A baby\u2019s 1st anniversary on Earth felt like a celebration that Heather and I, as parents, enjoyed, not like a birthday but with an exhale of relief that she survived pregnancy and birth of our daughter. We resolved our daily stresses and situations without issue, and our baby made it to 12 months without any issues.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not talking about any serious issues\u2026I\u2019m talking about ANY issues.<\/p>\n
Matilda is one year old and so far has not had an ear infection, an emergency room visit, or any medical emergencies. She had a small procedure at 6 weeks to allow her tongue to move more freely, which took about 5 minutes, and she has had a cold just one time. But at exactly 12 months, she switched to no more liquid food at all. A week before she began sleeping through the night (10-12 hours without issue), she hasn\u2019t had any allergies to any foods we\u2019ve tried, and she\u2019s been given everything (last night was hummus, avocado, pollo asada, blueberries, raspberries, mandarin oranges, naan bread, and quinoa). She doesn\u2019t like cottage cheese, and honestly, she doesn\u2019t care much for cow\u2019s milk either, but as someone who doesn\u2019t drink milk and never has, I\u2019m okay with that.<\/p>\n
Matilda is walking around the house assisted with a cart and stands for hours at a time next to tables and the couch. She doesn\u2019t cry on car rides and doesn\u2019t really fall over that much. Developmentally, she\u2019s 6-9 months early on many things. She has about 10 words, waves, high fives, does itsy-bitsy-spider, mimics our facial and arm movements, and tells us when she\u2019s done eating or wants more food. She knows certain songs and jingles and dances along to them for the past few months and is spatially pretty aware of where we are. I just put her down and do my thing, and she follows me around the house. The last thing I\u2019ve noticed is it only takes a couple of times for her to know something is off-limits. She no longer messes with the dog\u2019s food or water bowl or some of the decorative bottles behind the couch.<\/p>\n
This is all really great stuff.<\/p>\n
The last thing I\u2019ll mention is she\u2019s flown maybe 9-10 times on airplanes, and it\u2019s been a joy on all but 1 flight. She slept the entire way to France from Boston and generally is easily entertained. I can no longer do my long-form writing on airplanes anymore, even when she\u2019s sleeping, but she isn\u2019t crying or screaming. It\u2019s all going really well.<\/p>\n
As far as babies go, I\u2019ve never experienced such an easily manageable child. The fact that she\u2019s off the bottle, sleeping all night + 2 daily naps, and eating pretty much everything we\u2019re eating just chops it all basically like having a kid who just can\u2019t talk or walk yet.<\/p>\n
\u2014-<\/p>\n
Heather and I did survive, but it really feels like we had it too easy, but I\u2019m not complaining. I think everyone has been able to meet her on both sides of our family. I took a while, and she has a very large family. Her first real swimming lessons begin Saturday, and her 1-year-old doctor checkup is tomorrow, where we hope she\u2019s still tracking at nearly 100% for her size (twice the size of average), but given she\u2019s wearing 24-month clothes, that all tracks.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t hike as much lately, but now that it\u2019s cooling down, the bugs of North Carolina are taking a break, and I feel like we can get back out into the woods again. I\u2019m also lucky that Heather has been able to manage a full workload, and yet we still haven\u2019t had to do daycare yet. I think for her socialization, we\u2019ll likely end up doing 1 or 2 days a week soon just to help Matilda interact and mimic other kids, which I\u2019ve read could help her start walking sooner than if she spent all of her time with us.<\/p>\n
Matilda\u2019s IQ is yet to be determined, but I will say that she\u2019s full of FOMO, or fear of missing out. If there\u2019s a noise or new thing, she wants to be in the situation. She wants to ride on the lawnmower with me, watch me open a can of seltzer, and intently follows me putting butter on toast and brushing her hair when I brush mine. She is starting to learn how to swing by herself in the toddler swing, and she tries to unbuckle her car seat when we get to a destination. It\u2019s all very cool and exciting to see how curious and interested she is in the world around her. Yesterday on our afternoon walk, a flock of Canadian geese flew over, and she stretched her neck to intently watch them fly away. Heather and I both spend every waking hour with her, narrating our day for her, so it\u2019s not just an observation of geese but my mentioning to her these are birds flying through the air all together and narrating that for her in hopes she can assign a narrative to the observations.<\/p>\n
Every night at 7:30 p.m., Heather will clean her up after dinner, we cuddle with her, read her a book, turn on the white noise machine, and she\u2019ll turn off her own light when we lay her down in bed. She doesn\u2019t cry for more than 5 seconds, sits down, grabs a small blanket, and goes to sleep until 6-7 a.m. the next morning.<\/p>\n
One year in, and I\u2019m proud of where she is, and yet I\u2019m still celebrating more us as parents, but soon more development will be wholly on her, and I think subsequent birthdays will transform into her celebration than ours. That\u2019s how it should be. But she\u2019s doing okay and thriving.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A baby\u2019s 1st anniversary on Earth felt like a celebration that Heather and I, as parents, enjoyed, not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-10-30T17:51:28Z","apple_news_api_id":"5b7df120-2eaa-4ec2-ab7c-3fa854413dc7","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-18T05:41:05Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AW33xIC6qTsKrfD-oVEE9xw","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[403],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-parenting","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-3d4","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12293,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2024\/08\/27\/photography-europe-2024\/","url_meta":{"origin":12342,"position":0},"title":"Photography: Europe 2024","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 27, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a lot of family photos from this trip but I\u2019m keeping those private. 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