bizarre kitty. I have a theory that when she’s a little older and sleeping in a big-girl bed, Beaumont is probably going to be her sleeping companion. The two of them are totally buddies.

Side note: the audio is totally crap, because I filmed this with my regular camera instead of my camcorder. I think that’s probably my fault. I don’t know where the microphone is located on the camera, so it’s entirely likely that I had my finger over it the whole time.

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Work is picking up the pace, and things are about to get super hectic for the next few weeks. This is a good thing, since I’m generally enjoying what I do, and the Home Improvement Fund needs some serious donations so we can get this house ready to go on the market by spring.

I’ve already arranged for Cate to start going to daycare every weekday to accomodate the new crazy schedule. It’s funny, I used to think how I would hate to have her in daycare five days a week, and now I don’t even bat an eye. I think it’s mostly because she loves Patsy so much, she has so much fun there with the other kids, and she almost always comes home in a great mood. Sort of kills the Mommy Guilt right there, you know?

Oh, also, I think Cate might already have found her first boyfriend. There’s a new little boy going to daycare at Patsy’s house. His name is Mason, he’s 18 months old, and he’s just about the cutest little boy I’ve ever seen. (Except yours, of course, if you have one.) Patsy said that the other day, Cate was playing with a toy, and Mason walked over and stroked Cate’s hair. She smiled and seemed to like it. Then Mason noticed that Patsy was watching, so he got embarassed and walked away. How adorable is that?

Yesterday at pick-up time, Patsy showed me a picture she had taken of Mason and Cate playing together. There was going to be some sort of preschool/childcare fair at one of the churches here, and she wanted my permission to use the picture on her booth to help her drum up some business. I told her it was fine, of course. Heck, I think I might have to sneak my camera in there someday to try to get a picture of them together too.

In other news: four days from now, my baby is going to be one year old. I cannot begin to tell you how weird that feels. I could almost swear that we just got her home from the hospital few weeks ago.

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I’m slightly wigging out over the fact that Cate seems to be developing yet another cold. Because, you know, January is a whole new month, and apparently she has to have at least one for each month of winter. We’ve already had colds in both November and December.

So far, her only symptom is a runny nose, but it hasn’t seemed to affect her mood at all. She’s still generally cheerful and not acting like a sick baby. And (pardon me if this is gross/TMI) her nose is more watery than booger-y. So my hope is that maybe this isn’t another cold, maybe it’s just related to teething? Does anyone know if that’s even possible, or did I just make that up out of thin air?

She’s been working on those top two teeth for ages. One of them even broke through at some point, but then her gums swelled up and it went back in. Poor baby, that’s gotta hurt.

The other possible cause for the runny nose (other than a normal cold) is that it could be allergies, since the one-year mark is generally when kids could start developing them. I’m just crossing my fingers that she isn’t allergic to cats, because we’re all in big trouble if she is.

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I’m just now getting around to uploading a whole slew of pictures that have been on my computer for a while.

First, Lizard (plus her hubby and her own baby Catie) stopped by for a visit. She has more pictures than I do over on her site.

Also, there are a few that I’ve taken recently of Cate (the “Month 12″ set is here, such as it is - more pics will be added later). I love this one of her standing up on her own, even though she’s decided that she doesn’t like the flash on the camera so she won’t look at me when I’m trying to take her picture. But seriously, how cute is that outfit?

Finally, back in November, we went to the Sears Portrait Studio and had some professional photos taken of Cate (and a couple of family shots too). If you got a Christmas card from me this year, you’ve already seen a couple of them.

Originally I wanted to set up a photo session with Starr, who did our wedding photos and who I just adore. We ran into her at Scott and Cara’s wedding last summer and talked about how great it would be to do some baby pictures with her. But when we tried to set it up, we just couldn’t make it work with our schedules. I do want to get her to take some pictures of Cate at some point, probably this spring when everything is blooming again. (She does amazing outdoor photos.)

As it turned out, the Sears pictures weren’t nearly as cheesy as we thought they’d be. And I made a little photo album out of them, which was a nice Christmas gift for all of the grandparents. You can see the rest of the set here, if you’d like.

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